Imperfect Cognitions

This post is by Maja Kittel, formerly known as Maja Białek, a philosopher of psychiatry working at the Faculty of Philosophy and Cognitive Science of the University of Białystok. Maja focuses on the epistemic properties of delusions and is currently conducting empirical qualitative research on the content of delusions (for details, click here ). Maja recently published a paper entitled: “The epistemic innocence of elaborated delusions re-examined” in the Review of Philosophy and Psychology. Maja Kittel Epistemic innocence is the idea, put forth by Lisa Bortolotti and collaborators, that although certain beliefs seem epistemically costly, they sometimes bring more epistemic benefit than harm and thus deserve absolution. For example, a monothematic delusion that helps an individual understand their difficult and frightening experiences may be judged as epistemically innocent because, although it is false and fixed, it serves as an imperfect, temporary crutch, helping the person remain a...

In this post, José Eduardo Porcher , Research Fellow at the Rutgers Center for the Philosophy of Religion working primarily in the philosophy of psychiatry and philosophical psychology, outlines his target paper “ Double Bookkeeping and Doxasticism about Delusion ” in the newest issue of Philosophy, Psychiatry & Psychology. Doxasticism about delusion is the theoretical stance according to which delusion is a kind of belief. Although doxasticism is taken for granted in the psychiatric literature, it has been a major point of contention in the philosophical literature, where it has faced many objections and alternative accounts (see e.g. Bortolotti, 2018 ). In my paper, I show how double bookkeeping , a distinctive characteristic of delusional patients, motivates two kinds of argument against doxasticism. I then examine these arguments and find them inconclusive. So what is double bookkeeping? Consider the following excerpt of an interview with a patient who showed symptoms ...