Pathologies of Belief

Belief systems are supposed to be governed by norms of rationality. Yet some people seem to believe quite extraordinary things: for example, that they are dead, or that their closest relatives have been replaced by impostors, or that the person they see in the mirror is not really them, or that someone else′s thoughts are being inserted into their mind. Do people really believe such things? Could beliefs like these simply be rational interpretations of unusual experiences? Why are these beliefs maintained despite their utter implausibility and the uniform skepticism with which others greet them? In this book, psychologists and philosophers describe and discuss a range of case studies of delusional beliefs, drawing out general lessons both for the cognitive architecture of the mind and for the notion of rationality, and exploring connections between the delusional beliefs that occur in schizophrenia and the flawed understanding of beliefs that is characteristic of autism.

1. Introduction: Pathologies of Belief: Martin Davies (Macquarie University) and Max Coltheart (Macquarie University). 2. Wondrous Strange: The Neuropsychology of Abnormal Beliefs: Andrew W. Young (University of York). 3. Towards an Understanding of Delusions of Misidentification: Four Case Studies: Nora Breen (Macquarie University), Diana Caine (Royal Prince Albert Hospital, Sydney, Australia), Max Coltheart (Macquarie University), Julie Hendy (Julie Hendy and Associates, Sydney, Australia) and Corrine Roberts (Julie Hendy and Associates, Sydney, Australia). 4. Refining the Explanation of Cotard′s Delusion: Philip Gerrans (Victoria University). 5. Insights into Theory of Mind from Deafness and Autism: Candida C. Peterson (University of Queensland) and Michael Siegal (University of Sheffield). 6. Schizophrenia and Rationality: Ian Gold (Monash University) and Jakob Hohwy (LaTrobe University). 7. Imagination, Delusion and Hallucination: Gregory Currie (University of Nottingham). 8. The Cognitive Neuropsychology of Delusions: Robyn Langdon (Macquarie University) and Max Coltheart (Macquarie University).

Max Coltheart studied psychology at the University of Sydney and began his lecturing career there, subsequently teaching at the University of Waterloo in Canada and the University of Reading in England, before being appointed Professor of Psychology at Birkbeck College London, a position he held for twelve years before returning to Australia in 1987 to become Professor of Psychology at Macquarie University in Sydney. He is the author of about 150 journal articles and book chapters, co–author of Language Processing in Children and Adults , and editor of nine collections including Deep Dyslexi and The Cognitive Neuropsychology of Language . He was the founding editor of the journal Cognitive Neuropsychology and one of the founding editors of Mind and Language . Martin Davies studied philosophy at Monash University in Melbourne and at the University of Oxford and spent eleven years at Birkbeck College London as lecturer and then reader in philosophy. In 1993 he became the Wilde Reader in Mental Philosophy at Oxford, where he was a Fellow of Corpus Christi College. He returned to Australia in 2000 to take up a Professorship in the Philosophy Program, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University. He is the author of Meaning, Quantification ,Necessity and Knowing What Thought Requires and editor of three collections in the Readings in Mind and Language series. He was one of the founding editors of Mind and Language .