Folk and Philosophical Epistemologies: A Double Bookkeeping of Sorts by Delusion’s Theoreticians?

• Published in: Philosophy, psychiatry & psychology psychiatry & psychology, 2019-06, Vol.26 (2), p.121-123
• Main Author: de Rosalmeida Dantas, Clarissa
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Clinical medicine; Culture; Delusions; Epistemology; Insanity pleas; Mental disorders; Patients; Phenomenology; Philosophy; Psychiatry; Psychology; Psychosis
• ISSN: 1071-6076; 1086-3303; 1086-3303
• DOI: 10.1353/ppp.2019.0014

[...]my accordance to the negative moral Porcher extracts from the debate: “the heterogeneity of the class of delusion puts pressure on the very possibility of anyone ever arriving at a characterization that is at once general and precise” (2019, p. 115). In Porcher’s quotation of the definition presented in the Glossary of Technical Terms of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition, a very important part is missing: “The belief is not ordinarily accepted by other members of the person’s culture or subculture” (i.e., it is not an article of religious faith; American Psychiatric Association, 2013, p. 819). [...]the complete definition mixes epistemic terms with a cultural exclusion clause. Both advocates and critics of doxastic accounts, in arguing for the relevance of the whole debate, have referred to issues related to “legal conceptions of incompetence” and “insanity defense” (see Radden 2013), “autonomy and moral responsibility” and “reduced accountability” (see Bortolotti, 2012), but only incidentally. Clarissa de Rosalmeida Dantas is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychiatry, School of Medical Sciences, State University of Campinas, in Campinas, Brazil.