Philosophy of Mind and of Cognitive Science: The Nature of Beliefs and Delusions
My research in philosophy of mind is guided by the question of what beliefs are and how they differ from other cognitive attitudes.
In my dissertation, on Delusions as Imaginings, I approach this question by considering the nature of delusions, and by offering a new critical perspective on the received view that delusions are beliefs. I argue for a reevaluation of our mental taxonomy, particularly of the way we distinguish between belief-states and states of the imagination. I argue that the various challenges to the orthodox conception of delusions as irrational or otherwise deficient beliefs, the “doxastic view”, reflect deficits in the conceptual framework. Recent attempts to revise this framework, such as in Mandelbaum et al.’s “science of belief”, continue to dismiss the results from neuroscience and other contributing lower-level sciences. Instead, I argue for an understanding of beliefs, imaginings, delusions, and other mental phenomena that is both answerable to recent scientific findings across levels of explanation, and that can therefore make contributions to further research in the respective special sciences. Following Currie’s earlier proposal, I present an argument that demonstrates that an involvement of the imagination is constitutive of delusions. Following Mandelbaum et al.’s suggestion, I understand mental kinds as natural kinds as spelled out by the homeostatic property cluster account. The alternative view I present thus abandons the conception of psychology as an autonomous science and allows for the consideration of lower level sciences, including neuroscience. This allows my view to remain more faithful to the homeostatic property cluster account of natural kinds. My view furthermore has the resources to explain the relevance of folk psychology within a science of belief — which Mandelbaum et al. assume without argument — namely that of providing incomplete representations of mechanisms (sketches), on the basis of which science then constructs schemas of mechanisms.
I have presented material from my dissertation on various occasions, such as at two Annual Meetings of the Society of Philosophy and Psychology, at the University Warwick, at the Sorbonne, and in several colloquium talks both in the United States and in Europe.
History and Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics: Christine-Ladd Franklin’s Algebra of Logic and Euclid’s Elements
My work in the history and philosophy of logic and mathematics is guided by a focus on the question of what role canonization plays for the treatment of ideas in the history of philosophy—namely, first, in the context of the role of diagrammatic reasoning in Euclid’s Elements, and second in Christine Ladd- Franklin’s contributions to logic and mathematics. In both cases, we find a marked imbalance in the treatment by the canon. While the Euclidean diagrams have received ample attention throughout the centuries, I identify a tendency to understand mathematical practice in a particular manner, and within a particular tradition—at the expense of other viewpoints. Meanwhile, Christine-Ladd Franklin’s contribution to the disciplines of psychology, logic, mathematics, and also philosophy, suffered a different imbalance: It has commonly been neglected.
I argue that Ladd-Franklin’s conception of the “antilogism” foreshadowed the recently suggested reorientation towards anunderstanding of semantics as based on incompatibility rather than truth. In my forthcoming paper, “Ladd-Franklin’s Antilogism Reconsidered” (Journal for South American Logic), I discuss Ladd- Franklin’s impact on the tradition of pragmatist approaches to semantics.
I have presented my work on Ladd-Franklin at a workshop on “Female Logicians” at the University of Hagen (2022), at a a conference on “Logic of Judgement” also at Hagen in October 2022, and at SALOME1 in Cusco, Peru (2023), and I am currently working on a monograph with Roy Cook (University of Minnesota) on Ladd-Franklin.
Jasmin Özel 