Ema Sullivan-Bissett

A number of studies have investigated how immersion in a virtual reality environment can affect participants’ implicit biases. These studies presume associationism about implicit bias. Recently philosophers have argued that associationism is inadequate and have made a case for understanding implicit biases propositionally. However, no propositionalist has considered the empirical work on virtual reality and how to integrate it into their theories. I examine this work against a propositionalist background, in particular, looking at the belief and patchy endorsement models. I argue that the results therein can only be accommodated by a model which recognizes structural heterogeneity, that is, one which allows for implicit biases being both associatively and non-associatively structured. My preferred view – that implicit biases are constituted by unconscious imaginings – allows for this, as well as for heterogeneity at the level of content (propositional and imagistic), a feature which also earn its explanatory keep in this context. I conclude that empirical work on virtual reality and implicit bias gives us a reason to prefer a pluralist model of bias, and that my unconscious imagination model, in its recognizing wide-ranging heterogeneity, is uniquely placed to accommodate the results of work on virtual reality and bias mitigation.

In philosophy, psychiatry, and cognitive science, definitions of clinical delusions are not based on the mechanisms responsible for the formation of delusions, since there is no consensus yet on what causes 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 focus on whether delusions are harmful, as in the definition of delusions as beliefs that disrupt good functioning. Even if the epistemic features go some way towards capturing what otherwise different instances of clinical delusions have in common, they do not succeed in distinguishing delusions as a clinical phenomenon from everyday irrational beliefs. Focusing on the psychological features is a more promising way to mark the difference between clinical and non-clinical irrational beliefs, but there is wide variability in the extent to which delusions are psychologically harmful, and some everyday irrational beliefs can affect functioning in similarly negative ways. In this chapter we consider three types of belief that share similar epistemic features and exhibit variation with respect to how psychologically harmful they are: (1) delusions of thought insertion, (2) alien abduction beliefs, and (3) self-enhancing beliefs. In the light of the similarities and differences among these cases, we highlight the difficulty in providing an answer to what makes an irrational belief delusional.

This volume brings together recent work on the nature of belief, imagination, and delusion. Whilst philosophers of mind and epistemology employ notions of belief and imagination in their theorizing, parallel work seeking to make these notions more precise continues. Delusions are standardly taken to be bizarre beliefs occurring in the clinical population, which do not respond to evidence. The purpose of this collection of essays is to get clearer on the nature of belief and imagination, the ways in which they relate to one another, and how they might be integrated into accounts of delusional belief formation. The jumping off point is the idea that recent work in philosophy of mind and epistemology which has sought to characterise the nature of belief and imagination allows us to formulate the issues with new precision, by, for example, drawing on work concerning how imagination is involved in delusion formation, or work concerning how to properly distinguish imagination from belief. The volume also considers questions concerning imagination's architecture, the role of metacognitive error in our mental lives, how best to understand delusional experience, and the relationship between delusion and evidence. The contributors are ideally placed to explore these issues, both individually and as a collective. With interests spanning different disciplines (philosophy, psychology, cognitive science), and approaches (theoretical, empirically informed), the result is a rich and varied collection of insights.

In his recent book Delusions and Beliefs, Kengo Miyazono offers a thoroughgoing defence of delusions as biologically malfunctioning beliefs, greatly elaborating on his earlier defence of this view. Miyazono has it that delusions have biological doxastic functions, and that delusions involve direct or indirect malfunctions of this kind. In this short piece, I focus on Miyazono’s defence of a two-factor approach to delusion formation as it appears in Chapter Four. Miyazono approaches his discussion of the debate between one- and two-factor theories having already defended the key thesis of the book: that delusions are malfunctioning beliefs. Of course, that thesis might be thought to mesh nicely with the two-factor theorist’s claim that there is a cognitive abnormality present in delusion formation or maintenance. However, I will discuss Miyazono’s defence of the two-factor position in isolation from its role in his overall account of delusion. Miyazono abstracts away from the particulars of Max Coltheart’s two-factor view, and takes himself to be investigating the plausibility of two-factor theories without the specific commitments of Coltheart’s view. Miyazono also captures under the two-factor heading theories which locate the second factor in belief maintenance rather than just in belief formation. He puts forward a new argument for a two-factor approach which goes via inference to the best explanation. I begin by arguing that Miyazono’s starting motivation for a two-factor approach rests on a misrepresentation of the one-factor approach. Then, I turn to the four components of Miyazono’s inference to the best explanation argument, and argue that in each case, we do not have grounds for positing a second factor.

We have higher-order evidence that aesthetic judgements in the context of awarding art prizes may be affected by implicit bias, to the detriment of artists from marginalized groups. Epistemologists have suggested how to respond to higher-order evidence by appeal to bracketing or suspending judgement. We explain why these approaches do not help in this context. We turn to three ways of addressing the operation of implicit bias: (i) anonymization, (ii) the production of objective criteria, (iii) direct implicit bias mitigation techniques. We show that, in the art prize case, strategy (i) is sometimes counterproductive and any benefits are partial, and strategy (ii) is difficult or impossible to implement. This means that the need for (iii) (direct implicit bias mitigation techniques) is more pressing here than elsewhere. The art prize context is one where mitigation of a particular kind is all we are left with. However, domain-specific problems arise for this strategy too, which call for further empirical work on the operation of implicit bias in the artworld. We conclude that the problem of implicit bias as it arises in the specific context of awarding prizes in the artworld is especially challenging and, given the unavailability of alternative mitigations in this context, the need for direct bias mitigation is even more pressing here than in society in general.