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SUMMARY:Delusional cognition as explanation - Matthew Parrott (KCL)
DTSTART:20170208T130000Z
DTEND:20170208T143000Z
UID:TALK70720@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:31287
DESCRIPTION:One idea that has been extremely influential within cognitive 
 \nneuropsychology and neuropsychiatry is that delusions arise as \nintelli
 gible responses to highly irregular experiences.  More precisely\, \nover 
 a number of years Brendan Maher developed a proposal which \nmaintained th
 at an individual adopts a delusional belief because it \nserves to explain
  a ‘strange’ or ‘significant’ experience (see Maher \n1974\, 1988\
 , 1999).  Maher’s approach to understanding delusions is often \ncalled 
 ‘explanationism’ (Bayne and Pacherie 2004).\n\nEven though explanation
 ist accounts have been fairly popular in \ncognitive neuropsychiatry\, the
  framework has been questioned by a number \nof philosophers on the ground
 s that delusions are quite obviously very \nbad explanations.  Indeed\, si
 nce delusions strike most of us as highly \nimplausible\, it is hard to se
 e how they could explain any experience\, no \nmatter how unusual.\n\nThis
  talk will have two aims. First\, I shall distinguish three distinct \nway
 s in which a delusion might be thought to be explanatorily \ninadequate\, 
 each of which poses a distinct challenge for the \nexplanationist approach
 .  I shall then defend the approach from these \nchallenges by sketching h
 ow it can plausibly explain two delusions \ninvolving misidentification\, 
 the Capgras delusion and thought insertion. \n\nAs we will see in the disc
 ussion of these delusions\, the sort of \nexplanationist account I propose
  posits at least two discrete ways in \nwhich delusional cognition departs
  from ordinary cognition\, one of which \ninvolves the cognitive mechanism
 s underlying hypothesis generation.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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