Imperfect Cognitions

Pablo López-Silva is a Reader in Philosophical Psychology at the Faculty of Medicine of the Universidad de Valparaíso in Chile . He is the leading researcher of the FONDECYT project ‘ The Agentive Architecture of Human Thought ’ granted by the National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICYT) of the Government of Chile.  His current research focuses on cognitive phenomenology, attributions of mental agency, and delusions. In this post, he summarizes his new paper titled ‘ Mapping the Psychotic Mind ’ recently published in the Psychiatric Quarterly. Thought insertion – TI henceforth – is regarded as one of the most complex symptoms of psychosis. People suffering from TI report that external human and non-human agents have inserted thoughts or ideas into their minds. Over the last years, the enigmatic nature of TI reports has become target of a number of phenomenological, empirical, and conceptual debates. In fact, TI has been used as a good excuse to de...

Today's post is by  Peter Clutton is a graduate student at the Australian National University School of Philosophy (previously at Macquarie University) working on the nature and taxonomy of delusions. In my recent article, " A new defence of doxasticism about delusions: The cognitive phenomenological defence ", I enter the ongoing debate over whether delusions are beliefs (or whether they are some other, non-doxastic state). I argue that delusions are beliefs, despite the many objections to that view. It might seem obvious that delusions are beliefs. People with delusions typically insist they believe what they say, and the fact that they do is often the very reason they come to clinical attention in the first place. Indeed, clinical manuals like the DSM define “delusion” as a type of “false belief”. On the other hand, delusions seem to defy many preconceptions about the nature of belief. For example, we expect people to act on their beliefs, but people with ...

In this post Federico Bongiorno (PhD student at the University of Birmingham) interviews Peter Carruthers , Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD. Peter’s research has focused predominantly on philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, and cognitive science. Here, Federico and Peter (pictured below) discuss Peter's position on the debate over cognitive phenomenology. FB : Your recent work has focussed, among other things, on the question of cognitive phenomenology. Roughly, the question amounts to asking whether cognition has its own phenomenal character. Can you tell us more about this issue and its significance? PC : The first thing that I ought to mention is that this is joint work done with Bénédicte Viellet. The issue is essentially whether thought has a phenomenal character that is not reducible to other kinds of phenomenal character. Thought is often associated with phenomenal states. As you listen to me speaking now, you are...