Imperfect Cognitions

This post is by Sara Dellantonio and Luigi Pastore. They discuss the theme of a recent paper, " Ignorance, misconception and critical thinking ", appeared in Synthese . Sara Dellantonio Beliefs such as “Tiny specks of matter don’t weigh anything”, “Most people only use 10% of their brains”, “People with severe mental illness are prone to violence” or “Autism has become an epidemic” are usually defined as misconceptions , i.e., as beliefs that are considered to be false in the light of current accepted scientific knowledge. Most studies on misconceptions aim to identify and create lists of the most common misconceptions across scientific fields such as physics, psychology, medicine, etc. In our article “Ignorance, misconceptions and critical thinking” we instead investigate the reasons that such misconceptions are endorsed in the first place. It turns out that many of our misconceptions are not isolated errors that occur against the background of a correct explanatory framewor...

In this post, Rie Iizuka (Kansai University) reports on a held three-day workshop on epistemic paternalism and enhancement, entitled "Striving for perfection". This workshop was held online in February 2021, organised by Rie, as a part of her research on epistemic paternalism funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.  Day 1-Epistemic Nudging As an epistemic analogue of libertarian paternalism, Kengo Miyazono (Hokkaido University) introduced epistemic libertarian paternalism; epistemic nudges are placed in such a way people would judge in desirable ways, while no inquiries are blocked.  Epistemic nudging only changes our epistemic choice architectures but not our choice sets. This position may look modest initially. However, some believe epistemic nudging is an inherently contested concept (one of which claims nudging is irrational). He argues that such irrationality is contingent: some nudging can be rational, especially where nudges neutralize our biases. Ba...

This post is the sixth in a series of posts on a project on  agency and youth mental health  funded by a MRC/AHRC/ESRC Adolescence, Mental Health and the Developing Mind: Engagement Award and led by Rose McCabe at City University. Today a member of Young People's Advisory Group writes her reflections about the project and what it means to her.  The author is Catherine Fadashe, who is currently a third-year student at Birkbeck University studying English Literature and Italian. Her interests within mental health focuses on how to de-stigmatize culturally-influenced perceptions of mental health within Africa. In 2019, I delivered a TEDx talk speaking on my mental health journey since my suicide attempt when I was 18. Talking about something so personal on a public platform, and being so open and honest about the topic, gave me a huge sense of liberation. So when I came across the opportunity to be on the Young People’s Advisory Group (YPAG) for the McPin Agency pr...

This post is the fifth in a series of posts on a project on  agency and youth mental health  funded by a MRC/AHRC/ESRC Adolescence, Mental Health and the Developing Mind: Engagement Award and led by Rose McCabe at City University. Today it is my turn ( Lisa Bortolotti ) to answer four questions about the project.  I am Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham, affiliated with the Department of Philosophy and the Institute for Mental Health. I am a philosopher of psychology, interested in belief, rationality, self-knowledge, and mental health.  What interests you about clinical encounters with young people in the mental health context? The encounter between a mental healthcare practitioner and a young person experiencing a mental health crisis is the paradigmatic case of an interaction characterised by power imbalances: the practitioner is an expert who can assess risks and prescribe treatment, whereas the young person is thought of as a vulnerable...

This post is the fourth in a series of posts on a project on agency and youth mental health  funded by a MRC/AHRC/ESRC Adolescence, Mental Health and the Developing Mind: Engagement Award and led by Rose McCabe at City University. The research team members were asked the same four questions and today it is Michael Larkin's turn to answer. Michael Larkin Michael is a Reader in Psychology at Aston University. He is interested in related and connectedness and is an expert in the co-production and co-design of psychosocial services. In 2019, he was awarded the Mid-Career Research Prize by the Qualitative Methods Section of the British Psychological Society. What interests you about clinical encounters with young people in the mental health context? Over the years I’ve been involved in lots of studies about people’s experiences of mental health services, and of course, read a lot of other’s people’s work in this area too. It’s really striking how frequently certain key themes...

This post is the third in a series of posts on a project on  agency and youth mental health  funded by a MRC/AHRC/ESRC Adolescence, Mental Health and the Developing Mind: Engagement Award and led by Rose McCabe at City University. The research team members were asked the same four questions and today it is Rose McCabe's turn to answer. Rose McCabe Rose is a psychologist specialising in professional-patient communication in mental health care. She records professional-patient encounters and micro-analyses verbal and nonverbal communication. She also works on translating these findings into novel interventions to improve communication and patient outcomes in mental healthcare.  What interests you about clinical encounters with young people in the mental health context? I am fascinated by communication between people and how it has the potential to impact us in a good or bad way. In a mental health context, when someone is distressed and vulnerable, this becomes even m...

Matthew Broome This post is the second in a series of posts on a project on  agency and youth mental health  funded by a MRC/AHRC/ESRC Adolescence, Mental Health and the Developing Mind: Engagement Award and led by Rose McCabe at City University. The research team members were asked the same four questions and today it is Matthew Broome's turn to answer. Matthew is an academic psychiatrist and Director of the Institute for Mental Health at the University of Birmingham. His main research interests lie in the field early psychosis and in the philosophy and ethics of mental health.  What interests you about clinical encounters with young people in the mental health context? There were two main drivers to my interest. One is very practical: as a psychiatrist I often see young people with mental health problems and am aware of the difficulties they can face in getting the help and understanding they would like.  The second driver is more theoretical, but with p...

Rachel Temple This post is first in a series of posts on a project on agency and youth mental health  funded by a MRC/AHRC/ESRC Adolescence, Mental Health and the Developing Mind: Engagement Award and led by Rose McCabe at City University. The research team members were asked the same four questions and today it is Rachel Temple's turn to answer. Rachel is a Public Involvement & Research Manager at the mental health research charity, The McPin Foundation . At The McPin Foundation, she leads the McPin’s Young People Advisory Group and the wider young people’s network . She is passionate about ensuring meaningful involvement of young people in mental health research in ways that are comfortable, accessible, and engaging; regularly drawing from her social anxiety experiences when facilitating.  Rachel is responsible for ensuring that no key decisions are made without consulting with the young people on this project; seeking their input on things such as project aims, des...

Here is the fifth post in our series on social approaches to delusions. Today, Phil Corlett raises some concerns about the arguments proposed in favour of a social turn in the previous posts, offering a different perspective. Phil Corlett Lots of people I like and respect who think about delusions have recently decided that social processes are relevant to belief formation and maintenance and thence to delusions. I call this the social turn . The preceding blog posts in this fascinating series suggest: 1) That we give testimony about the quality of other individuals as sources of testimony, and as such, we should define delusions and (given their social contents) delusions arise within individuals, through inherently social processes. 2) That testimonial abnormalities might be domain specific and dissociable from general reasoning abnormalities, and further that the socially specific deficit is one of coalitional cognition – how we form and sustain alliances with conspecifics. 3) That...

Justin Sulik Here is the fourth post in the series on social approaches to delusions, after the posts by Miyazono , Williams and Montagnese , and Wilkinson . In today's post, Justin Sulik, Charles Jefferson, and Ryan McKay discuss their new paper, “ Collectively Jumping to Conclusions: Social Information Amplifies the Tendency to Gather Insufficient Data ”. Justin Sulik is a postdoctoral researcher in the Cognition, Values and Behavior group at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.  Charles Efferson is Professor in the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Lausanne.  Ryan McKay is Professor of Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London.   Charles Efferson Human beings are inveterate misbelievers. At the individual level, our propensity to false beliefs about our prowess and prospects can be costly and dangerous: promoting harmful behaviours like unsafe driving, smoking and overspending. Spreading and amplifying in large groups, however,...