Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs

Lisa Bortolotti is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Birmingham (UK). Her main research interests are in the philosophy of the cognitive sciences and in the intersection between philosophy of mind and ethics. She has published a number of articles on belief ascription, rationality and delusions in journals such as Mind & Language and Philosophical Psychology. She is the author of An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science for Polity Press, the editor of Philosophy and Happiness for Palgrave and the co-editor (with M.R. Broome) of Psychiatry as Cognitive Neuroscience: Philosophical Perspectives for Oxford University Press.

Bortolotti's book is an important contribution to our understanding of the nature of beliefs and hence of our understanding of delusions. It shows that psychiatry has a lot to learn from philosophy and no doubt philosophy too can only benefit from dialogue with psychiatrists. There are many original insights in this book.

• Acknowledgements ; Synopsis ; 1. The Background ; 2. Procedural Rationality and Belief Ascription ; 3. Epistemic Rationality and Belief Ascription ; 4. Agential Rationality and Belief Ascription ; 5. Beliefs and Self Knowledge ; 6. Conclusions ; Bibliography and Reference List