Delusions: A Different Kind of Belief?

Delusions are typically considered to be beliefs and analyzed as propositional attitudes, under constraints of rationality and coherence. But, whereas factual beliefs are assessed in terms of falsity and conviction, but other beliefs are not so clear-cut. The characteristics of delusions are considered here in the light of philosophical approaches to belief, and they are compared with other strongly held, nonfactual beliefs. Approaching delusions as beliefs has several drawbacks: (i) It implies that psychiatry is in the business of determining and regulating the acceptable limits of human belief; (ii) it may result in the misidentification of other strong belief as delusion; and (iii) it fails to explain the often debilitating nature of delusions. If delusions are organized and integrated into the psyche in ways that differ from ordinary beliefs, their influence on, and incongruence with, a person’s other thoughts, emotions, and behavior become more explicable, as do the persistent theoretical problems of definition and distinction in the face of a relatively robust diagnostic practice. We argue that, although accepting that delusions might reasonably be considered as a kind of belief, their wider role in the life of a psychotic patient and the ways that they seem to differ from more ordinary belief merits scrutiny.