Lisa Bortolotti

On 10th August Why Delusions Matter is out in paperback! One of the key ideas of the book is that we should avoid thinking of beliefs that we find irrational as a sign of a pathology. In the last few days, two open-access papers have been published where I capture some aspects of this idea. In one paper,  Is it pathological to believe conspiracy theories? , I ask how we decide that some ways of thinking about the world are pathological. Either those ways are considered to be harmful or the output of a malfunctioning mechanism. But in the case of conspiracy beliefs, harmfulness is hard to ascertain, and beliefs that are harmful in some ways can also bring benefits.  For instance, the belief that a vaccine is unsafe and is promoted by health authorities to benefit the pharmaceutical company who produced it may lead someone not to take advantage of the vaccine. As a result, the person is left unprotected against a serious disease. But conspiracy theories also aim to respond to e...

  One month to the publication of Why Delusions Matter (Bloomsbury, 2023)!  This week I will present the main ideas in the book at an in-person event in Oxford, a lecture for the MSt in Practical Ethics, and at an online seminar in Poland , at the Institute of Applied Psychology, Faculty of Management and Social Communication, Jagiellonian University. Reflecting on what happens when we call another person's belief delusional helps us realise that we tend to disapprove of that belief because we regard it as implausible, unshakeable, and costly. But there is another dimension to delusional beliefs: for the person who reports the belief and defends it from challenges, the delusion may be a way to explain distressing or unexpected events and to find meaning.