Tim Bayne

Bottom-Up or Top-Down: Campbell's Rationalist Account of Monothematic Delusions

A popular approach to monothematic delusions in the recent literature has been to argue that monothematic delusions involve broadly rational responses to highly unusual experiences. Campbell (2001) calls this the empiricist approach to monothematic delusions, and argues that it cannot account for the links between meaning and rationality. In place of empiricism, Campbell offers a rationalist account of monothematic delusions, according to which delusional beliefs are understood as Wittgensteinian framework propositions. We argue that neither Campbells attack on empiricism nor his rationalist alternative to empiricism is successful.

Narrators and comparators: the architecture of agentive self-awareness

This paper contrasts two approaches to agentive self-awareness: a high-level, narrative-based account, and a low-level comparator-based account. We argue that an agent’s narrative self-conception has a role to play in explaining their agentive judgments, but that agentive experiences are explained by low-level comparator mechanisms that are grounded in the very machinery responsible for action-production.

Are There Levels of Consciousness

The notion of a level of consciousness is a key construct in the science of consciousness. Not only is the term employed to describe the global states of consciousness that are associated with post-comatose disorders, epileptic absence seizures, anaesthesia, and sleep, it plays an increasingly influential role in theoretical and methodological contexts. However, it is far from clear what precisely a level of consciousness is supposed to be. This paper argues that the levels-based framework for conceptualizing global states of consciousness is untenable and develops in its place a multidimensional account of global states.

The Vegetative State and the Science of Consciousness

Consciousness in experimental subjects is typically inferred from reports and other forms of voluntary behaviour. A wealth of everyday experience confirms that healthy subjects do not ordinarily behave in these ways unless they are conscious. Investigation of consciousness in vegetative state patients has been based on the search for neural evidence that such broad functional capacities are preserved in some vegetative state patients. We call this the standard approach. To date, the results of the standard approach have suggested that some vegetative state patients might indeed be conscious, although they fall short of being demonstrative. The fact that some vegetative state patients show evidence of consciousness according to the standard approach is remarkable, for the standard approach to consciousness is rather conservative, and leaves open the pressing question of how to ascertain whether patients who fail such tests are conscious or not. We argue for a cluster-based ‘natural kind’ methodology that is adequate to that task, both as a replacement for the approach that currently informs research into the presence or absence of consciousness in vegetative state patients and as a methodology for the science of consciousness more generally. 1. Introduction2. The Vegetative State3. The Standard Approach4. The Natural Kind Methodology5. Is Consciousness a Special Case? 5.1 Is consciousness a natural kind? 5.2 A special obstacle?6. Conclusion Introduction The Vegetative State The Standard Approach The Natural Kind Methodology Is Consciousness a Special Case? 5.1 Is consciousness a natural kind? 5.2 A special obstacle? 5.1 Is consciousness a natural kind? 5.2 A special obstacle? Conclusion

Delusion and self-deception: Mapping the terrain

The papers in this volume are drawn from a workshop on delusion and self-deception, held at Macquarie University in November of 2004. Our aim was to bring together theorists working on delusions and self-deception with an eye towards identifying and fostering connections—at both empirical and conceptual levels—between these domains. As the contributions to this volume testify, there are multiple points of contact between delusion and self-deception. This introduction charts the conceptual space in which these points of contact can be located and introduces the reader to some of the general issues that frame the discussion of subsequent chapters.Introduction Subjects with delusions profess to believe some extremely peculiar things. Patients with Capgras delusion sincerely assert that, for example, their spouses have been replaced by impostors. Patients with Cotard’s delusion sincerely assert that they are dead. Many philosophers and psychologists are hesitant to say that delusional subjects genuinely believe the contents of their delusions. One way to reinterpret delusional subjects is to say that we’ve misidentified the content of the problematic belief. So for example, rather than believing that his wife is has been replaced by an impostor, we might say that the victim of Capgras delusion believes that it is, in some respects, as if his wife has been replaced by an impostor. Another is to say that we’ve misidentified the attitude that the delusional subject bears to the content of their delusion. So for example, Gregory Currie and co-authors have suggested that rather than believing that his wife has been replaced by an impostor, we should say that the victim of Capgras delusion merely imagines that his wife has been replaced by an impostor. In this paper, I will explore a strategy of this second sort. Saying that the attitude that delusional subjects bear to the contents of their delusions is imagination, though, faces its own problems. I want to suggest that, instead, we ought to say that delusionalT. Bayne, J. Fernandez, Delusion and Self-deception: Mapping the Terrain. P. Ditto, Passion, Reason, and Necessity: A Quantity of Processing View of Motivated Reasoning. A. Mele, Self-deception and Delusions. M. Davies, Delusion and Motivationally Biased Belief: Self-deception in the Two-factor Framework. M.L. Spezio, R. Adolphs, Emotion, Cognition, and Belief: Findings from Cognitive Neuroscience. E. Pacherie, Perception, Emotions and Delusions: The Case of the Capgras Delusion. P. Gerrans, From Phenomenology to Cognitive Architecture and Back. B.P. Mclaughlin, Monothematic Delusions and Existential Feelings. R. McKay, R. Langdon, M. Coltheart, Sleights of Mind: Delusions and Self-deception. A.M. Aimola Davies, M. Davies, J.A. Ogden, M. Smithson, R.C. White, Cognitive and Motivational Factors in Anosognosia. N. Levy, Self-deception Without Thought Experiments. F. de Vignemont, Hysterical Conversion: The Reverse of Anosognosia? A. Egan, Imagination, Delusion, and Self-deception.

Delusion and confabulation : mistakes of perceiving, remembering and believing

This paper adopts an inclusive approach to the relationship between delusion and confabulation, according to which some symptoms might qualify as both delusional and confabulatory. Our initial focus is on the cardinal signs of delusions: incomprehensibility, incorrigibility, and subjective conviction. Setting aside post hoc (or secondary) confabulations—plausible rationalisations that might be generated by nonpathological belief formation processes—we focus on spontaneous memory-based confabulations which, we suggest, conform to the characterisation of delusions. After considering current accounts of the role of experience in delusion formation, we propose that spontaneous confabulations are located at (or towards) the “received” end of a “received-reflective” spectrum of delusions: the spontaneous confabulator simply receives and endorses as genuine the content of an apparent—yet implausible—memory experience. Underlying both spontaneous confabulations and other received delusions, we propose, is an inability to inhibit the prepotent tendency to upload and maintain experiential content (mnemonic or perceptual) into belief.

Delusions as doxastic states: contexts, compartments and commitments

Although delusions are typically regarded as beliefs of a certain kind, there have been worries about the doxastic conception of delusions since at least Bleuler’s time. ‘Anti-doxasticists,’ as we might call them, do not merely worry about the claim that delusions are beliefs, they reject it. Reimer’s paper weighs into the debate between ‘doxasticists’ and ‘antidoxasticists’ by suggesting that one of the main arguments given against the doxastic conception of delusions—what we might call the functional role objection—is based on a fallacy. She also draws attention to certain parallels between delusions and what she calls “nihilistic philosophical doctrines,” such as the skeptical position that we have no knowledge. I read Reimer as presenting the anti-doxasticist with a dilemma: they must either adopt an anti-doxastic treatment of philosophical nihilism or they must identify a crucial respect in which nihilistic states differ from delusional states. As she puts it, “If we are to withhold the label ‘belief’ from psychiatric delusions, . . . parity of reason requires that we withhold it from seemingly sincere endorsements of [standard] philosophical doctrines” (2010, 317). Although Reimer herself stops short of endorsing the doxastic conception of delusions, she is clearly very sympathetic to it. Reimer’s discussion is a very welcome contribution to the contemporary discussion of delusions, and I have learnt much from it. I do, however, have questions. In the first part of this commentary I focus on the question of what exactly Reimer’s position is. Her view has multiple strands, and it is not clear to me that its various strands can be reconciled with each other. In the second and third sections, I take a step back from Reimer’s paper and ask what exactly might be at stake in the debate about the doxastic status of delusions.

Doing without deliberation: Automatism, automaticity, and moral accountability

Actions performed in a state of automatism are not subject to moral evaluation, while automatic actions often are. Is the asymmetry between automatistic and automatic actions justified? In order to answer this question we need a model of moral accountability that does justice to our intuitions about a range of modes of agency, both pathological and non-pathological. Our aim in this paper is to lay the groundwork for the development of such a model. In all of us, even in good men, there is a lawless wild-beast nature, which peers out in sleep. Plato, The Republic

The grounds of worship

Although worship has a pivotal place in religious thought and practice, philosophers of religion have had remarkably little to say about it. In this paper we examine some of the many questions surrounding the notion of worship, focusing on the claim that human beings have obligations to worship God. We explore a number of attempts to ground our supposed duty to worship God, and argue that each is problematic. We conclude by examining the implications of this result, and suggest that it might be taken to provide an argument against Gods existence, since theists generally regard it is a necessary truth that we ought to worship God.

Reforming the taxonomy in disorders of consciousness

This article examines the serious shortcomings that characterize the current taxonomy of postcomatose disorders of consciousness (DoC), and it provides guidelines for how an improved DoC taxonomy might be developed. In particular, it is argued that behavioral criteria for the application of DoC categories should be supplemented with brain‐based criteria (eg, information derived from electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging), and that the categorical framework that currently characterizes DoC should be replaced by a multidimensional framework that better captures the performance of patients across a range of cognitive and behavioural tasks. Ann Neurol 2017;82:866–872