Shaping our action space: A situated perspective on self-control

ULTIMA

As part of our research project, we have launched ULTIMA (Utrecht Lectures on Topics In Mind and Action). This is a series of monthly lectures that will host some of the most important researchers in the philosophy of mind, the cognitive sciences, and the philosophy of action.

Our first upcoming talk will be:

Beyond belief? Delusions and the regulative account of folk psychology

Speaker: Miguel Núñez de Prado & Annemarie Kalis (Utrecht University).

Abstract:

At least in Western countries, our everyday practices of belief ascription are typically guided by what we call the congruity principle, i.e., the idea that believing something entails, ceteris paribus, that one acts and reasons in accordance with the content of that belief. In the philosophy of psychiatry, multiple authors have observed that some cases of delusions seem to run counter to this principle, with individuals systematically failing to act congruently with the content of their delusion. This has led many to deny a doxastic (i.e., belief) status to delusions, at least in cases where such incongruences are observed. However, this contradicts extensive clinical and scientific literature characterizing delusions in doxastic terms, as well as recent experimental evidence that ‘the folk’ systematically interpret delusions as beliefs, irrespective of any incongruences. The debate is not merely a philosophical puzzle: at the very least, it poses questions about the ability of people with delusions to speak their own minds and about their status as agents. This presents a challenge: can the intuitive appeal of doxasticism about delusions be reconciled with the equally intuitive appeal of the congruity principle?

Our goal is to argue that recent regulative approaches to folk psychology provide the conceptual tools needed to meet this challenge. Specifically, these approaches share two key commitments: a) regulativism, i.e., the idea that belief ascription practices are primarily geared towards normative regulation; and b) context-sensitivity, or the idea that the factors relevant to belief ascription can differ across contexts. The resulting perspective reframes the congruity principle as a regulative ideal governing belief ascription, rather than a factual benchmark. Furthermore, because of its emphasis on context-sensitivity, the regulative approach can address the challenge of delusion by showing how and why in the ‘context’ of delusion we might attach less weight to the congruity principle than in other contexts. We conclude that, although our position doesn’t fully embrace nor deny doxasticism about delusions, it provides a way for accommodating both doxasticist intuitions and the idea that congruity is a guiding principle for belief ascription.

When: Thursday, March 28, 2024  (15.30 to 17.00)

Where: Kromme Nieuwegracht 80 (room 1.06), Utrecht. Attendance is free but space is limited. Please, to attend send an e-mail to m.nunezdepradogordillo@uu.nl.

*Online: This is a hybrid event. To attend online, please send an e-mail to m.nunezdepradogordillo@uu.nl

 

Other upcoming talks: