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Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs This Page Intentionally Left Blank Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs This page intentionally left blank Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs Lisa Bortolotti Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Birmingham, UK 1 1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Oxford University Press, 2010 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset in Minion by Glyph International, Bangalore, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by The MPG Books Group Ltd. ISBN 978-0-19-920616-2 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Oxford University Press makes no representation, express or implied, that the drug dosages in this book are correct. Readers must therefore always check the product information and clinical procedures with the most up-to-date published product information and data sheets provided by the manufactures and the most recent codes of conduct and safety regulations. The authors and the publishers do not accept responsibility or legal liability for any errors in the test or for the misuse or misapplication of material in this work. Except where otherwise stated, drug dosages and recommendations are for the non-pregnant adult who is not breastfeeding. To Matteo In loving memory of Elvira Prandi and Giada Paternoster This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgements Ideas in this book have been slowly developing since I started my PhD in 2000, but most of the writing has been done in the 2008/2009 academic year. First and foremost, I am grateful to the University of Birmingham for granting me study leave from September to December 2008. During this period I visited the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science (MACCS) in Australia. My research visit was made possible by the financial support of the Endeavour Programme, funded by the Australian Ministry for Education and Training, and managed by Austraining. As a 2008 Endeavour Research Fellow, I benefited from the thriving research culture of MACCS and from the many opportunities for discussion with Max Coltheart and Robyn Langdon. I am grateful to all the members of the Delusion and Hypnosis reading group for making me feel extremely welcome and help- ing me understand better what it is that cognitive psychologists do. Amanda Barnier and Rochelle Cox introduced me to the literature on confabulation and hypnosis which had a significant impact on the development of my ideas. I would not have finished the book if I had not obtained AHRC funding for research leave from January to April 2009 (AH/G002606/1).The AHRC grant allowed me to dedicate all of this time to completing the book, and also funded a short but very productive visit to the Department of Philosophy at the University of California Berkeley, where I benefited from John Campbell’s comments on the arguments presented in the book, and from the opportunity to talk to John’s graduate students and to Ken Kendler. I owe a great debt to Eva Picardi, Martin Davies, and Matthew Broome. Eva got me interested in beliefs 16 years ago and I am still interested in them now—she must have done a good job. Martin first introduced me to the literature on delusions, and was the ideal PhD supervisor. He has been a source of encouragement and inspiration in my post-doctoral work. Matthew helped me navigate the psychiatric literature and has been an invaluable collaborator. His influence is apparent in every section of this book. For constant support and encouragement, I thank David Papineau, John Harris, Helen Beebee, and Kim Sterelny. The arguments presented in the book have been tuned in conversation with Matteo Mameli, Hanna Pickard, Dominic Murphy, Jakob Hohwy, Derek Bolton, Rachel Cooper, Edoardo Zamuner, Dan López de Sa, Max Coltheart, Jordi Fernández, Daniel Cohen, Nic Damnjanovic, viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Ian Ravenscroft, Phil Gerrans, Amanda Barnier, Rochelle Cox, John Sutton, Peter Menzies, Eric Schwitzgebel, Robyn Langdon, Mark Colyvan, Ken Kendler, John Campbell, and Flavie Waters. Neralie Wise, Matthew Broome, Kirk Surgener, and Rochelle Cox read an early draft of the book and provided detailed and insightful comments which have been very precious to me. I am also grateful to my colleagues and students at the University of Birmingham, where I presented early versions of the book chapters at staff seminars, and I taught a third-year module in the Philosophy of Psychology since 2005 on the relationship between intentionality and rationality. I received good feedback from the participants in departmental seminars and reading groups where I presented sections of my work at the Open University, the University of Reading, Northampton University, the University of Glasgow, Macquarie University, the University of Sydney, the University of Western Australia, the University of Adelaide, Flinders University, Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga, and the European School of Molecular Medicine in Milan. For helpful comments, I am also indebted to the audiences of the following workshops and conferences: the Philosophy of Psychiatry Work-in-Progress Workshop organised by Rachel Cooper at the University of Lancaster in January 2008; the Delusions and Self Knowledge Workshop organised by Finn Spicer at the University of Bristol in February 2008; the Delusion Day organised by Nic Damnjanovic at the University of Western Australia, Perth, in September 2008; the Introspection and Consciousness Workshop organised by Daniel Stoljar, David Chalmers and Declan Smithies at the Australian National University, Canberra, in October 2008; the Memory Day organised by John Sutton and Amanda Barnier at the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science in November 2008; the AHRC Workshop on the Concept of Mental Disorder organised by Havi Carel and Rachel Cooper at Warwick University in March 2009; the symposium on psychiatry as cognitive neuroscience at the meeting of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Liverpool in June 2009; the Joint Session and the annual meeting of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science at the University of East Anglia in July 2009; the symposium on the application of memory biases and distortions to experi- mental psychopathology at the meeting of the Society for Applied Research on Memory and Cognition in Kyoto in July 2009. Some of the material in the book comes from systematisation and revision of previous work, and especially the following papers: ‘Inconsistency and interpretation’ (Philosophical Explorations, 2003); ‘Can we interpret irrational behavior?’ (Behavior & Philosophy, 2004); ‘Delusions and the background of rationality’ (Mind & Language, 2005); ‘Intentionality without rationality’ (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 2005); ‘If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix notice’ (with M. Broome, Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 2007); ‘Delusional beliefs and reason giving’ (with M. Broome, Philosophical Psychology, 2008); ‘A role for ownership and authorship in the analysis of thought insertion’ (with M. Broome, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2009); ‘Shaking the bedrock’ (forthcoming in Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology); ‘The epistemic benefits of reason giving’ (Theory & Psychology, 2009); ‘Can we create delusions in the laboratory?’ (with R. Cox and A. Barnier, submitted); and ‘Faultless ignorance: strengths and limitations of epistemic definitions of confabulation’ (with R. Cox, forthcoming in Consciousness & Cognition). I acknowledge the support of my extraordinary parents, my courageous sister, and my closest friends. They have all borne with grace my extensive travelling and my eremitic tendencies during the preparation of this book. Matteo deserves a special mention as he has always been there to push me one step further when I needed extra confidence. In the last year, we have talked about delusions a lot, and our conversations have helped me clarify my ideas. The book is also dedicated to my grandma and my baby niece. I miss them dearly. This page intentionally left blank Contents Synopsis xv 1 The background 1 1.1 Introduction to the project 1 1.2 Reflections on methodology 4 1.3 Introducing the rationality constraint 9 1.3.1 Interpretation
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