Imperfect Cognitions

In this post, Susanna Siegel , Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University, introduces her book, The Rationality of Perception . On a traditional conception of the human mind, reasoning can be rational or irrational, but perception cannot. Perception is simply a source of new information, and cannot be assessed for rationality. I argue that this conception is wrong. Drawing on examples involving racism, emotion, self-defense law, and scientific theories, The Rationality of Perception makes the case that perception itself can be rational or irrational. The Rationality of Perception argues that reasoning and perception can be deeply intertwined. When unjustified beliefs, fears, desires, or prejudices influence what we perceive, we face a philosophical problem: is it reasonable to strengthen what one believes, fears, or suspects, on the basis of an experience that was generated, unbeknownst to the perceiver, by those very same beliefs, fears, or suspicions? I argue that it is not ...

This post is by Tillmann Vierkant (pictured above), who is a senior lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. He works on mental actions, conscious will, self control, mindreading, and lots of other stuff in the philosophy of cognitive science. Here, he summarises a paper written with Rosa Hardt  (pictured below), who also works in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, and recently completed her PhD on the role of emotions in moral agency.  Intuitively, we might want to say that what is special about our conscious beliefs is that they are conscious, because we can only use our rationality to deliberate about them if we are conscious of them. But this can’t be quite right by itself. We can obviously be conscious of other attitudes like gut feelings, phobias and implicit biases as well. However, as Levy argues, there is an important difference near by. While it is true that we can be aware e.g. of our spider phobia or our stereotypes about wom...

Camillia Kong is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Kent and Research Associate at the Ethox Centre, University of Oxford. She researches and has published on moral and political philosophical issues around the medico-juridical concept of capacity, mental disorder, and intellectual impairment. Her recent work also examines ethical issues around psychiatric genomics. What should medical and legal professionals do when a person with intellectual impairment chooses to remain within an abusive and disabling environment? Should these professionals even be considering the difference between relationships and care environments which promote or disable the autonomy of individuals with a learning disability or mental disorder? Or is this paternalism gone one step too far? In my new book Mental Capacity in Relationship: Decision-making, dialogue, and autonomy I explore these complex issues through the prism of mental capacity legislation in England and Wales and h...

Johannes Mahr (pictured above) is a PhD student in the Department of Cognitive Science at Central European University in Budapest. His work centers on the question of how the capacity for complex forms of communication has shaped higher cognition in humans. During his PhD he developed a novel account of the nature and function of episodic memory, which focuses on its role in communication. You can read about it here . We usually think that when we remember the past, we form beliefs based on whatever we remember. When you remember that you went to the supermarket and bought a bottle of champagne yesterday, you take yourself to believe that this is indeed what you did because you remember it. Similar to perception, it seems to us that remembering provides us with evidence on the basis of which we form our beliefs. In the case of perception it has been widely argued that the processes by which we perceive our environment are encapsulated from what we already believe. Th...

On May 5th, Project PERFECT hosted our workshop at the University of Cambridge. In a previous post on the workshop, the individual talks were summarised, so the current post focuses on some of the common themes that emerged in the talks and discussion: (a) the active nature of episodic memory and its potential to generate knowledge; (b) the implications of the existence of observer memories; (c) the role of others in the generation of knowledge through episodic memory. It seems obvious that we have knowledge of past episodes in our lives, but Kourken Michaelian and Dorothea Debus highlighted how humans are active in the process of forming our memories. This might seem to show that we cannot have knowledge through episodic memory because episodic memory systems do not passively represent the past. Michaelian discussed this point through the lens of work on the reconstructive nature of memory. In the cognitive sciences, it is now widely accepted that episodic memories are c...

This post is by Hugo Mercier , Cognitive Scientist (French National Center for Scientific Research) and co-author (with Dan Sperber) of The Enigma of Reason . In this post, he discusses the argumentative theory and refers to some of his most recent publications ( 1 ; 2 ; 3 ).  It is easy nowadays to find long lists of biases (such as this one ). In turn, these lists of biases have given rise to numerous attempts at debiasing. The popular system 1 / system 2 framework has been useful in framing these attempts at debiasing. System 1 would be a set of cognitive mechanisms that deliver quick, effortless intuitions, which tend to be correct but are prone to systematic mistakes. System 2 would be able to correct these intuitions through individual reflection. Teaching critical thinking, for instance, can then be thought of as a way of strengthening system 2 against system 1. The problem is that, as Vasco Correia noted in a recent post , debiasing attempts, including the teac...

This post is by Amy Chandler , a sociologist currently holding a Chancellor’s Fellowship in Health, through Arts, Design and Humanities at the University of Edinburgh. In this blog she introduces her book, Self-Injury, Medicine and Society: Authentic Bodies , published by Palgrave Macmillan. Find out more about Amy's research . The book is the culmination of over 10 years research, and a much longer period of engagement and interest, in the practice of self-injury. In the book I focus on the different ways that people make sense of self-injury, through an analysis of accounts – or narratives – about the practice. Self-injury is commonly associated with mental ill-health, seen as ‘irrational’ or ‘impulsive’. As such, the ways in which self-injury is explained might be understood by some as an example of an ‘imperfect cognition’. People report injuring their bodies in order to make themselves feel better – how could this be possible? In the book, I explore the diverse...

Anne Baril (pictured above) has research interests in ethics and epistemology, and is currently writing a book in which she argues for the moral and prudential importance of epistemic virtue. Starting in Fall 2017, she will be a Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis. In this post, she summarizes a paper she recently published in Episteme. Folk wisdom holds that ignorance can be bliss. We’re happier not knowing how many germs are on our toothbrushes or how many calories were in that cupcake. Likewise for personality traits, such as being disposed to be too curious or too strict about the truth. The kind of person who is disposed to press her spouse to say what he really thinks about his attractive colleague is in for some hurt feelings. And without a degree of self-deception – about others, and about ourselves – wouldn’t we just be too depressed? Sometimes the work of psychologists is put forward in support of the claim that se...

Today's post is by Christina Moutsiana  (pictured above), who is Lecturer in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Westminster. Her research focuses on perceptual and cognitive biases which she investigates using a variety of neuroscience tools, behavioural paradigms, and psychophysics. In this post she discusses some of her recent research on belief updating and brain architecture (see Moutsiana et al. 2015 for more details). We make decisions every day, some of which are critical to our health and wellbeing. These decisions are driven by the beliefs we hold. But do we form beliefs in an accurate manner that allow us to avoid harm and maximize reward? Cognition is not impervious to error, especially when emotion comes into play. One of the most robust cognitive biases is asymmetric belief updating; the tendency for healthy individuals to alter beliefs about their future to a greater extent in response to good information compared with bad information. Decision ...

In this post, Colin Feltham, Emeritus Professor of Critical Counselling Studies, Sheffield Hallam University, and also an External Associate Professor of Humanistic Psychology, University of Southern Denmark, discusses his new book Depressive Realism: Interdisciplinary Perspectives . Some of his work that bears on similar themes includes Death  (In The Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science, in press); Anthropathology: the abiding malady of the species (In The Evolution of Psychopathology, in press);  Keeping Ourselves in the Dark  (2015);  Failure  (2012). Although my academic and professional background was rooted in counselling and psychotherapy, my writing for the past ten years has also focused on what I call anthropathology (the principle of evolved, pervasive human pathology); on philosophies of failure and pessimism; on aspects of evolutionary psychology; and on the inescapably depressing features of human existence, most no...