Imperfect Cognitions

Ema Sullivan-Bissett (pictured above) is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Birmingham, having previously worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on project PERFECT. In this post she summarises her paper ‘ Biological Function and Epistemic Normativity ’, forthcoming in a special issue of Philosophical Explorations on False but Useful Beliefs. Alongside Lisa Bortolotti, Ema guest edited this special issue which is inspired by project PERFECT’s interests in belief. In my paper I give a biological account of epistemic normativity. I am interested in explaining two features: (EN1) Beliefs have truth as their standard of correctness. (EN2) There are sui generis categorical epistemic norms.

On 4 th  and 5 th  February project  PERFECT  hosted their first major event, PERFECT 2016, a two day workshop on  False but Useful Beliefs . The workshop was held in the Herringham Hall at Regent’s Conferences and Events (pictured above) in London. In this post I give a brief overview of the ten papers presented at the workshop.  Anandi Hattiangadi  (Stockholm), pictured above, opened the workshop with a paper entitled: ‘Radical Interpretation and Implicit Cognition’. Anandi considered the prospects for the possibility of Lewisian radical interpretation which requires an entailment from the physical truths about some subject to intentional truths about her. In light of recent work in experimental psychology, in particular, work on heuristics which lead to irrational actions from the point of view of decision theory, she concluded that radical interpretation is impossible.  In discussion time, there was an opportunity for Anandi to clari...

Project PERFECT is very proud to announce its first workshop, on False but Useful Beliefs , to be held in London on 4th and 5th of February 2016. The workshop will take place at Regent's Conferences and Event in Regent's Park (see picture below). The idea of the workshop is to explore a variety of beliefs and belief-like states that are epistemically faulty (either false or badly supported by evidence) but that also play a useful function for the agent, either biologically, psychologically, pragmatically, epistemically, or in some other way. The workshop features three types of talks. 1. Talks by invited speakers who are leading experts in the area.  Anandi Hattiangadi from Stockholm University will talk about radical interpretation and implicit cognition,  Neil Van Leeuwen  from Georgia State University will discuss agent-like stimuli in religious practice, and  David Papineau  from King's College London and CUNY will ask whether functional falsity r...

Ema Sullivan-Bissett In this post I give an overview of what I did as a Research Fellow in the first year of project PERFECT , as well as my plans for the coming year. My research for the duration of my time working on PERFECT will focus on belief. Last year, Lisa and I worked together on three papers. The first, together with Matthew Broome and Matteo Mameli , was on the moral and legal implications of the continuity between delusional and non-delusional beliefs. The second, together with Rachel Gunn , was on what makes a belief a delusional belief. The third paper was on the status of beliefs from fiction and the teleological account of belief. My main focus this year though was on defending the one-factor account of monothematic delusion formation. According to this view, the only abnormality we need to appeal to in order to explain why a subject comes to hold a delusional belief, is the anomalous experience she has. We do not need to appeal to any abnormal deficit or bi...

In this post, Allan Hazlett , Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Mexico , presents his book, A Luxury of the Understanding (Oxford University Press, 2013). Allan (in the picture above)  works on the value of accurate representation, deference and disagreement, and political epistemology. Philosophers have for some time acknowledged the possibility of irrational and false beliefs that are nonetheless beneficial to the believer. A familiar case is that of the over-confident athlete: it is easy to imagine that Karen is better off over-estimating her tennis abilities, than she would be were her evaluation of her abilities accurate, given the boost to her confidence that this over-estimation provides. However, it is standard for philosophers to argue that, since Karen’s belief is irrational and false, although it may be all-things-considered best for her, it is nevertheless “epistemically” bad. In A Luxury of the Understanding (cover pictured below), I a...

Dear all As part of PERFECT we want to promote further investigation into whether false beliefs can be advantageous, due to their being biologically adaptive, enhancing wellbeing, being conducive to the satisfaction of epistemic goals, or promoting some other form of agential success. In the psychological literature, self-deception, positive illusions, delusions, confabulatory explanations, and other instances of false belief have been regarded as beneficial in some sense, but there has not yet been a systematic study of their role in supporting different aspects of human agency within philosophy.  The workshop we are planning for February 2016 aims at filling that gap. We welcome theoretical papers from researchers in epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of biology, and psychology. Themes and research questions Some beliefs seem to have an important role in supporting human agency: they can make us feel better about ourselves and ev...