Delusion and Self-Deception

Affective and Motivational Influences on Belief Formation

Tim Bayne, Jordi Fernández

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781138876750
• eBook ISBN: 9781136874864
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Cognitive Psychology & Cognition
• Index: Psychology

This collection of essays focuses on the interface between delusions and self-deception. As pathologies of belief, delusions and self-deception raise many of the same challenges for those seeking to understand them. Are delusions and self-deception entirely distinct phenomena, or might some forms of self-deception also qualify as delusional? To what extent might models of self-deception and delusion share common factors? In what ways do affect and motivation enter into normal belief-formation, and how might they be implicated in self-deception and delusion? The essays in this volume tackle these questions from both empirical and conceptual perspectives. Some contributors focus on the general question of how to locate self-deception and delusion within our taxonomy of psychological states. Some contributors ask whether particular delusions - such as the Capgras delusion or anosognosia for hemiplegia - might be explained by appeal to motivational and affective factors. And some contributors provide general models of motivated reasoning, against which theories of pathological belief-formation might be measured.

The volume will be of interest to cognitive scientists, clinicians, and philosophers interested in the nature of belief and the disturbances to which it is subject.

Table of contents

• MACQUARIE MONOGRAPHS IN COGNIIVE SCIENCE
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Editors
• Contributors
• 1 Delusion and Self-Deception
• 2 Passion, Reason, and Necessity
• 3 Self-Deception and Delusions
• 4 Delusion and Motivationally Biased Belief
• 5 Emotion, Cognition, and Belief
• 6 Perception, Emotions, and Delusions
• 7 From Phenomenology to Cognitive Architecture and Back
• 8 Monothematic Delusions and Existential Feelings
• 9 “Sleights of Mind”
• 10 Cognitive and Motivational Factors in Anosognosia
• 11 Self-Deception Without Thought Experiments
• 12 Hysterical Conversion
• 13 Imagination, Delusion, and Self-Deception
• Author Index
• Subject Index