Imperfect Cognitions

In today's post I report on the Summer School in Reichenau   which I had the pleasure to attend on 25th and 26th August 2023. The theme was Belief, meaning, knowledge: how we deal with uncertainty . Delusions was a topic often discussed in the presentations, from philosophical, phenomenological, and clinical perspectives. Organisers of the event were Johannes Rusch, Daniel Nischk, Dorothea Debus, and Thomas Müller. Rathaus Reichenau (front) Rathaus Reichenau (courtyard) The first speaker was Rico Gutschmidt (Konstanz) with a presentation on Mysticism and Delusions . Fundamental uncertainties are limitations of knowledge and experience and three questions arise: (1) Where do we come from? (2) Why there is anything at all rather than nothing? (3) Who are we? Although such questions are not easy to answer or possible to answer they can evoke transformative experiences. Philosophical experiences such as struggling with these questions can be transformative because they change the type...

On 5th and 6th January 2023, Alex Grzankowski hosted a hybrid two-day workshop at the University of Birkbeck entitled,  Happiness: Emotion, Mood, or Character Trait.    In the first talk, “Can we be delusional and happy?”, I (Lisa Bortolotti, University of Birmingham) focused on the relationship between being happy and having delusional beliefs. We tend to assume that living in a delusional world is bad epistemically because we lack contact with reality. And it is bad psychologically because believing the delusions can make us feel disconnected and excluded, and depending on the content of the delusion, also stressed and anxious. But things are more complicated than this: delusions can be a response to a crisis that bring about a paralysis of agency, and can help us overcome overwhelming negative emotions, so believing a delusion may lead to temporary happiness. However, the temporary happiness is a stepping stone towards a more permanent state of happiness where con...