•  74
    Philip Gerrans The Measure of Madness: Philosophy of mind, cognitive neuroscience, and delusional thought (review)
    with Rachel Gunn
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (3). 2015.
    Review of Phil Gerrans' book on delusions, The Measure of Madness.
  •  692
    What makes a belief delusional?
    with Ema Sullivan-Bissett and Rachel Gunn
    In I. McCarthy, K. Sellevold & O. Smith (eds.), Cognitive Confusions, Legenda. pp. 37-51. 2016.
    In philosophy, psychiatry, and cognitive science, definitions of clinical delusions are not based on the mechanisms responsible for the formation of delusions. Some of the defining features of delusions are epistemic and focus on whether delusions are true, justified, or rational, as in the definition of delusions as fixed beliefs that are badly supported by evidence). Other defining features of delusions are psychological and they focus on whether delusions are harmful, as in the definition of …Read more
  •  510
    Immortality without boredom
    Ratio 22 (3): 261-277. 2009.
    In this paper we address Bernard Williams' argument for the undesirability of immortality. Williams argues that unavoidable and pervasive boredom would characterise the immortal life of an individual with unchanging categorical desires. We resist this conclusion on the basis of the distinction between habitual and situational boredom and a psychologically realistic account of significant factors in the formation of boredom. We conclude that Williams has offered no persuasive argument for the nec…Read more
  •  743
    Costs and Benefits of Realism and Optimism
    with Magdalena Antrobus
    Current Opinion in Psychiatry 28 (2): 194-198. 2015.
    Purpose of review: What is the relationship between rationality and mental health? By considering the psychological literature on depressive realism and unrealistic optimism it was hypothesized that, in the context of judgments about the self, accurate cognitions are psychologically maladaptive and inaccurate cognitions are psychologically adaptive. Recent studies recommend being cautious in drawing any general conclusion about style of thinking and mental health. Recent findings: Recent invest…Read more
  •  126
    Various debates in bioethics have been focused on whether non-persons, such as marginal humans or non-human animals, deserve respectful treatment. It has been argued that, where we cannot agree on whether these individuals have moral status, we might agree that they have symbolic value and ascribe to them moral value in virtue of their symbolic significance. In the paper I resist the suggestion that symbolic value is relevant to ethical disputes in which the respect for individuals with no intrin…Read more
  •  26
    Delusions in Context (edited book)
    Palgrave. 2018.
    This open access book offers an exploration of delusions--unusual beliefs that can significantly disrupt people's lives. Experts from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, including lived experience, clinical psychiatry, philosophy, clinical psychology, and cognitive neuroscience, discuss how delusions emerge, why it is so difficult to give them up, what their effects are, how they are managed, and what we can do to reduce the stigma associated with them. Taken as a whole, the book proposes that …Read more
  •  505
    Taking the long view: an emerging framework for translational psychiatric science
    with Bill Fulford and Matthew Broome
    World Psychiatry 13 (2): 110-117. 2014.
    Understood in their historical context, current debates about psychiatric classification, prompted by the publication of the DSM-5, open up new opportunities for improved translational research in psychiatry. In this paper, we draw lessons for translational research from three time slices of 20th century psychiatry. From the first time slice, 1913 and the publication of Jaspers’ General Psychopathology, the lesson is that translational research in psychiatry requires a pluralistic approach encom…Read more
  •  93
    Can we recreate delusions in the laboratory?
    with Rochelle Cox and Amanda Barnier
    Philosophical Psychology 25 (1). 2012.
    Clinical delusions are difficult to investigate in the laboratory because they co-occur with other symptoms and with intellectual impairment. Partly for these reasons, researchers have recently begun to use hypnosis with neurologically intact people in order to model clinical delusions. In this paper we describe striking analogies between the behavior of patients with a clinical delusion of mirrored self misidentification, and the behavior of highly hypnotizable subjects who receive a hypnotic s…Read more
  •  129
    Neurophilosophy at work • by Paul Churchland (review)
    Analysis 69 (1): 176-178. 2009.
    This is a collection of Paul Churchland's recent essays which have in common an overarching research programme aimed at identifying the scope and the importance of the contributions that neuroscience has made and will make to philosophy of mind, moral philosophy, epistemology and metaphysics. The general structure of many of the essays included in the collection is as follows: there is a long-standing problem in the philosophical literature which has escaped not only a convincing solution but al…Read more
  •  736
    The Ethics of Delusional Belief
    Erkenntnis 81 (2): 275-296. 2016.
    In this paper we address the ethics of adopting delusional beliefs and we apply consequentialist and deontological considerations to the epistemic evaluation of delusions. Delusions are characterised by their epistemic shortcomings and they are often defined as false and irrational beliefs. Despite this, when agents are overwhelmed by negative emotions due to the effects of trauma or previous adversities, or when they are subject to anxiety and stress as a result of hypersalient experience, the …Read more
  •  95
    ‘Faultless’ ignorance: Strengths and limitations of epistemic definitions of confabulation
    with Rochelle E. Cox
    Consciousness and Cognition 18 (4): 952-965. 2009.
    There is no satisfactory account for the general phenomenon of confabulation, for the following reasons: (1) confabulation occurs in a number of pathological and non-pathological conditions; (2) impairments giving rise to confabulation are likely to have different neural bases; and (3) there is no unique theory explaining the aetiology of confabulations. An epistemic approach to defining confabulation could solve all of these issues, by focusing on the surface features of the phenomenon. However…Read more
  • Double bookkeeping in delusions: Explaining the gap between saying and doing
    In A. Buckareff, J. Aguilar & K. Frankish (eds.), New Waves in Philosophy of Action, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 237--256. 2010.
    In this chapter I defend the doxastic account of delusions and offer some reasons to believe that the double-bookkeeping argument against doxasticism (delusions are not beliefs because they do not drive action) should be resisted.
  •  683
    Animal rights, animal minds, and human mindreading
    Journal of Medical Ethics 32 (2): 84-89. 2006.
    Do non-human animals have rights? The answer to this question depends on whether animals have morally relevant mental properties. Mindreading is the human activity of ascribing mental states to other organisms. Current knowledge about the evolution and cognitive structure of mindreading indicates that human ascriptions of mental states to non-human animals are very inaccurate. The accuracy of human mindreading can be improved with the help of scientific studies of animal minds. But the scientifi…Read more
  •  18
    In this paper I compare different criteria for moral status, and assess Regan's notion of a "subject of a life".
  •  141
    Mental illness as mental: a defence of psychological realism
    with Matthew Broome
    Humana Mente 3 (11): 25-44. 2009.
    This paper argues for psychological realism in the conception of psychiatric disorders. We review the following contemporary ways of understanding the future of psychiatry: (1) psychiatric classification cannot be successfully reduced to neurobiology, and thus psychiatric disorders should not be conceived of as biological kinds; (2) psychiatric classification can be successfully reduced to neurobiology, and thus psychiatric disorders should be conceived of as biological kinds. Position (1) can l…Read more
  •  350
    Agency, life extension, and the meaning of life
    The Monist 93 (1): 38-56. 2010.
    Contemporary philosophers and bioethicists argue that life extension is bad for the individual. According to the agency objection to life extension, being constrained as an agent adds to the meaningfulness of human life. Life extension removes constraints, and thus it deprives life of meaning. In the paper, I concede that constrained agency contributes to the meaningfulness of human life, but reject the agency objection to life extension in its current form. Even in an extended life, decision-ma…Read more
  •  44
    Philip Gerrans the measure of madness: Philosophy of mind, cognitive neuroscience, and delusional thought
    with Rachel Gunn
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 67 (3): 919-923. 2016.
    Review of Measure of Madness
  •  695
    Rationality, diagnosis and patient autonomy
    Oxford Handbook Psychiatric Ethics. 2014.
    In this chapter, our focus is the role played by notions of rationality in the diagnosis of mental disorders, and in the practice of overriding patient autonomy in psychiatry. We describe and evaluate different hypotheses concerning the relationship between rationality and diagnosis, raising questions about what features underpin psychiatric categories. These questions reinforce widely held concerns about the use of diagnosis as a justification for overriding autonomy, which have motivated a shi…Read more
  •  164
    Intentionality without rationality
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 105 (3): 385-392. 2005.
    It is often taken for granted in standard theories of interpretation that there cannot be intentionality without rationality. According to the background argument, a system can be interpreted as having irrational beliefs only against a general background of rationality. Starting from the widespread assumption that delusions can be reasonably described as irrational beliefs, I argue here that the background argument fails to account for their intentional description
  •  137
    Irrationality
    Polity Press. 2014.
    We talk about irrationality when behaviour defies explanation or prediction, when decisions are driven by emotions or instinct rather than by reflection, when reasoning fails to conform to basic principles of logic and probability, and when beliefs lack coherence or empirical support. Depending on the context, agents exhibiting irrational behaviour may be described as foolish, ignorant, unwise or even insane. In this clear and engaging introduction to current debates on irrationality, Lisa Borto…Read more
  •  178
    Does reflection lead to wise choices?
    Philosophical Explorations 14 (3): 297-313. 2011.
    Does conscious reflection lead to good decision-making? Whereas engaging in reflection is traditionally thought to be the best way to make wise choices, recent psychological evidence undermines the role of reflection in lay and expert judgement. The literature suggests that thinking about reasons does not improve the choices people make, and that experts do not engage in reflection, but base their judgements on intuition, often shaped by extensive previous experience. Can we square the tradition…Read more
  •  271
    Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs
    Oxford University Press. 2009.
    Delusions are a common symptom of schizophrenia and dementia. Though most English dictionaries define a delusion as a false opinion or belief, there is currently a lively debate about whether delusions are really beliefs and indeed, whether they are even irrational. The book is an interdisciplinary exploration of the nature of delusions. It brings together the psychological literature on the aetiology and the behavioural manifestations of delusions, and the philosophical literature on belief asc…Read more
  •  65
    Large scale surveys for policy formation and research–a study in inconsistency
    with Søren Holm
    Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 28 (3): 205-220. 2007.
    In this paper we analyse the degree to which a distinction between social science and public health research and other non-research activities can account for differences between a number of large scale social surveys performed at the national and European level. The differences we will focus on are differences in how participation is elicited and how data are used for government, research and other purposes. We will argue that the research / non-research distinction does not account for the ide…Read more
  •  901
    The Epistemic Benefits of Reason Giving
    Theory and Psychology 19 (5): 1-22. 2009.
    There is an apparent tension in current accounts of the relationship between reason giving and self knowledge. On the one hand, philosophers like Richard Moran (2001) claim that deliberation and justification can give rise to first-person authority over the attitudes that subjects form or defend on the basis of what they take to be their best reasons. On the other hand, the psychological evidence on the introspection effects and the literature on elusive reasons suggest that engaging in explicit…Read more
  •  739
    The Epistemic Innocence of Motivated Delusions
    Consciousness and Cognition (33): 490-499. 2015.
    Delusions are defined as irrational beliefs that compromise good functioning. However, in the empirical literature, delusions have been found to have some psychological benefits. One proposal is that some delusions defuse negative emotions and protect one from low self-esteem by allowing motivational influences on belief formation. In this paper I focus on delusions that have been construed as playing a defensive function (motivated delusions) and argue that some of their psychological benefits …Read more
  •  10
    Intentionality and the welfare of minded non-humans
    Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 29 (2): 83-96. 2010.
  •  23
    The relative importance of undesirable truths
    Medicine Healthcare and Philosophy (4): 683-690. 2012.
    The right not to know is often defended on the basis of the principle of respect for personal autonomy. If I choose not to acquire personal information that impacts on my future prospects, such a choice should be respected, because I should be able to decide whether to access information about myself and how to use it. But, according to the incoherence objection to the right not to know in the context of genetic testing, the choice not to acquire genetic information undermines the capacity for a…Read more