Delusion and Self-Deception ─ Affective and Motivational Influences on Belief Formation

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.

Tim Bayne obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in 2002. He taught in the philosophy department at Macquarie University (Sydney) from 2002 until 2007, when he moved to the University of Oxford where he is University Lecturer in the Philosophy of Mind and a Fellow of St. Catherine’s College. He has published widely on consciousness, and is an editor of the forthcoming Oxford Companion to Consciousness. He is completing a monograph on the unity of consciousness.

Jordi Fernandez obtained his Ph.D. from Brown University in 2003. He has held positions at Bowdoin College, Macquarie University (Sydney), and the Australian National University (Canberra). At present he is a lecturer in the Philosophy Department at the University of Adelaide. He has published widely on the philosophical problems raised by self-knowledge and memory.