Imperfect Cognitions

On 4th–5th June, Arché at the University of St. Andrews held a workshop on  Sensing Strange Things , organized by  Patrick Greenough . In this post I summarise the seven papers given at the workshop.  Fiona Macpherson  (Glasgow) opened the workshop with her paper, co-authored with  Clare Batty  (Kentucky), ‘Redefining Illusion and Hallucination in Light of New Cases’. Fiona and Clare identified several new cases which put pressure on traditional accounts of illusion and hallucination. They suggested that such cases ought to be accounted for by theories of experience and perception. In light of these hitherto unidentified instances of illusion and hallucinations, Fiona and Clare offered new definitions of these notions.  Next was  Jennifer Corns  (Lancaster) giving a talk entitled ‘Hedonic Qualities, Independence, and Heterogeneity’. Jennifer defended a version of hedonic internalism, the claim that the hedonic is best acc...

On Friday 27th November, project PERFECT (Department of Philosophy), together with the Aberrant Experience and Belief research theme (School of Psychology), held a mini-workshop on the topic of Belief and Emotion . In this post I summarise the three talks given by Allan Hazlett , Neil Levy , and Carolyn Price .  Allan Hazlett opened the workshop with his paper ‘On the Special Insult of Refusing Testimony’. He argued that refusing someone’s testimony (i.e. not believing what someone tells you) is insulting, and to express such refusal amounts to a special kind of insult. Understanding telling as an attempt to engage in information sharing, Hazlett suggested that in telling someone that p, I am asking that person to believe that p because I believe it. Refusing my testimony would be to insult me because it constitutes the person's not trusting me. Hazlett concluded by asking why it is that not trusting would be insulting? He canvassed four ideas to answer this question, la...

Rachel Gunn Some postulate that for certain kinds of delusions sensory input is distorted such that the evidence available to the subject is altered and this evidence is therefore powerful enough to resist counter arguments. In this case the subject employs normal cognitive processes to explain perceptual anomalies and this results in delusion ( Maher 1974 ). If the experience of a subject provides or includes the evidence for a delusion and the experience is anomalous (outside ‘normal’ experience) then a third party cannot hope to grasp the subject’s explanation. Further, as Maher says, there is no point of intervention in any ordinary sense to dispute the subject’s delusion. If this theory holds water it is likely to only apply to a subset of delusional subjects.