Imperfect Cognitions

Fiona Woollard (University of Southampton) is a moral philosopher who has worked in areas that have been traditionally neglected by analytic philosophy, such as pregnancy and motherhood. See for instance, her recent piece for The Conversation .  In this interview, she shows us that philosophy can make a difference to how we think about maternal duties and choices in pregnancy and early motherhood. Fiona Woollard Lisa Bortolotti: To start with I'd like to ask you how you got interested in pregnancy and motherhood. Fiona Woollard : Thank you, Lisa. It feels to me that I was part of a fortunate group of women philosophers who felt able to be philosophers while still being women, without having to downplay the interests that we have as women. In the past it had been seen as possible to succeed as a woman in philosophy. But it was harder to get recognized as a philosopher if you were dealing with things that were thought to as women's issues.  And it felt as if there wa...

The second day of the workshop on Conspiratorial Ideation and Psychopathology (Birmingham, 25th April 2023) opened up with a talk by the organisers, Anna Ichino from the University of Milan and Ema Sullivan-Bissett from the University of Birmingham. The talk addressed heads-on the theme of the workshop: does the overlap between conspiracy beliefs and delusions mean that conspiracy beliefs are pathological? Anna Ichino and  Ema Sullivan-Bissett Why do we think that delusions are pathological? They flout epistemic norms, but many other (non delusional) beliefs do the same, so this is not a promising criterion for pathology. Another option is that delusions have strange content, but again other beliefs also have strange content such as paranormal beliefs or QAnon beliefs. A more promising criterion of pathology for beliefs is an etiological one: pathological beliefs involve a malfunction. Monothematic delusions can be considered as pathological because they may arise out of anomalo...

As part of a British Academy project on Conspiratorial Ideation and Pathological Beliefs, Ema Sullivan-Bissett (University of Birmingham) and Anna Ichino (University of Milan) organised a workshop in Birmingham with speakers from philosophy, psychology, and psychiatry. In this post, I summarise the workshop talks on day one, 24th April 2023. Workshop poster Psychologist  Karen Douglas kicked off the workshop talking about the psychology of conspiracy theories, asking why people believe in conspiracy theories and what the consequences are of believing conspiracy beliefs. Douglas started with a psychologist's definition of a conspiracy theory: "A belief that two or more actors have coordinated in secret to achieve an outcome. It is a conspiracy that the public should know about." For Douglas, conspiracy beliefs respond to three types of needs: Epistemic needs: finding meaning and explanation, addressing uncertainty, seeing patterns, wanting closure. People more likely to ...

Today's post is by Jan-Paul Sandmann (Harvard University), on his recent paper " Irrationality and Indecision " ( Synthese,  2023). Jan-Paul Sandmann What is wrong with preferring some option a to option b , b to c , but c again to a ? Why shouldn’t one cling on to such cyclical preferences? The standard response is that one ought not hold on to cyclical preferences because one could be money pumped as a result. By focusing on the binary comparisons alone, it would seem reasonable to pay some amount of money for b rather than c , a rather than b , as well as c rather than a .  If the agent however takes these actions, she ends up with the option she started with, c , while having paid some money. And that clearly does not seem sensible: acting upon a preference cycle would not be in the agent’s interest. The money pump argument thus draws one to conclude that the agent should get rid of her cyclical preferences.  The argument is powerful, but it also makes som...

In this post, Robin McKenna presents a new book, Non-Ideal Epistemology (Oxford University Press 2023). I started thinking about the ideas that became Non-Ideal Epistemology when I was teaching social epistemology for the first time. I wanted to cover more than just the epistemologies of testimony and disagreement. I also wanted to do more than simply finish with a unit on epistemic injustice.  I wanted to cover the bits of social epistemology that overlap with philosophy of science and political philosophy, the bits that engaged with social psychology, the bits that asked political questions about knowledge and knowledge production. I wanted to help students identify and question the assumptions underlying the kind of approach to social epistemology that is more interested in how things might work than in how they actually work. But I didn’t want to do too much. I didn’t want to lose the students. A grand narrative was needed. But what would this grand narrative look like? What ...

In today's blog post, Mark Blagrove and Julia Lockheart present The Science and Art of Dreaming (Routledge 2023). Mark Blagrove is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Sleep Laboratory at Swansea University. Julia Lockheart is Associate Professor at Swansea College of Art, University of Wales Trinity Saint David. They undertake public discussions and painting of dreams in the DreamsID.com science art collaboration.   Julia Lockheart Mark had become interested in investigating the memory sources of dreams through discussing individual dreams at length with the dreamer: this utilised the free association method of Sigmund Freud in which the putative mechanisms of dream formation during the night are followed back in reverse through free associations to the dream when awake.  This interest had resulted in studies that investigated gains of personal insight to the individual through the open-ended group discussion of dreams and their relationship to the recent waking l...

Today's post is by  Anne Meylan (University of Zurich) and Sebastian Schmidt  (University of Zurich) on their recent paper, " Refusing the COVID-19 vaccine: What’s wrong with that ?" ( Philosophical Psychology, 2023 ) . Anne is the director of the Zurich Epistemology Group on Rationality ( ZEGRa ) and Sebastian is a postdoc at ZEGRa. Anne Meylan This article analyses the cognitive attitudes of people who refuse the COVID-19 vaccine. We argue that vaccine refusers are responsible for their belief that they should not get vaccinated and that they are rational (although mistaken) in holding this belief. We support this conclusion by building on recent philosophical theories of responsibility for belief and of the rationality of attitudes. Our conclusion has further implications for public health policy: there is a reason not to use non-argumentative means, such as mandatory vaccination or certain kinds of nudging, to make rational vaccine refusers comply with vaccination re...