Imperfect Cognitions

Today's post is by Sam Wilkinson (University of Exeter) and it is the third in the series “Social Approaches to Delusions”. Sam Wilkinson This series of posts has sought to show how there has been a “social turn” in thinking about delusions. The excellent posts by Kengo Miyazono and Dan Williams on their respective co-authored papers ( Miyazono and Salice 2020 ; Williams and Montagnese preprint ) are testament to the fruitfulness of going beyond individual cognition and individualistic epistemology when theorising about delusion. In this post I draw inspiration from their work to reflect on precisely what we might mean by delusions being social. Let’s draw a distinction between delusions being social in their formation (call this “the social formation claim”), and in their evaluation (call this “the social evaluation claim”). In other words, social factors (deficits in social cognition, social epistemology) may play a role in generating those things that we end up calling delusi...

Today's post is by Daniel Williams and Marcella Montagnese and it is the second in the series “Social Approaches to Delusions”. Daniel is an Early Career Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge, and Marcella is a doctoral student in the Department of Neuroimaging, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, at King’s College London. Here Daniel and Marcella talk about their new paper “ Bayesian Psychiatry and the Social Focus of Delusions ”.   Daniel Williams As with many other areas of psychology and philosophy, the study of delusions is taking a social turn. This has different manifestations. For example, in an extremely interesting article , Sam Wilkinson argues that the very attribution of delusional status to certain beliefs is wrapped up in social practices of folk-epistemic approval and disapproval. To call something a delusion, Wilkinson argues, is not to describe – or at least not only to describe – reality but to express a certa...

Today's post is by Kengo Miyazono (Hokkaido University) and it is the first in the series “Social Approaches to Delusions”. Here Kengo talks about his new paper with Alessandro Salice (University College Cork) “ Social Epistemological Conception of Delusion ” (open access in  Synthese ). Kengo Miyazono The dominant conception of delusion in psychiatry (in textbooks, research papers, diagnostic manuals, etc.) is predominantly epistemic ( Broome & Bortolotti 2009 ). Delusions are almost always characterized in terms of some epistemic notion, e.g., evidence, reasoning, judgment, etc. For instance, DSM-5 characterizes delusions as “fixed beliefs that are not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence ” (italics added: p. 87), and they are said to be “based on incorrect inference about external reality” and “firmly held despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary” (italics added:...

This post is by Michael Hannon and Elizabeth Edenberg . Here they present their new book,  Political Epistemology  (published by Oxford University Press in May 2021). The following authors have contributed to the book: Elizabeth Anderson, Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij, Jason Brennan, Quassim Cassam, Thomas Christiano, Elizabeth Edenberg, David Estlund, Alexander Guerrero, Michael Hannon, Jennifer Lackey, Michael P. Lynch, Fabienne Peter, Jeroen de Ridder, Regina Rini, Jennifer R. Steele, Robert B. Talisse, and Briana Toole. As current events around the world have illustrated, epistemological issues are at the center of our political lives. It has become increasingly difficult to discern legitimate sources of evidence, misinformation spreads faster than ever, and the role of truth in politics has allegedly decayed in recent years. It is therefore no coincidence that political discourse is currently saturated with epistemic notions like ‘post-truth,’ ‘fake news,’ ‘truth dec...