Friday, May 8, 2009

Recent publications

An article and a journal issue:

A role for ownership and authorship in the analysis of thought insertion
Lisa Bortolotti and Matthew Broome
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
Volume 8, Number 2 / June, 2009
Abstract Philosophers are interested in the phenomenon of thought insertion because it challenges the common assumption that one can ascribe to oneself the thoughts that one can access first-personally. In the standard philosophical analysis of thought insertion, the subject owns the ‘inserted’ thought but lacks a sense of agency towards it. In this paper we want to provide an alternative analysis of the condition, according to which subjects typically lack both ownership and authorship of the ‘inserted’ thoughts. We argue that by appealing to a failure of ownership and authorship we can describe more accurately the phenomenology of thought insertion, and distinguish it from that of non-delusional beliefs that have not been deliberated about, and of other delusions of passivity. We can also start developing a more psychologically realistic account of the relation between intentionality, rationality and self knowledge in normal and abnormal cognition.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/145j2111842wpv7h/

And another issue of PPP: that's 3 in 2 months.

Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology
Volume 15, Number 4, December 2008
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/philosophy_psychiatry_and_psychology/toc/ppp.15.4.html

Target articles:
Delusions, Certainty, and the Background
John Rhodes and Richard G. T. Gipps
pp. 295-310
with commentaries by Giovanni Stanghellini and S. Nassir Ghaemi

The Concept of Mental Disorder: A Proposal
Alfredo Gaete
pp. 327-339
with commentary by Richard G. T. Gipps