Do Delusions Have Epistemic Value?

Kengo Miyazono

In this post Kengo Miyazono, post-doctoral researcher at the University of Birmingham Philosophy Department, summarises a paper he presented it at the 88th Joint Session of the Aristotelian Society and Mind Association in Cambridge earlier this month. The paper “Do delusions have any epistemic value?”, co-authored by Kengo and Lisa Bortolotti was presented in the open session.

Delusional beliefs are false in most cases. And, probably, they are unjustified according any interesting accounts of epistemic justification. However, we believe that there are some positive things we can say about epistemic status of delusional beliefs. The aim of the paper (or, strictly speaking, the aim of the longer paper upon which the presented paper is based) is to defend two claims about the epistemic status of delusional beliefs. The claims correspond to two kinds of epistemic evaluations; consequentialist and deontological evaluations. First, delusions can have some good epistemic consequences that are at least indirectly related to the acquisition of true beliefs. Second, people with delusions are not epistemically blameworthy for their delusional beliefs.

Epistemic Innocence and Delusion Formation

Ema Sullivan-Bissett

In this post Ema Sullivan-Bissett, post-doctoral researcher at the University of Birmingham Philosophy Department, summarises a paper she is currently working on. She presented it at the 88th Joint Session of the Aristotelian Society and Mind Association in Cambridge earlier this month. Ema works with Lisa Bortolotti on the project entitled Epistemic Innocence of Imperfect Cognitions.

 In the paper I argue that that delusional beliefs have the potential for epistemic innocence, irrespective of which approach to delusion formation we adopt. If I am right, whatever implications there are for delusions having this epistemic status, hold for whatever one says about how delusions are formed, that is, whether they are bottom-up and involve one or two factors, or whether they are top down.

I use the notion of epistemic innocence to capture an epistemically poor cognition which nevertheless both confers an epistemic benefit, and for which such a benefit is otherwise unobtainable. I place two conditions on what it takes for a delusion to be epistemically innocent. The first is that the delusional belief confers some significant epistemic benefit onto the subject (Epistemic Benefit). The second is that the epistemic benefit conferred on the subject could not be otherwise had since alternative, less epistemically faulty cognitions, are unavailable to the subject at that time (No Alternatives).