In this post I summarise my talk at the Royal College of Psychiatrists Annual Congress in July 2015, where with Richard Bentall and Phil Corlett I participated in a symposium on "the function of delusions" sponsored by project PERFECT. The main argument I defended in the symposium has now appeared in an open access paper in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science . Can elaborated and systematized delusions emerging in the context of schizophrenia have a useful function? This is a provocative question, of course, as we know how disruptive delusions can be in the context of schizophrenia. But a serious consideration of the circumstances in which delusional beliefs are adopted can reveal that the delusion is playing a role, admittedly one that has beneficial effects only in a critical situation and whose beneficial effects are short-lived. As philosophers have long recognised, elaborated and systematized delusions in schizophrenia are typically false and ...
A blog at the intersection of philosophy, psychology, and mental health