Imperfect Cognitions

Chloe Bamboulis, a PhD student at the University of Birmingham, works on the relationship between classic philosophical views and cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT). In this video , she talks for three minutes about self-knowledge in Plato and in CBT. In today's post she summarises a commentary co-authored with Lisa Bortolotti on the utility of CBT, forthcoming in Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology. Chloe Bamboulis A common idea about CBT is that it does not contribute to the person's understanding of reality ( validity ) but encourages ways of thinking that boost the person's wellbeing ( utility ). In our brief commentary, we argue that CBT can also contribute to some of the person's epistemic goals. Suppose James comes to believe that he will not be offered his dream job, the one he is going to be interviewed for. James arrives at this self-prediction by accepting a negative automatic thought about himself as someone who does not perform well at job interviews. A...

Today's post is by Eugenia Lancellotta, who has recently completed her doctoral project at the University of Birmingham, on the adaptiveness of delusions and delusions in OCD. Here Eugenia presents some ideas from an article she published in Review of Philosophy and Psychology in 2021, entitled: "Is the biological adaptiveness of delusions doomed? ". Eugenia also discussed some themes from her research in this video interview . Eugenia Lancellotta How likely is it that you father has been replaced by an imposter? Or that you are the Emperor of Antarctica? These beliefs are instances of delusions: fixed, irrational beliefs that are not amenable to change in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary. In popular culture, delusions are considered to be the mark of madness, while psychiatry usually takes them to be the symptoms of a serious mental illness. However, in countertendency to the narrative that sees delusions as pathological, some researchers working in the f...

Today's post is by Rosa Ritunnano (University of Birmingham and Melbourne), consultant psychiatrist and PhD candidate at the Institute for Mental Health, Birmingham, UK. Here she talks about a recent paper she co-authored with Lisa Bortolotti, “ Do delusions have and give meaning? ”, recently published in  Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences  (open access).  Rosa Ritunnano For many people living with psychosis, delusional experiences are hugely distressing. They are not only harmful because of the negative emotions they often carry along, but they are also dysfunctional ( Miyazono, 2015 ). Someone who believes, for example, that everyone in their workplace is reading their thoughts and controlling their movements through a mysterious influencing machine, may feel extremely nervous, gradually withdraw from their friends and family, and give up their job. This can lead to a disruption in good functioning and may be accompanied by a constellation of symptoms attracting...

In this post, Federico Bongiorno (now a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oxford, funded by an Analysis Trust and Mind Association award) is summarising a paper he wrote with Lisa Bortolotti while a PhD student at the University of Birmingham. The paper is entitled: "The Role of Unconscious Inference in Models of Delusion Formation" and appeared in Inference and Consciousness , a volume edited by Timothy Chan and Anders Nes and published by Routledge in 2019. Federico Bongiorno Brendan Maher was the first to suggest that the formation of delusions involves an inferential transition—although he denies that the inference from which delusions arise is faulty ( Maher, 1992 ; Maher, 1999 ). Maher defends a view known as ‘explanationism’ ( Maher, 1974 ; Stone and Young, 1997 ), according to which delusions are hypotheses adopted to explain anomalous perceptual experiences and arrived at by inferential reasoning that is neither abnormally biased nor otherwise deficient (...

This post is by Jane Kisbey, PhD student at the University of Birmingham. Jane talks about her research on psychopathy and moral responsibility in this video interview . Jane Kisbey Some philosophers have recognised that in psychopaths there appears to be a failing in prudential concern. Philosophers characterise this in various ways, however I offer a new conceptualisation of the psychopath. My hypothesis says that we can best understand psychopaths as extreme future discounters . This account draws upon Neil Levy’s (2014) account to substantiate my hypothesis. However, there is a crucial difference between mine and Levy’s view. Whilst Levy thinks that psychopaths are unable to imagine what it is like to be a future person, it seems that this is not the case. It is rather that psychopaths cannot see why they should care about their future self, because for psychopaths, it is only what happens now they should care about. Levy argues that psychopaths have an impaired ability to mental...

Today's post is by Maria Cristina Amoretti and Elisabetta Lalumera . This is their second of two blog posts on applied philosophy of science and conceptual analysis in the time of COVID-19. Amoretti and Lalumera As philosophers, one of our interests is the interplay of facts and values in medical sciences. We think that debunking the myth of science as purely factual is a contribution that philosophers can usefully bring to society. We also think that science can be nevertheless objective and trustworthy, but not in virtue of being purely factual – as many philosophers have argued recently. In a recent paper , we focused on mortality statistics during the pandemic.  Mortality data have been very salient throughout the pandemic, both at the personal level, by influencing our emotional uptake of the situation, and at the level of society, as government’s decisions are based on epidemiological models, which, in their turn, are fed by mortality data. When is someone’s death due to COV...

Today's post is by Maria Cristina Amoretti and Elisabetta Lalumera. They discuss the concept of disease in the time of COVID-19 which they also write about in a recent article in Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics . This is the first of two blog posts on applied philosophy of science and conceptual analysis in the time of COVID-19. Maria Cristina Amoretti is Associate Professor at the University of Genoa, Department of Antiquity, Philosophy and History (DAFIST) and Vice-Director of PhilHeaD-Philosophy of Health and Disease Research Center. Elisabetta Lalumera is Assistant Professor at the University of Bologna, Department of Life Quality Studies (QUVI), and member of PhilHeaD. Amoretti and Lalumera During the pandemic, medical and non-medical interventions of institutions and governments became central to our lives. Sometimes we felt overwhelmed with worry and anxiety, conditions that do not favour philosophical reflection. In our paper we tried to put worry and anxiety in bracket...

In today's post, Lucienne Spencer (University of Bristol) discusses the wrongful depathologization of serious mental conditions. The post is based on a paper co-authored with Havi Carel and published open access in Philosophy of Medicine. Lucienne Spencer The Mental Health Foundation states that ‘people with mental health problems are amongst the least likely of any group with a long-term health condition or disability to find work, be in a steady, long-term relationship, live in decent housing [or] be socially included in mainstream society’. Given the global decline in mental health following the coronavirus pandemic, addressing the marginalisation of people with psychiatric illness has never been more urgent. According to the literature, this marginalisation is grounded in sanist attitudes that portray people with psychiatric illness as ‘dangerous and frightening’, ‘incompetent to participate in “normal” activities’ and ‘morally repugnant’.  Comic by Michael Seymour Blake (Inst...

Today's post is part of a series on the AHRC funded project Deluded by Experience , ran by PI Ema Sullivan-Bissett and Co-I Paul Noordhof . In this post Harriet Stuart (Research Assistant for Deluded by Experience) interviews Carolina Flores about their research interests and most recent work. Carolina is a graduate student in Philosophy at Rutgers, New Brunswick , specialising in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and social philosophy. Carolina Flores HS: Your PhD work seeks to address questions around belief and interactions with evidence, how did you first become interested in these ideas? CF: My interest in these questions has a theoretical and a political source. The theoretical source was my interest, as an undergraduate, in Davidson’s idea that to have beliefs is to be rational. Though I was intrigued by this view, it was also clear to me that it is in tension with the fact that we are frequently irrational, sometimes deeply so (as in the case of delusions). In my undergra...