Apologies for late notice! Please come along, all welcome, and please forward to others who may be interested. Enquiries to Robert Ross, [email protected] The Australian Hearing Hub, where these talks will be held, is at the intersection of University Ave and Balaclava Road at Macquarie University. It is less than 10 minutes walk from Macquarie Uni rail station, and just off Epping Road: it is building S2.6 at map reference T14 on this campus map: http://www.mq.edu.au/pubstatic/custom/files/media/campus_map_jpeg.jpg The Department of Cognitive Science is on Level 3 of the Hearing Hub.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Robert Ross <[email protected]> Date: Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 5:09 PM Subject: [CCD MQ Staff] [CCD MQ] Upcoming CCD talks by Professor Martin Davies To: CCD Macquarie Node <[email protected]> Dear all, Professor Martin Davies (http://www.mkdavies.net/Martin_Davies/Home.html), Wilde Professor of Mental Philosophy at the University of Oxford, is giving two talks at the Centre of Cognition and it’s Disorders in the Seminar Room (Room 3.610) of the Australian Hearing Hub, Macquarie University. Thursday 21st November 3:30pm-5:00pm: The silence of psychology and the consistency fallacy Friday 22nd November 10:30am-12:00pm: Cognitive theories of delusions Abstracts are below. After the Thursday talk a group of us will continue discussions with the speaker over dinner at Sakana-ya Japanese Restaurant ( http://sakanaya.com.au/) in Crows Nest. The restaurant is booked for 7pm. If you would like to attend the dinner then please email me at [email protected] by midday Monday so that I can get numbers correct for the booking. Best regards, Robert Ross *The silence of psychology and the consistency fallacy* Martin Davies, Faculty of Philosophy and Department of Experimental Psychology University of Oxford It is widely accepted that there is no way of putting a boundary around the kinds of evidence that might be relevant to the confirmation or disconfirmation of an empirical hypothesis or theory. Nevertheless, the relevance of neuroscientific evidence – particularly, neuroimaging evidence – to psychological theories cast purely in terms of cognitive structures and processes is contested. In the first part of the talk, I shall discuss the following argument (generalising an argument in Coltheart, 2006): (1) Theories in cognitive psychology speak about modularity, internal representations and information processing, but they are silent on neuroscientific matters. (2) Consequently, cognitive theories make no neuroscientific predictions. (3) Therefore, neuroscientific findings neither support, nor count against, cognitive theories. The ‘silence of psychology’ argument is an interesting general argument for the claim that neuroimaging evidence cannot, in principle, help us decide between cognitive theories. But the argument invites a parity of reasoning response: Cognitive psychological theories are silent, not only about the brain, but also (for example) about patterns of impaired and spared performance in patients following brain injury. Specifically, cognitive theories are silent about the anatomical modularity that is required if separate cognitive modules are to be independently damaged. Even if there is no general argument for the ‘in principle’ claim that neuroimaging evidence is irrelevant to cognitive theories, a case-by-case approach may cast doubt on the value of neuroimaging evidence. For example, it may be difficult to find clear cases in which neuroimaging evidence has overturned a cognitive theory that was strongly supported by other kinds of evidence. In recent discussions that adopt a case-by-case approach, an important role has been played by the idea that neuroimaging researchers are particularly prone to committing the *consistency fallacy *(Mole and Klein, 2010): ‘a fallacy is committed whenever a researcher moves from claiming that his or her neuroimaging data are consistent with a hypothesis to claiming that those data show the hypothesis to be true (or even probable)’. Thus, the consistency fallacy is the transition from ‘data D are consistent with theory T’ to ‘data D support theory T’. Clearly, whether the consistency fallacy is actually fallacious depends on what is meant by ‘consistent with’ and what is meant by ‘support’. In the second part of the talk, I shall discuss the consistency fallacy and the examples of the fallacy that Mole and Klein provide. *References* Coltheart, M. 2006: Perhaps functional neuroimaging has not told us anything about the mind (so far). *Cortex, *42, 422–7. Mole, C. and Klein, C. 2010: Confirmation, refutation, and the evidence of fMRI. In S.J. Hanson and M. Bunzl (eds), *Foundational Issues in Human Brain Mapping. *Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 99–111. *Cognitive theories of delusion* Martin Davies Faculty of Philosophy and Department of Experimental Psychology University of Oxford A dominant cognitive theory of delusion is the two-factor theory developed by Coltheart and colleagues (e.g. Coltheart, Langdon and McKay, 2011). The leading idea of the two-factor theory is that an explanation of a delusion can be achieved by answering two questions (Coltheart, 2007): ‘Where did the delusion come from?’ and ‘Why does the patient not reject the belief?’. The answers to these questions are supposed to identify two factors (two departures from normality) in the aetiology of the delusion. The first is an anomalous experience (or, in more explicitly neuropsychological versions, a neuropsychological deficit that might give rise to an anomalous experience). The second factor is an impairment of belief evaluation. The strength of the two-factor theory is the evidence that a first factor is present in patients with delusions, yet is not itself sufficient to explain the delusion – so that there must be (at least) a second factor. A weakness of the two-factor theory is the less well developed characterisation of the cognitive nature of the second factor. The focus on just two questions may also obscure the complexity of explanations of delusions. There are at least three processing stages to be considered: from anomalous experience to delusional idea or hypothesis; from the generation of the hypothesis to its adoption as a belief; and the persistence of the belief despite its implausibility and the evidence against it. So there are at least three questions that an explanation of a delusion needs to answer: ‘Where did the delusional idea or hypothesis come from?’; ‘Why was the delusional idea or hypothesis adopted as a belief, rather than being rejected?’; and ‘Why does the delusional belief – once it is adopted – persist, rather than being rejected?’. So it is not only the cognitive nature, but also the role, of the second factor that could be more fully characterised. In this talk, I shall consider the role and nature of the second factor (or factors) in delusion, drawing on (1) the empirical literature on reasoning in individuals with delusions; (2) recent work on Bayesian inference and compartmentalisation (Coltheart, Menzies and Sutton, 2010; Davies and Egan, 2013; McKay 2012); and (3) evidence from patients with anosognosia for motor impairments (failure to acknowledge paralysis following stroke; Aimola Davies et al., 2009, 2010). *References* Aimola Davies, A.M., Davies, M., Ogden, J.A., Smithson, M. and White, R.C. 2009: Cognitive and motivational factors in anosognosia. In T. Bayne and J. Fernández (eds), *Delusion and Self-Deception: Affective Influences on Belief-Formation. *Hove, East Sussex: Psychology Press, 187–225. Aimola Davies, A.M., White, R.C. and Davies, M. 2010: Assessment of anosognosia for motor impairments. In J.M. Gurd, U. Kischka and J.C. Marshall (eds), *Handbook of Clinical Neuropsychology *(Second Edition). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 436–68. Coltheart, M. 2007: Cognitive neuropsychiatry and delusional belief. *Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, *60, 1041–62. Coltheart, M., Langdon, R. and McKay, R. 2011: Delusional belief. *Annual Review of Psychology, *62, 271–98. Coltheart, M., Menzies, P. and Sutton, J. 2010: Abductive inference and delusional belief. *Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, *15, 261–87. Davies, M. and Egan, A. 2013: Delusion, cognitive approaches: Bayesian inference and compartmentalisation. In K.W.M. Fulford, M. Davies, R.G.T. Gipps, G. Graham, J. Sadler, G. Stanghellini and T. Thornton (eds), *The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry. *Oxford: Oxford University Press, 689–727. McKay, R. 2012: Delusional inference. *Mind & Language, *27, 330–55. -- Professor John Sutton Deputy Head, Department of Cognitive Science Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia Phone: +61 (0)2 9850 4132 Email: [email protected] URL: http://www.johnsutton.net/ http://www.maccs.mq.edu.au/ http://mq.academia.edu/JohnSutton
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