Today’s post is provided by Jorge Gonçalves of IFILNOVA , Universidade Nova de Lisboa (UNL) and the Lisbon Mind & Reasoning Group (group included in IFILNOVA). In this post he provides a summary of his chapter "Why are delusions pathological?" in Hipólito, I., Gonçalves, J. Pereira, J. G. Schizophrenia and Common Sense: explaining the relation between madness and social values . The aim of the article is to identify a characteristic of delusions: that which makes them pathological. This aim may appear a bit strange at first because one believes that delusions just are a pathological alteration of the mind. However, some authors have shown that although pathological delusions are the most studied, not all delusions have necessarily harmful consequences for the delirious subject or for others. Hence, it seems pertinent to question what makes delusions a pathological state. “Pathological” is here understood as that which damages the subject (not that which d
A blog at the intersection of philosophy, psychology, and mental health