Project Workshop Two: Delusional Experience
The second workshop of the project will be on delusional experience, featuring six talks from seven researchers in philosophy:
Marianna Ganapini (Union College)
Laura Gow (Liverpool)
Peter Langland-Hassan (Cincinnati)
Heather Logue (Leeds)
Jessie Munton (Cambridge)
Paul Noordhof (York)
Ema Sullivan-Bissett (Birmingham)
See below for the Programme and titles and abstracts. The workshop will take place in ERI G51 at the University of Birmingham. For updates follow us on twitter @del_by_ex
To register, go here.
Programme (provisional)
15th June
09:30: Coffee
09:45-11:15: Laura Gow: 'Redefining Non-veridicality in Perception'
11:15: Coffee
11:30-13:00: Jessie Munton: 'Salience, Active Ignorance, and Negative Delusions'
13:00 Lunch (provided)
14:15-15:45: Heather Logue: 'Monothematic Delusions and Naïve Realist Theories of Hallucination'
15:45 Coffee
16:00-17:30: Peter Langland-Hassan: 'Thought Insertion as a Persecutory Delusion'
17:30: Close
18:30 Dinner at Buonnisimo, Harborne
16th June
09:30: Coffee
09:45-11:15: Marianna Ganapini: 'Are Delusions Sensitive to the Evidence?'
11:15: Coffee
11:30-13:00: Paul Noordhof and Ema Sullivan-Bissett: 'Making Sense of Delusional Experience'
13:00 Lunch (provided) and close
Titles and abstracts
Laura Gow: 'Redefining Non-verdicality in Perception'
When we say that a particular perceptual experience is non-veridical, what we mean is that the experience gets the world wrong in some way. Our pink elephant hallucination is non-veridical because our local environment does not include a pink elephant, and our illusory experience of a blue banana is non-veridical because the banana in front of us isn't actually blue. I argue that although failing to match the world is what 'non-veridical' means, no theory of perception can justify our using 'non-veridical' in this way. I will provide an alternative way of thinking about non-veridicality.
Marianna Ganapini: 'Are Delusions Sensitive to the Evidence?'
A delusion is often defined as a subject’s false belief that is held despite the fact that everybody else takes it to be false and despite the fact that the subject has incontrovertible evidence of its falsity. As a result many have argued that delusions are not sensitive to the evidence: they are fundamentally evidence-resistant. This established view has been recently put into question. In particular, it has been argued that delusions' insensitivity to evidence is a performance error not a problem with competence: subjects with delusions retain the ability to deal with the evidence but this ability is “masked" in various ways for the deluded belief. If so, then their irrational delusional belief could not only be excusable but even considered reasonable at times. In this talk, I raise some objections against this approach and then draw some conclusions for the view that delusions are beliefs.
Peter Langland-Hassan: 'Thought Insertion as a Persecutory Delusion'
Popular two-factor accounts of thought insertion hold that this delusion is caused by two elements working in tandem: an anomalous experience of some kind (the first factor) and a reasoning deficit or bias (the second factor). This talk defends a very different alternative to explaining and treating thought insertion—one that views thought insertion as a form persecutory delusion. I will begin by presenting several difficulties for two-factor accounts of thought insertion and for two-factor accounts of delusions more generally. I will then discuss positive reasons for seeing thought insertion as a form of persecutory delusion. The positive case begins with reflection on first-person descriptions of thought insertion gleaned from online discussion forums. It continues by considering ways in which clinical diagnostic tools may create the appearance of deep differences between symptoms such as thought insertion and persecutory delusions where there are none. This case is bolstered by evidence for volatility in the type of delusions patients present with over time. Implications for the treatment of thought insertion are then considered.
Heather Logue: 'Monothematic Delusions and Naïve Realist Theories of Hallucination'
In this talk, I'll outline the current menu of options for naive realist theories of hallucination: standard "negative" disjunctivism (which holds that the phenomenal character of total hallucinations consists in their subjective indiscriminability from possible perceptions), eliminativist disjunctivism (which denies that total hallucinations have perceptual phenomenal character, despite being subjectively indiscriminable from a possible perception), moderate "new wave" naive realism (which holds that the phenomenal character of a total hallucination consists in the subject perceiving the mind-independent things that cause the hallucination), and radical "new wave" naive realism (which regards the question of the kind and extent of phenomenal character had by total hallucinations as an open empirical one). I'll then discuss how to extend these theories to partial hallucinations, and explore the question of whether they are compatible with a purely experiential theory of monothematic delusion.
Jessie Munton: 'Salience, Active Ignorance, and Negative Delusions'
Negative hallucinations are characterised by the failure to see something, despite looking directly at it. Could there, in addition, be negative delusions: robust failures to form relevant beliefs, despite directly encountering evidence for them? If so, how are we to distinguish such negative delusions from cases of “casual” ignorance? I argue that appealing to the salience structure that underwrites the distribution of a subject’s attention can help us to draw this distinction, in a way that lets us recognise negative delusions as a sub-species of a broader category of active ignorance. Recognising this phenomenon helps us to understand various aspects of the mind: certain forms of prejudice for instance can be characterised by a form of active ignorance more akin to a negative delusion than a false belief.
Paul Noordhof and Ema Sullivan-Bissett: 'Making Sense of Delusional Experience'
The present paper seeks to relate theoretical approaches to monothematic delusion, developments in the literature on belief, and its relationship to truth, with currently fashionable approaches to the nature of experience. We distinguish between positive and negative delusions and argue that a certain kind of relationist about perceptual experience rules out empiricism in cases of positive delusions. We argue that this is a considerable cost insofar as the relationist has to recognise a difference of kind in the class of monothematic delusion on which there are no theoretical grounds. We suggest that the relationist is forced into rationalism about the formation of positive delusions, but in their so being, also have to rule out both of the orthodox views of the relationship between belief and truth. She is forced to a model of this relationship which severs any conceptual or necessary link typically thought to be secured agentially, and instead secures it as a contingent matter related to the biological circumstances of human belief.
The second workshop of the project will be on delusional experience, featuring six talks from seven researchers in philosophy:
Marianna Ganapini (Union College)
Laura Gow (Liverpool)
Peter Langland-Hassan (Cincinnati)
Heather Logue (Leeds)
Jessie Munton (Cambridge)
Paul Noordhof (York)
Ema Sullivan-Bissett (Birmingham)
See below for the Programme and titles and abstracts. The workshop will take place in ERI G51 at the University of Birmingham. For updates follow us on twitter @del_by_ex
To register, go here.
Programme (provisional)
15th June
09:30: Coffee
09:45-11:15: Laura Gow: 'Redefining Non-veridicality in Perception'
11:15: Coffee
11:30-13:00: Jessie Munton: 'Salience, Active Ignorance, and Negative Delusions'
13:00 Lunch (provided)
14:15-15:45: Heather Logue: 'Monothematic Delusions and Naïve Realist Theories of Hallucination'
15:45 Coffee
16:00-17:30: Peter Langland-Hassan: 'Thought Insertion as a Persecutory Delusion'
17:30: Close
18:30 Dinner at Buonnisimo, Harborne
16th June
09:30: Coffee
09:45-11:15: Marianna Ganapini: 'Are Delusions Sensitive to the Evidence?'
11:15: Coffee
11:30-13:00: Paul Noordhof and Ema Sullivan-Bissett: 'Making Sense of Delusional Experience'
13:00 Lunch (provided) and close
Titles and abstracts
Laura Gow: 'Redefining Non-verdicality in Perception'
When we say that a particular perceptual experience is non-veridical, what we mean is that the experience gets the world wrong in some way. Our pink elephant hallucination is non-veridical because our local environment does not include a pink elephant, and our illusory experience of a blue banana is non-veridical because the banana in front of us isn't actually blue. I argue that although failing to match the world is what 'non-veridical' means, no theory of perception can justify our using 'non-veridical' in this way. I will provide an alternative way of thinking about non-veridicality.
Marianna Ganapini: 'Are Delusions Sensitive to the Evidence?'
A delusion is often defined as a subject’s false belief that is held despite the fact that everybody else takes it to be false and despite the fact that the subject has incontrovertible evidence of its falsity. As a result many have argued that delusions are not sensitive to the evidence: they are fundamentally evidence-resistant. This established view has been recently put into question. In particular, it has been argued that delusions' insensitivity to evidence is a performance error not a problem with competence: subjects with delusions retain the ability to deal with the evidence but this ability is “masked" in various ways for the deluded belief. If so, then their irrational delusional belief could not only be excusable but even considered reasonable at times. In this talk, I raise some objections against this approach and then draw some conclusions for the view that delusions are beliefs.
Peter Langland-Hassan: 'Thought Insertion as a Persecutory Delusion'
Popular two-factor accounts of thought insertion hold that this delusion is caused by two elements working in tandem: an anomalous experience of some kind (the first factor) and a reasoning deficit or bias (the second factor). This talk defends a very different alternative to explaining and treating thought insertion—one that views thought insertion as a form persecutory delusion. I will begin by presenting several difficulties for two-factor accounts of thought insertion and for two-factor accounts of delusions more generally. I will then discuss positive reasons for seeing thought insertion as a form of persecutory delusion. The positive case begins with reflection on first-person descriptions of thought insertion gleaned from online discussion forums. It continues by considering ways in which clinical diagnostic tools may create the appearance of deep differences between symptoms such as thought insertion and persecutory delusions where there are none. This case is bolstered by evidence for volatility in the type of delusions patients present with over time. Implications for the treatment of thought insertion are then considered.
Heather Logue: 'Monothematic Delusions and Naïve Realist Theories of Hallucination'
In this talk, I'll outline the current menu of options for naive realist theories of hallucination: standard "negative" disjunctivism (which holds that the phenomenal character of total hallucinations consists in their subjective indiscriminability from possible perceptions), eliminativist disjunctivism (which denies that total hallucinations have perceptual phenomenal character, despite being subjectively indiscriminable from a possible perception), moderate "new wave" naive realism (which holds that the phenomenal character of a total hallucination consists in the subject perceiving the mind-independent things that cause the hallucination), and radical "new wave" naive realism (which regards the question of the kind and extent of phenomenal character had by total hallucinations as an open empirical one). I'll then discuss how to extend these theories to partial hallucinations, and explore the question of whether they are compatible with a purely experiential theory of monothematic delusion.
Jessie Munton: 'Salience, Active Ignorance, and Negative Delusions'
Negative hallucinations are characterised by the failure to see something, despite looking directly at it. Could there, in addition, be negative delusions: robust failures to form relevant beliefs, despite directly encountering evidence for them? If so, how are we to distinguish such negative delusions from cases of “casual” ignorance? I argue that appealing to the salience structure that underwrites the distribution of a subject’s attention can help us to draw this distinction, in a way that lets us recognise negative delusions as a sub-species of a broader category of active ignorance. Recognising this phenomenon helps us to understand various aspects of the mind: certain forms of prejudice for instance can be characterised by a form of active ignorance more akin to a negative delusion than a false belief.
Paul Noordhof and Ema Sullivan-Bissett: 'Making Sense of Delusional Experience'
The present paper seeks to relate theoretical approaches to monothematic delusion, developments in the literature on belief, and its relationship to truth, with currently fashionable approaches to the nature of experience. We distinguish between positive and negative delusions and argue that a certain kind of relationist about perceptual experience rules out empiricism in cases of positive delusions. We argue that this is a considerable cost insofar as the relationist has to recognise a difference of kind in the class of monothematic delusion on which there are no theoretical grounds. We suggest that the relationist is forced into rationalism about the formation of positive delusions, but in their so being, also have to rule out both of the orthodox views of the relationship between belief and truth. She is forced to a model of this relationship which severs any conceptual or necessary link typically thought to be secured agentially, and instead secures it as a contingent matter related to the biological circumstances of human belief.