This week, doctoral researcher Rachel Gunn examines the nature of delusions.
If a subject says they believe something then I am inclined to take this at face value. The subject usually has other mundane unexamined beliefs (e.g.: I believe that when I turn a tap on water comes out) as well as examined beliefs or opinions (e.g.: I believe that liberal democracy is the best political system). Against this background of other beliefs it does not seem appropriate to ‘second guess’ the subject about his own experience. Not everyone would agree with this and some would argue that delusions do not meet the criteria for beliefs as they are irrational, do not necessarily affect behaviour and do not cohere with other beliefs.
Some propose that a delusional subject
fails to monitor an imagining as being self-generated (the subject is in some sense
not the agent of the imagining). This
mental activity is then mislabelled (representationally) as a belief and
somehow ‘given’ as true. So the
delusional person has a thought with content P. He does not believe P.
He imagines P. And he believes that he believes P.
In this case some delusions are imaginings with a strong feeling of
subjective conviction (Currie and Jureidini, 2001). This is an intriguing way of
describing some delusions and might help us explain why some subjects do
not seek to integrate their delusions into their lives or to act on them (we do
not routinely act on our imaginings).
However, there are problems here – the most obvious being that there are
many examples of people acting on their delusions and integrating them into
elaborate belief networks that pervade the rest of their lives - for example,
the person who believes he is a millionaire, a general and a senior
psychiatrist who regularly phones the bank to check on his millions, attempts
to arrange to inspect local military bases and applies for a job as a chief
executive of a hospital (Bentall,
2004, pp.295–6).
The other problem arises from
establishing how this characterisation of delusion differs from non-delusional
subjects who are ‘believers’. Our normal
propositional attitudes can be manifest as beliefs, which we may not act on,
which may not be integrated into the rest of our beliefs and which may also be
irrational. For example I might say that
I believe smoking kills people and I do not want to die sooner than necessary
yet I continue to smoke. This series of
un-integrated beliefs might include an unexamined belief (or sub-clinical
delusion) that I am special and the detrimental effect of smoking will somehow
not have an impact on me. If questioned
about it I would probably concede that the (weakly held) belief that I am
special is not true, yet I am unlikely to change my behaviour. Further, one could successfully argue that my
behaviour and my thinking in this case is irrational but it is unlikely that
one would question the belief status of my statement about smoking. Some say that delusions are non-doxastic
acceptances that do not meet relevant rationality standards (Frankish, 2012) – and here I would have to question
what is meant by ‘relevant rationality standards.’ Ideal (normative) rationality is not consistent
in human beings and therefore one cannot deny the doxastic nature of delusions
simply because they are sometimes irrational (for
supporters of this position see Bayne and Pacherie, 2005;
Bortolotti, 2010).
Whilst it might be true that some delusions
are not beliefs this does not alter the fact that our ordinary
conceptualisation of beliefs sometimes seem to have the same external
characteristics as the phenomenon that Currie and Jureidini describe as
imaginings mistaken as beliefs and that Frankish describes as non-doxastic
acceptances. Of course, as we
are unable to consistently and accurately define or describe beliefs or
imaginings, I cannot say more about it here - perhaps beliefs, acceptances and
imaginings are complex overlapping forms of mental activity. For more on delusion see the imperfect cognitions blog.
Other
(non-electronic) references:
Bentall,
R.P. (2004) Madness Explained: Psychosis and Human Nature. London:
Penguin
Bortolotti, L. (2010) Delusions and other
irrational beliefs. International perspectives in philosophy and
psychiatry. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press
