Irrational beliefs are often associated with poor mental health and are seen as costly beliefs that should be eliminated or replaced when possible. Building on decades of empirical research, we argue that irrational beliefs are widespread in human cognition and not confined to people with poor mental health. Moreover, recent philosophical research has emphasized that irrational beliefs can be beneficial to the person holding them, not only psychologically but also epistemically, which suggests that in some cases elimination or replacement is not the most appropriate course of action. The problem emerging is how we decide when an agent’s irrational belief needs to be challenged: in this chapter, we point to the importance of the social context surrounding the agent by discussing one case of everyday confabulation whose effects vary across contexts.

Beliefs are, or at least appear to be, integral to cognition and action. Though there are scarcely features of human psychology more intuitive to their bearers, beliefs are surprisingly elusive targets of study. In this chapter, we consider some perennial questions about beliefs and suggest that some clarity might be achieved by viewing beliefs through the lens of cognitive psychology. We discuss psychological findings and evolutionary considerations which seem to imply that the mind is not designed to form true beliefs, but beliefs that are instrumentally useful. This issue is redolent of debates over whether people are rational or irrational and whether beliefs aim at truth or serve other psychological functions. We survey a series of practical tradeoffs and computational constraints that limit the attainment of true beliefs, and which may be responsible for apparent irrationality. Additionally, the origin of false or irrational-seeming beliefs may be inadequately specified by behavioral data, which implies that a deeper understanding of processes and prior knowledge inside the head is essential for a science of beliefs. We conclude by noting that a view of irrational beliefs as the result of prior knowledge, rather than irrational processes, may have optimistic implications for improving people’s beliefs.

This chapter illustrates various examples of delusions and then reviews three issues regarding their nature. The first issue concerns the characterization of delusions as mental states. The philosophical debate between those who consider delusions as beliefs and those who propose otherwise is examined. The second issue concerns the pathological nature of delusions. The grounds for and implications of pathologizing a belief are elucidated. This issue suggests that the extension of pathological beliefs does not coincide with that of delusions. Furthermore, it highlights how delusions are held by patients who are “hijacked” by their illness, thus exempting them from responsibility for the negative consequences of delusions. The third issue concerns the psychopathology of delusion. I discuss theories regarding the causes of delusions, including abnormal inferences, abnormal experiences, or both, suggesting that the cause of delusions is likely to differ among different mental disorders.

This chapter explores the different treatments the topic of love received in the Symposium and the Phaedrus. The Symposium expressly addresses the question of the character and benefits of eros – and the question of its nature. It is a philosophical enquiry into this phenomenon, conducted by a set of mature men (and the memory of one exceptional woman) who have personal experience in this topic and have thought about it. In the Phaedrus, by contrast, the topic is addressed from the point of view of a would-be lover trying, through a speech addressed to the young and inexperienced man, to persuade him to submit to his overtures and desires. For Plato, eros is crucial to the practice of philosophy, a force which can take us in two separate directions, towards the good and towards the bad.

This chapter applies the demarcation-explanation cycle to emotion theories. In Stage 1, theories propose working definitions of emotion listing (a) properties of emotions (intensional format) and/or (b) prototypical emotions (divisio format). Typical and apparent properties of emotions are that they have ontogenetic and phylogenetic continuity, are caused by important events, have mental aspects (Intentionality, phenomenality) and bodily aspects (somatic responses, subtle and coarse motor responses), and are characterized by heat (valence, intensity), automaticity, control precedence, and irrationality. Prototypical emotions are fear, anger, sadness, joy, and so on. In Stage 2, theories offer constitutive and/or causal-mechanistic explanations for emotions. In Stage 3, the explanations are validated in empirical research. In Stage 4, they form the basis for the eventual scientific definitions of emotions that allows (a) demarcating the set of emotions from other sets (intensional format) and (b) partitioning the set of emotions into subsets (divisio format). The demarcation-explanation cycle forms the basis for a novel typology of emotion theories in which the theories are placed on several axes. The axes correspond to questions that arise at various stages in the demarcation-explanation cycle and the positions of theories on these axes correspond to the answers they formulate to these questions.

In the last chapter, we saw that judicial review is not the same as an appeal against a lower court’s decision. The courts will only intervene in the operation of a public function on the basis of particular criteria. The longest-established and least controversial of these criteria is illegality, which primarily involves the courts checking that lawful authority exists for a decision maker’s actions (fundamental to even the most limited conceptions of the rule of law). The courts, however, have developed further grounds for judicial review beyond this core function. Even if a public body has lawful authority for an action, the courts may still scrutinise its activity on the basis that there was no rational basis for the action (controversially requiring the courts to consider the reasoning behind a decision) or on the basis that adequate procedural safeguards were not operative within the decision-making process (which can, equally controversially, involve the courts introducing procedural requirements upon exercises of a power beyond those imposed by Parliament). In recent decades judicial review has been further extended to protect the interests of claimants who received specific promises from a decision maker, preventing that public body from reneging upon those promises without good reason.

In everyday moral experience, we judge ourselves for our emotional responses. Often the emotions that we criticize are recalcitrant: they are emotions that we do not endorse or that conflict with our considered judgments. Most of the philosophical literature on recalcitrant emotions focuses on (a) whether and how they are possible or (b) whether and how they are irrational. In this paper, my interest is in the ways we blame ourselves for recalcitrant emotions. I aim to show that it is harder than it looks to explain self-blame for recalcitrant emotions. I will argue recalcitrance alone does not give us a reason to feel any particular way about our emotions and it is not sufficient grounds for self-blame.

This chapter examines the judicial interpretation of a broadly stated constitutional test of fairness in the property rights context, the factors that influence outcomes, and the extent and effects of unpredictability. That analysis goes to the heart of the mediation of property rights and social justice thorugh constitutional property rights adjudication, by considering what is involved in an 'unjust attack' on property rights. The overall picture that emerges is of judicial deference to the decisions of the elected branches of government. Where judges have doubts about the fairness of interferences with property rights by the State, such doubts are often smuggled into decisions under the cover of 'non-property' principles like retrospectivity, fair procedures, and rationality, rather than through direct judicial engagement with the tension between property rights and social justice. The question of fair burdening emerges as the core area of contestation in constitutional property law, with the most uncertainty and unpredictability emerging from judicial decision-making on that issue.

Throughout this chapter I referred to attempts to separate, in different historical and cultural periods,'inferior' and 'superior' thinking and knowing, and to difficulties in maintaining such a separation. Some scholars, like Aristotle and Jacob argued that scientific and mythical reasoning fulfil, at least to some degree, similar functions: they both aim at explaining fundamental questions about the universe,the origin of matter and life; and they are both based on imagination, representations of the world, and they explore powers that rule it.

Although the categories of mythos and logos have created controversies since ancient Greece, they have been maintained throughout centuries together with the conviction that on its road towards progress humankind will shed off irrational beliefs and myths. However, today, the mixture of myth and science still characterizes the thinking of ordinary citizens, scientific popularisers and political ideologists. It may even permeate thinking of scientists who, whether with or without awareness, are prone to propagating ‘scientific myths’. But search for coherence takes different paths; for scientists like Einstein or Wiener, boundaries between different kinds of knowing like science, religion, ethics and aesthetics were not rigid, but totally fluid and open towards creative and imaginative thought.

Throughout this chapter I referred to attempts to separate, in different historical and cultural periods,'inferior' and 'superior' thinking and knowing, and to difficulties in maintaining such a separation. Some scholars, like Aristotle and Jacob argued that scientific and mythical reasoning fulfil, at least to some degree, similar functions: they both aim at explaining fundamental questions about the universe,the origin of matter and life; and they are both based on imagination, representations of the world, and they explore powers that rule it.

Although the categories of mythos and logos have created controversies since ancient Greece, they have been maintained throughout centuries together with the conviction that on its road towards progress humankind will shed off irrational beliefs and myths. However, today, the mixture of myth and science still characterizes the thinking of ordinary citizens, scientific popularisers and political ideologists. It may even permeate thinking of scientists who, whether with or without awareness, are prone to propagating ‘scientific myths’. But search for coherence takes different paths; for scientists like Einstein or Wiener, boundaries between different kinds of knowing like science, religion, ethics and aesthetics were not rigid, but totally fluid and open towards creative and imaginative thought.