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Why Some Delusions Are Necessarily Inexplicable Beliefs
- Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 11, Number 1, March 2004
- pp. 25-34
- 10.1353/ppp.2004.0044
- Article
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After presenting and criticizing recent theoretical work on the nature of delusional belief, I argue that the works of the later Wittgenstein and Donald Davidson offer heretofore underappreciated insights into delusional belief. I distinguish two general kinds of delusion: pedestrian and stark. The former can be explained as cognitive mistakes of various kinds, whereas the latter I argue are necessarily inexplicable. This thesis requires the denial of the Davidsonian dogma that rationality is constitutive of mental content. I claim that the dogma holds only for normal cognition and is violated precisely in the case of stark delusion.