Imperfect Cognitions

In today's post I report on the Summer School in Reichenau   which I had the pleasure to attend on 25th and 26th August 2023. The theme was Belief, meaning, knowledge: how we deal with uncertainty . Delusions was a topic often discussed in the presentations, from philosophical, phenomenological, and clinical perspectives. Organisers of the event were Johannes Rusch, Daniel Nischk, Dorothea Debus, and Thomas Müller. Rathaus Reichenau (front) Rathaus Reichenau (courtyard) The first speaker was Rico Gutschmidt (Konstanz) with a presentation on Mysticism and Delusions . Fundamental uncertainties are limitations of knowledge and experience and three questions arise: (1) Where do we come from? (2) Why there is anything at all rather than nothing? (3) Who are we? Although such questions are not easy to answer or possible to answer they can evoke transformative experiences. Philosophical experiences such as struggling with these questions can be transformative because they change the type...

Today's post is by  David Thorstad  on his recent paper “ Why bounded rationality (in epistemology)? ” published in 2023 in  Philosophy and Phenomenological Research .  David Thorstad Bounded rationality gets a bad rap in epistemology. Critics argue that theories of bounded rationality are too context-sensitive, conventionalist, or reliant on ordinary language. My aim in this paper is to make sure that bounded rationality gets the rap sheet it deserves. The first order of business is to lay out an approach to bounded rationality inspired by traditional theories of bounded rationality in cognitive science. I explain and defend this theory more fully in my book, Inquiry under Bounds , under contract with Oxford University Press. My approach has five core commitments. First, bounds matter. Paradigmatic bounds such as limited cognitive abilities and the cost of computation bear on how it is rational for us to cognize.  Second, rationality is procedural , moving up...

This post is a reply by Phil Corlett (Yale)  (pictured below) to Dan Williams's recent post on Hierarchical Bayesian Models of Delusions . Dan Williams has put forward a lucid and compelling critique of hierarchical Bayesian models of cognition and perception and, in particular, their application to delusions. I want to take the opportunity to respond to Dan’s two criticisms outlined so concisely on the blog (and in his excellent paper) and then comment on the paper more broadly. Dan is “ sceptical that beliefs—delusional or otherwise—exist at the higher levels of a unified inferential hierarchy in the neocortex . ” He says, “ every way of characterising this proposed hierarchy... is inadequate .” Stating that “ it can’t be true both that beliefs exist at the higher levels of the inferential hierarchy and that higher levels of the hierarchy represent phenomena at large spatiotemporal scales . There are no such content restrictions on beliefs, whether delusional ...