testingflink

This post is by Anna Ichino, University of Milan. Have you ever visited a Philosophy Museum? I bet not. Apparently, indeed, there aren’t any Philosophy Museums in the world. Or better: there aren’t any yet… But together with my colleagues at the Philosophy Department of the University of Milan we have decided that it is time to build the first one. In this post, I’ll tell you about this exciting project. What we had in mind was not an historically-minded museum collecting relics about the lives and works of important philosophers; but something more dynamic and interactive – built on the model of the best science museums – where philosophical problems and theories become intuitively accessible through a variety of games, activities, experiments, aesthetic experiences, and other such things. Easier to say than to do, no doubt. It’s an ambitious project, and to put it into action we had to proceed gradually. We started with a temporary exhibition, which took place in our University from...

Here is the second post in our series reflecting on the end of project PERFECT , this week from postdoc Sophie Stammers . Whilst we’ve all focused on something slightly different, PERFECT researchers were united in using philosophical and psychological tools to dismantle the assumptions that give rise to mental health stigma, and to change the narrative on what counts as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ cognition. A big focus of my work on the project has been the issue of confabulation. We confabulate when we give an account of an event or an action that is not grounded in evidence, but which is given sincerely. Originally, researchers were interested in confabulation as it arose in cases of mental distress or cognitive disfunction, but it turns out that confabulation arises commonly and frequently in all of us, from explanations of mundane consumer choices, to accounting for our moral and political beliefs. Maybe you’ll have been engaged in an explanation of an event, or an experience you’ve had, or...

Hello! This is a post in a series where we are reflecting on the end of project PERFECT , offer an overview of our activities, and look at the future! So it's me first. Research Yesterday the project officially ended, after five intense and wonderful years. We did achieve the goals that we set for ourselves, investigating what we call the epistemic innocence of beliefs that are irrational and often false. Epistemic innocence is the capacity some beliefs have to support epistemic agency despite their obvious epistemic costs. In other words, it is good for us to have those beliefs in some respects, even if the beliefs themselves are not well-supported by, or responsive to, evidence. Our main focus was on those belief-like states that can be at the same time common in the non-clinical population and symptomatic of mental health issues: delusional beliefs, distorted memory beliefs, and confabulatory explanations. Indeed, we investigated these three cases in some depth, Ema Sullivan-Bi...

As announced , project PERFECT organised and co-hosted two public engagement events as part of the Arts and Science Festival at the University of Birmingham. Both celebrated the role of imagination and the importance of relationships in growing and healing. Here I report on how they went! Red Hands Film Screening A scene from Red Hands Director and screenwriter Francesco Filippi presented his short film in 2D and stop animation, Mani Rosse (Red Hands) , to an engaged and diverse audience at the Midlands Arts Centre on 18th June. The film has been honoured with awards at film festivals worldwide and sparked lots of interest. The screening was followed by a panel discussion featuring experts in youth mental health and experts with lived experience of domestic violence, one of the themes of the film. Panel discussion: Lucy Some of the audience's comments and questions were about how the film was made, what it was inspired by, and what some specific scenes or symbols recurring in the...

In today's post we announce two events celebrating the work of project PERFECT, both to be held later this month. Both events are part of the Arts and Science Festival at the University of Birmingham. PERFECT hosted three academic workshops, one on belief in 2016, one on memory in 2017, and one on confabulation in 2018. In 2019 we want to see whether some core themes of the project can be conveyed to a wider public via the means of artistic expression. We have planned the screening of a film, Mani Rosse (Red Hands) by Francesco Filippi ; and an art exhibition entitled Pouring Water Through a Telescope in collaboration with the Art Recovery Group at the Barber Institute . Both events celebrate the role of imagination in promoting growth and healing. Both events explore the importance of personal relationships in wellbeing and success. RED HANDS  Film screening Where: Midlands Arts Centre , Birmingham  When: 18th June, doors open at 6pm. For whom: All welcome. Film suitabl...

On 15th October at Hornton Grange Matthew Broome , director of the Institute for Mental Health  in Birmingham, chaired the book launch of Delusions in Context (Palgrave Pivot, 2018), a collection of four new papers on delusions. The book is truly interdisciplinary, featuring authors with a background in psychiatry, lived experience, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and philosophy, and is available open access on the Springer website . I edited the book. At the launch, I explained how the book fits with the work we have been doing as part of project PERFECT . In the project one of the objectives is to examine whether beliefs that we consider as epistemically irrational (either not supported by existing evidence, or resistant to new counter-evidence) can nonetheless have some benefits for the person who adopts such beliefs. Benefits could be cashed out in terms of increased wellbeing or reduced anxiety, enhanced motivation to pursue epistemic goals, or better performance in some ...

As Project PERFECT enters its fifth year, here’s a little bit about what I’ve been up to recently, and what I plan to do over the year to come. This year just gone has been our Year of Confabulation: we held our confabulation workshop in Oxford in May, where we were lucky enough to have a programme of researchers from around the world, all at the forefront of philosophical and interdisciplinary inquiry into confabulation; we also co-organised a Confabulation and Epistemic Innocence workshop with Elisabetta Lalumera at Milano-Bicocca. Our special issue on confabulation with Topoi is well underway, and we hope it will be ready for you to read in the next few months. In my own work, I’ve been investigating some under-explored benefits of confabulation, and have developed two papers on the topic this year. In one paper I argue that confabulation can have epistemic benefits because it preserves collective cognitive partnerships; whilst in another I explore the psychological and social ...

We have got to the last year of project PERFECT . In this brief post I will summarise our latest challenges and achievements, and move on to describe our plans for the year to come which we want to make a year to remember! Our recent past Our research has continued to focus on memory and confabulation, according to plan. We have managed to secure publication for several original research articles. I authored papers on confabulation  and the optimism bias , and co-authored papers on memory and delusion . Sophie, Michael, and Valeria will report on their own efforts in the next few weeks! As well as organising and participating in academic conferences and writing articles for specialist journals, we have made a real effort to reach wider audiences. One way in which I have attempted to disseminate our work on cognitions that are imperfect but useful is by writing for Aeon (on dementia and confabulation ) and IAI TV (on optimism and the self ) and, with Kathy Puddifoot, for the Phil...