Imperfect Cognitions

This post is by Lisa Bortolotti who reports on a symposium was organised by Mark Flear to explore interdisciplinary perspectives (law, philosophy of psychiatry, bioethics, sociology, and more) on epistemic injustice, hosted by City University on 15th September 2023.  This is a report of some of the talks presented at the symposium. The other talks were given by Anna Drożdżowicz (on epistemic injustice and linguistic exclusion); Miranda Mourby (on reasonable expectations of privacy in healthcare); and Neil Maddox and Mark Flear (on epistemic injustice and separated human biomaterials).  The City Law School, venue of the symposium The first presentation was by David Archard (Queen’s University, Belfast) on lived experience and testimonial injustice. Lived experience is being increasingly used in debates on a number of controversial areas—as a source of special authority on a given subject. The appeal to lived experience often works in resisting claims that contradict live...

This post is by Juliette Vazard who recently published a paper entitled " The Doxastic Profile of the Compulsive Re-checker " in Philosophical Explorations, open access. Juliette Vazard What exactly is epistemically wrong with checking again (and again)? Checking is one of the most common compulsive actions performed by patients with Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)( APA, 2013 ; Abramowitz, McKay, Taylor, 2008 ). And while incessant checking is undeniably problematic from a practical point of view, it is hard to pinpoint what exactly makes it inadequate from an epistemological standpoint. My suggestion is that, in order to understand exactly what goes epistemically wrong with rechecking, we first need to take a step back from the behaviors themselves, and consider the mental state that the re-checker is in as she goes through the moves. What is she looking for, as she goes back for another check? A first intuitive answer is: although she already has sufficient evidenc...

On December 16th and 17th, the Cognitive Irrationality project hosted a workshop on beliefs that feel good, organized by Marie van Loon, Melanie Sarzano and Anne Meylan. This very interesting event dealt with beliefs that feel good but are epistemically problematic in some way, as well as with beliefs for which this is not the case. While the majority of talks and discussions focused on problematic cases, such as wayward believers, self-deceptive beliefs and unrealistically optimistic beliefs, there was also a discussion of epistemic virtues and the relation between scepticism and beliefs in the world. Below, I summarize the main points made in the talks. Quassim Cassam probed the question why people hold weird beliefs and theories. Some examples are the theory that the moon landings were faked, or that 9/11 was in reality an inside job. Quassim argued that more often not, these types of beliefs stem from epistemic vices. In as far as these vices are stealthy, i.e. not apparent t...