•  101
    Affective Forecasting and Substantial Self-Knowledge
    In Alba Montes Sánchez & Alessandro Salice (eds.), Emotional Self-Knowledge, Routledge. pp. 17-38. 2023.
    This chapter argues that our self-knowledge is often mediated by our affective self-knowledge. In other words, we often know about ourselves by knowing our own emotions. More precisely, what Cassam has called “substantial self-knowledge” (SSK), such as self-knowledge of one's character, one's values, or one's aptitudes, is mediated by affective forecasting, which is the process of predicting one's emotional responses to possible situations. For instance, a person comes to know that she is courag…Read more
  •  21
    A group identification account of collective epistemic vices
    with Rie Iizuka
    Synthese 202 (1): 1-21. 2023.
    This paper offers an account of collective epistemic vices, which we call the “group identification account”. The group identification account attributes collective epistemic vices to the groups that are constituted by “group identification”, which is a primitive and non-doxastic self-understanding as a group member (Turner, 1982; Brewer, 1991; Brewer & Gardner, 1996; Pacherie, 2013; Salice & Miyazono, 2020). The distinctive feature of the group identification account is that it enables us to at…Read more
  •  13
    Special Issue on COVID-19 Collective Irrationalities: An Overview
    with Rie Iizuka
    Philosophical Psychology 36 (5): 895-905. 2023.
    In the previous discussions of irrationality in philosophy and psychology, the focus has been on irrationality at the level of individuals, such as irrational reasoning, irrational judgment, irrati...
  •  32
    Vivid Representations and Their Effects
    Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia e Psicologia 9 (1): 73-80. 2018.
    : Sinhababu’s Humean Nature contains many interesting and important ideas, but in this short commentary I focus on the idea of vivid representations. Sinhababu inherits his idea of vivid representations from Hume’s discussions, in particular his discussion of calm and violent passions. I am sympathetic to the idea of developing Hume’s insight that has been largely neglected by philosophers. I believe that Sinhababu and Hume are on the right track. What I do in this short commentary is to raise s…Read more
  •  59
    One of the most exciting debates in philosophy of imagination in recent years has been over the epistemic use of imagination where imagination epistemically contributes to justifying beliefs and acquiring knowledge. This paper defends “generationism about imagination” according to which imagination is a generative source, rather than a preservative source, of justification. In other words, imagination generates new justification above and beyond prior justification provided by other sources. Aft…Read more
  •  18
    Epistemic Libertarian Paternalism
    Erkenntnis 1-20. forthcoming.
    Libertarian paternalism is a weak form of paternalism that recommends nudges rather than bans, restrictions, or other strong interventions. Nudges influence people’s choice by modifying contextual factors (the “choice architecture”). This paper explores the possibility of an epistemic analogue of libertarian paternalism. What I call “epistemic libertarian paternalism” is a weak form of epistemic paternalism that recommends “epistemic nudges” rather than stronger paternalistic interventions. …Read more
  •  20
    An introduction to how the latest psychological studies are fundamentally altering our philosophical understanding of the mind.
  •  15
    Who tailors the blanket?
    with Keisuke Suzuki and Katsunori Miyahara
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 45. 2022.
    The gap between the Markov blanket and ontological boundaries arises from the former's inability to capture the dynamic process through which biological and cognitive agents actively generate their own boundaries with the environment. Active inference in the free-energy principle (FEP) framework presupposes the existence of a Markov blanket, but it is not a process that actively generates the latter.
  •  16
    Précis of Delusions and Beliefs: A Philosophical Inquiry
    Asian Journal of Philosophy 1 (2): 1-5. 2022.
    The central hypothesis of this book, Delusions and Beliefs: A Philosophical Inquiry (Routledge, 2019), is that delusions are malfunctional beliefs (Chapter 1); they belong to the category of belief (Chapter 2) but, unlike mundane false or irrational beliefs, they fail to perform some functions of belief (Chapter 3). More precisely, delusions directly or indirectly involve some malfunctioning cognitive mechanisms, which is empirically supported by the two-factor account of delusion formation (Cha…Read more
  •  11
    On Smithies’ Argument from Blindsight
    Asian Journal of Philosophy 1 (1): 1-6. 2022.
    Declan Smithies’ The Epistemic Role of Consciousness is a defense of “Phenomenal Mentalism” according to which, necessarily, which propositions X has epistemic justification to believe at any given time is determined solely by X’s phenomenally individuated mental states at that time. Smithies offers two kinds of arguments for Phenomenal Mentalism: the ones that appeal to particular cases such as blindsight and the ones that appeal to general epistemic principles such as the JJ principle. My focu…Read more
  •  45
    Social epistemological conception of delusion
    Synthese 199 (1-2): 1831-1851. 2020.
    The dominant conception of delusion in psychiatry (in textbooks, research papers, diagnostic manuals, etc.) is predominantly epistemic. Delusions are almost always characterized in terms of their epistemic defects, i.e., defects with respect to evidence, reasoning, judgment, etc. However, there is an individualistic bias in the epistemic conception; the alleged epistemic defects and abnormalities in delusions relate to individualistic epistemic processes rather than social epistemic processes. W…Read more
  •  23
    The article Social epistemological conception of delusion, written by Kengo Miyazon and Alessandro Salice, was originally published electronically on the publisher’s internet portal on 17 September 2020 without open access.
  •  50
    Vividness as a natural kind
    Synthese 199 (1-2): 3023-3043. 2020.
    Imaginings are often characterized in terms of vividness. However, there is little agreement in the philosophical literature as to what it amounts to and how to even investigate it. In this paper, we propose a natural kind methodology to study vividness and suggest treating it as a homeostatic property cluster with an underlying nature that explains the correlation of properties in that cluster. This approach relies on the empirical research on the vividness of mental imagery and contrasts with …Read more
  •  53
    1. Philosophical arguments (Schweikard & Schmid, 2013) and empirical evidence (Tomasello, Carpenter, Call, Behne, & Moll, 2005) support the idea that the capacity to engage in joint actions is a ke...
  •  25
    Art and Belief
    British Journal of Aesthetics 59 (3): 342-344. 2019.
    SULLIVAN-BISSETTEMA, BRADLEYHELEN, AND NOORDHOFPAUL oup. 2017. pp. 272. £50
  •  1445
    Where is imagination in imaginative resistance? We seek to answer this question by connecting two ongoing lines of inquiry in different subfields of philosophy. In philosophy of mind, philosophers have been trying to understand imaginative attitudes’ place in cognitive architecture. In aesthetics, philosophers have been trying to understand the phenomenon of imaginative resistance. By connecting these two lines of inquiry, we hope to find mutual illumination of an attitude (or cluster of attitud…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
  •  191
    Does functionalism entail extended mind?
    Synthese 194 (9): 3523-3541. 2017.
    In discussing the famous case of Otto, a patient with Alzheimer’s disease who carries around a notebook to keep important information, Clark and Chalmers argue that some of Otto’s beliefs are physically realized in the notebook. In other words, some of Otto’s beliefs are extended into the environment. Their main argument is a functionalist one. Some of Otto’s beliefs are physically realized in the notebook because, first, some of the beliefs of Inga, a healthy person who remembers important info…Read more
  •  98
    The two-factor theory (Davies, Coltheart, Langdon & Breen 2001; Coltheart 2007; Coltheart, Menzies & Sutton 2010) is an influential account of delusion formation. According to the theory, there are two distinct factors that are causally responsible for delusion formation. The first factor is supposed to explain the content of the delusion, while the second factor is supposed to explain why the delusion is adopted and maintained. Recently, another remarkable account of delusion formation has been…Read more
  •  54
    Inner Speech and Introspection
    Kagaku Tetsugaku 44 (2). 2011.
    This article explores “Inner Speech Account of Introspection”, according to which inner speech is the source of our introspective self-knowledge. The view hypothesizes that we come to know that we are thinking that p by being aware of the sentence of inner speech “p” accompanying the thought. I argue for Inner Speech Account by showing that it explains six explananda imposed for the philosophical theories of introspection; peculiar access, privileged access, detection condition, the lack of phen…Read more
  •  28
    Are Alien Thoughts Beliefs?
    Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 34 (1): 134-148. 2015.
    Thought insertion is a common delusion in schizophrenia. People affected by it report that there are thoughts in their heads that have been inserted by a third party. These thoughts are self-generated but subjec-tively experienced as alien (hereafter, we shall call them alien thoughts for convenience). In chapter 5 of Transparent Minds, Jordi Fernández convincingly argues that the phenomenon of thought insertion can be accounted for as a pathology of self-knowledge. In particular, he argues that…Read more
  •  42
    What sort of mental state is a delusion? What causes delusions? Why are delusions pathological? This book examines these questions, which are normally considered separately, in a much-needed exploration of an important and fascinating topic, Kengo Miyazono assesses the philosophical, psychological and psychiatric literature on delusions to argue that delusions are malfunctioning beliefs. Delusions belong to the same category as beliefs but - unlike healthy irrational beliefs - fail to play the f…Read more
  •  130
    Recent Work on the Nature and Development of Delusions
    Philosophy Compass 10 (9): 636-645. 2015.
    In this paper we review two debates in the current literature on clinical delusions. One debate is about what delusions are. If delusions are beliefs, why are they described as failing to play the causal roles that characterise beliefs, such as being responsive to evidence and guiding action? The other debate is about how delusions develop. What processes lead people to form delusions and maintain them in the face of challenges and counter-evidence? Do the formation and maintenance of delusions …Read more
  •  53
    Delusions as harmful malfunctioning beliefs
    Consciousness and Cognition 33 561-573. 2015.
    Delusional beliefs are typically pathological. Being pathological is clearly distinguished from being false or being irrational. Anna might falsely believe that his husband is having an affair but it might just be a simple mistake. Again, Sam might irrationally believe, without good evidence, that he is smarter than his colleagues, but it might just be a healthy self-deceptive belief. On the other hand, when a patient with brain damage caused by a car accident believes that his father was replac…Read more