Anna Ichino

Qual è la relazione che lega il dolore di una bruciatura agli stati del nostro cervello? Può la coscienza di una persona dividersi, come una strada quando raggiunge un bivio? E se sì, che cosa ne è di quella persona? Che cosa fa sì che, quando visualizzate il volto di vostro padre con l’occhio della mente, quell’immagine confusa e incompleta sia proprio un’immagine del volto di vostro padre – e non di qualcuno che gli somiglia? Quali sono le capacità mentali necessarie a padroneggiare un linguaggio? Quanto dobbiamo prendere sul serio la psicologia del senso comune – col suo parlare di credenze, desideri, e così via? E qual è l’essenza di questi stati mentali? In che modo l’intelligenza artificiale può influenzare la struttura e il funzionamento della cognizione umana? E qual è la natura di deliri, confabulazioni e altre condizioni psichiatriche? Queste sono solo alcune delle domande al centro della filosofia della mente, alla quale questo volume costituisce un’introduzione accessibile e ciononostante rigorosa, attenta alle connessioni con le altre aree della filosofia e costantemente in dialogo con le scienze della mente – dalla psicologia cognitiva e sociale, alle neuroscienze, alla psichiatria.

Dans cet article, nous soutenons que la pratique de la philosophie est bénéfique au public. En engageant leurs connaissances et leurs méthodes philosophiques, les agents épistémiques développent leur capacité à acquérir, produire, partager et utiliser des connaissances à la poursuite de leurs fins. Pour préciser ce que peut impliquer « faire de la philosophie », nous nous appuyons sur la littérature pédagogique et philosophique récente et présentons deux exemples illustrant la manière dont des ressources et des activités peuvent être élaborées et mises en place afin de favoriser l’implication du public envers la philosophie. Dans les études de cas présentées, un cadre stimulant et inclusif est instauré, permettant à toutes et à tous de pratiquer des tâches philosophiques, individuellement et en groupe. Les participant·e·s sont encouragé·e·s à réfléchir à une question en lien avec leur vie, à identifier les limites et les biais de leur propre raisonnement ou de leur perspective, et à explorer divers points de vue sur cette question avec curiosité.

Dans cet article, nous soutenons que la pratique de la philosophie est bénéfique au public. En engageant leurs connaissances et leurs méthodes philosophiques, les agents épistémiques développent leur capacité à acquérir, produire, partager et utiliser des connaissances à la poursuite de leurs fins. Pour préciser ce que peut impliquer « faire de la philosophie », nous nous appuyons sur la littérature pédagogique et philosophique récente et présentons deux exemples illustrant la manière dont des ressources et des activités peuvent être élaborées et mises en place afin de favoriser l’implication du public envers la philosophie. Dans les études de cas présentées, un cadre stimulant et inclusif est instauré, permettant à toutes et à tous de pratiquer des tâches philosophiques, individuellement et en groupe. Les participant·e·s sont encouragé·e·s à réfléchir à une question en lien avec leur vie, à identifier les limites et les biais de leur propre raisonnement ou de leur perspective, et à explorer divers points de vue sur cette question avec curiosité.

This chapter examines two pathways through which fictions may affect beliefs: by invading readers’ cognitive system via heuristics and other sub-rational devices, and by expressing authorial beliefs that readers take to be reliable. Focusing mostly on the latter pathway, the chapter distinguishes fiction as a mechanism for the transmission of uncontroversial factual information from fiction as a means of expressing distinctive perspectives on evaluative propositions. In both cases, the inferences on which readers rely are precarious, and especially so with evaluative cases where there is little hope of independent verification. Moreover, trust, which in other contexts can increase the reliability of beliefs transmitted from person to person, cannot be much depended on when it comes to belief transmission from author to reader.

Monothematic delusions and beliefs in conspiracy theories share some important features: they both typically have bizarre contents and are resistant to counterevidence. Yet conspiracy beliefs are generally taken to be a normal range phenomenon, whilst monothematic delusions are considered to involve doxastic pathology. In this paper, we argue that this difference in conceptualization is not warranted, and that, if we’re right, the correct response is to de-pathologize monothematic delusions. We identify three reasons which could justify taking monothematic delusions to be pathological beliefs whilst not treating conspiracy beliefs in such terms. First, we consider what have been identified as initial provoking conditions in monothematic delusions (anomalous experience) and conspiracy beliefs (epistemic mistrust). Second, we consider the role of cognitive biases or deficits in these phenomena. Third, we consider the different roles played by testimony and one’s social environment in the formation and maintenance of monothematic delusions and conspiracy beliefs. We argue that there are no grounds from any of these quarters for the different approaches taken with respect to the question of doxastic pathology. Our primary conclusion then is that monothematic delusions and conspiracy beliefs should be treated the same in this respect. Our secondary conclusion is that the correct way to do so is to de-pathologize monothematic delusions.

According to a once-standard view, imagination has little or no role in action guidance: its motivating power, if any, is limited to pretence play. In recent years this view has been challenged by accounts that take imagination to motivate action also beyond pretence, for instance in the domain of religion and conspiracy-related thinking. Following this trend, I propose a new argument in favour of imagination’s motivating power based on a class of actions that has not yet received much consideration in the imagination literature: what I call ‘superstitious–magical actions’. These actions are extremely pervasive in our lives and reveal imagination’s motivating power to be larger than many take it to be. By analysing them I show not only that imagination motivates very often, but also how it does so – that is, what the dynamics of motivation by imagination are.

This paper offers an explanation for subjects’ lack of confidence in vaccines’ safety, which in turn is widely recognized as one of the main determinants of vaccine hesitancy. I argue that among the psychological roots of this lack of confidence there is a kind of intuitive thinking that can be traced back to a specific superstitious belief: the belief that “it is bad luck to tempt fate”. Under certain conditions, subjects perceive the choice to undergo vaccinations as an action that “tempts fate”, and this leads them to overestimate its risks. When an action is perceived as “tempting fate”, indeed, its possible negative outcomes are anticipated as highly aversive, and as such they capture subjects’ imagination, thereby feeling more subjectively probable. This has important consequences for practical pro-vaccine interventions. Part of what makes an action perceived as “tempting fate” is its being free, arbitrary, and departing from one’s typical behavior: insofar as vaccine hesitancy is driven by beliefs about tempting fate, then, we can predict the success of interventions that make vaccinations nearly mandatory, or build vaccination opportunities into health care routines as opt-out, rather than opt-in options, making them closer to something that subjects passively accept rather actively seek.

From November 5 to November 22, 2019, the University of Milan hosts an exhibition in which philosophy and its problems are staged in playful and interactive forms. Like any catalog, this volume also intends to document the objects and themes proposed to the visitor. But it also has a more ambitious goal: to imagine and design the spaces of that Museum of Philosophy which, we are sure, will be created here in Milan, starting from the experience of this exhibition--Translated, via Google, from page 2 of cover.

Imagination and belief are obviously different. Imagining that you have won the lottery is not quite the same as believing that you have won. But what is the difference? According to a standard view in the contemporary debate, they differ in two key functional respects. First, with respect to the cognitive inputs to which they respond: imaginings do not respond to real-world evidence as beliefs do. Second, with respect to the behavioural outputs that they produce: imaginings do not motivate us to act as beliefs do. I argue that this view is mistaken in one important respect. The distinction between imagination and belief does lie at the functional level; but the relevant functional difference does not concern behavioural outputs – since, in spite of appearances, imaginings and beliefs motivate us to act in the same ways. To see the difference, we need to focus on the inputs side – and, relatedly, on the sorts of inferential relations that imaginings and beliefs bear to each other. I show that this view does not have the absurd consequences that it may prima facie seem to have; on the contrary, it has important implications for our understanding of how the mind works.

Superstition and confabulation are extremely pervasive in our cognitive lives. Whilst both these phenomena are widely discussed in the recent psychological literature, however, the relationship between them has not been the object of much explicit attention. In this paper, I argue that this relationship is actually very close, and deserves indepth consideration. I argue that superstitious and confabulatory attitudes share several key features and are rooted in the same psychological mechanisms. Moreover, some of the key features that superstitious and confabulatory attitudes share reveal such attitudes to be non-doxastic in nature, with important implications for our assessment of their epistemic rationality. Many instances of what we call superstitious and confabulatory ‘beliefs’ are not, in fact, beliefs; hence, entertaining them may be less irrational than it prima facie seems to be.

Much of Tamar Gendler’s dense and engaging book argues for the emotional, cognitive and motivational power of imagination, which is presented as a central feature of human mental architecture. But in the final chapters Gendler argues that some of us have over-exploited this resource, too easily assuming that, if belief cannot explain a class of human behaviours, imagination will do the job. She gives a number of examples of problematic behaviours (‘Gendler cases’, as we shall say), which in her view can be explained only by appeal to a previously unrecognized mental state: alief, different from belief and from imagination, and from any other mental kinds we are familiar with. We argue that it’s a mistake to explain Gendler cases in terms of a single mental state of the kind alief is supposed to be; we should appeal instead to a variety of representational states, including familiar ones such as belief, desire, imagination and perception. While a few of these cases do plausibly require us to acknowledge representations at levels other than the personal one, none require us to acknowledge the existence of aliefs, at least as those states are officially characterized by Gendler. We then turn to one of Gendler’s more general arguments for the new category of alief: the argument from hyperopacity. We reject that argument. But all this is not simply die-hard conservativism: we conclude by elaborating the idea (somewhat in the spirit of Gendler’s proposal) that various representational states not acknowledged by folk-psychology have a role to play in explaining behaviour, emotion and cognition.