In everyday confabulation and rationalisation of behaviour, agents provide sincerely believed exp... more In everyday confabulation and rationalisation of behaviour, agents provide sincerely believed explanations of behaviour which are ill-grounded and normally inaccurate. In this paper, I look at the commonalities and differences between confabulations and rationalisations and investigate their moral costs and benefits. Following Summers and Velleman, I argue that both can be beneficial because they constrain future behaviour through self-consistency motivations. However, I then show that the same features that make confabulations and rationalisations beneficial in some cases can also make them morally costly, when behaviour is explained and justified through the endorsement of bad moral principles. I show that these effects are most likely to occur where the central element of confabulation, self-explanation, and the central element of rationalisation, self-justification, coincide.
In this paper, I address the question whether mental disorders should be understood to be brain d... more In this paper, I address the question whether mental disorders should be understood to be brain disorders and what conditions need to be met for a disorder to be rightly described as a brain disorder. I defend the view that mental disorders are autonomous and that a condition can be a mental disorder without at the same time being a brain disorder. I then show the consequences of this view. The most important of these is that brain differences underlying mental disorders derive their status as disordered from the fact that they realize mental dysfunction and are therefore non-autonomous or dependent on the level of the mental. I defend this view of brain disorders against the objection that only conditions whose pathological character can be identified independently of the mental level of description count as brain disorders. The understanding of brain disorders I propose requires a certain amount of conceptual revision and is at odds with approaches which take the notion of brain disorder to be fundamental or look to neuroscience to provide us with a purely physiological understanding of mental illness. It also entails a pluralistic understanding of psychiatric illness, according to which a condition can be both a mental disorder and a brain disorder.
When individuals display cognitive biases, they are prone to developing systematically false beli... more When individuals display cognitive biases, they are prone to developing systematically false beliefs. Evolutionary psychologists have argued that rather than being a flaw in human cognition, biases may actually be design features. In my paper, I assess the claim that unrealistic optimism is such a design feature because it is a form of error management. Proponents of this theory say that when individuals make decisions under uncertainty, it can be advantageous to err on the side of overconfidence if the potential gains through success are high and the costs of failure are low. I argue that there are a number of conceptual problems in matching the theory with the existing data. I also show that there is empirical evidence against the error management hypothesis.
Here we consider the nature of unrealistic optimism and other related positive illusions. We are ... more Here we consider the nature of unrealistic optimism and other related positive illusions. We are interested in whether cognitive states that are unrealistically optimistic are belief states, whether they are false, and whether they are epistemically irrational. We also ask to what extent unrealistically optimistic cognitive states are fixed. Based on the classic and recent empirical literature on unrealistic optimism, we offer some preliminary answers to these questions, thereby laying the foundations for answering further questions about unrealistic optimism, such as whether it has biological, psychological, or epistemic benefits. In this paper we are interested in the nature of unrealistic optimism and other positive illusions as discussed in the psychological literature. There is an ongoing debate in philosophy and psychology as to whether false beliefs are epistemically irrational and whether they can have pragmatic benefits, even if they are epistemically irrational (Bortolotti & Sullivan-Bissett, 2015; Craigie & Bortolotti, 2014; Haselton & Nettle, 2006). Beliefs exhibit epistemic irrationality to the extent that they are badly supported by the evidence available to the agent, or are maintained despite counter-evidence which is available to the agent. It is sometimes claimed that positive illusions generally, and unrealistic optimism specifically, are systematic tendencies to form beliefs that are biased, and often false, but have significant benefits (Taylor & Brown, 1988, 1994), because they increase wellbeing, contribute to mental and physical health, and support productivity and motivation (cf. Bortolotti & Antrobus, 2015). In order to assess such claims, we need to explain what unrealistic optimism is, whether the cognitive states that are unrealistically optimistic are belief states, and to what extent they are false. If such cognitive states can be said to be false or epistemically irrational beliefs, then they are candidates for being false or epistemically irrational beliefs that are useful. Whether they do indeed have positive effects is beyond the scope of this paper. In Section 1, we distinguish between unrealistic optimism and other positive illusions and explain different ways of oper-ationalizing unrealistic optimism. In Section 2, we ask how we should think about positive illusions. Are they tendencies to adopt and maintain positive beliefs and to make predictions that are optimistically biased, or to express desires and hopes about the self and the future? We suggest that we should understand optimistically biased cognitive states as beliefs and predictions. In Sections 3 and 4, we consider their epistemic status. Are they typically false? Are they epistemically irra-tional? The answers to these questions will be informed by an analysis of the extent to which optimistically biased beliefs
In this brief response to Etzioni’s paper we argue that satisfying one’s preferences and seeking ... more In this brief response to Etzioni’s paper we argue that satisfying one’s preferences and seeking to live up to one’s moral standards are not incompatible ways of living one’s life, and that choosing to act morally need not involve self-sacrifice.
People are motivated to adopt the most favorable beliefs about their future because positive beli... more People are motivated to adopt the most favorable beliefs about their future because positive beliefs are experienced as rewarding. However, it is so far inconclusive whether brain regions known to represent reward values are involved in the generation of optimistically biased belief updates. To address this question, we investigated neural correlates of belief updates that result in relatively better future outlooks, and therefore imply a positive subjective value of the judgment outcome. Participants estimated the probability of experiencing different adverse future events. After being provided with population base rates of these events, they had the opportunity to update their initial estimates. Participants made judgments concerning themselves or a similar other, and were confronted with desirable or undesirable base rates (i.e., lower or higher than their initial estimates).
Belief updates were smaller following undesirable than desirable information, and this optimism bias was stronger for judgments regarding oneself than others. During updating, the positive value of self-related updates was reflected by neural activity in the subgenual ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) that increased both with increasing sizes of favorable updates, and with decreasing sizes of unfavorable updates. During the processing of self-related undesirable base rates, increasing activity in a network including the dorsomedial PFC, hippocampus, thalamus and ventral striatum predicted decreasing update sizes.
Thus, key regions of the neural reward circuitry contributed to the generation of optimistically biased self-referential belief updates. While the vmPFC tracked subjective values of belief updates, a network including the ventral striatum was involved in neglecting information calling for unfavorable updates.
Current legal practice holds that a diagnosis of psychopathy does not remove criminal responsibil... more Current legal practice holds that a diagnosis of psychopathy does not remove criminal responsibility. In contrast, many philosophers and legal experts are increasingly persuaded by evidence from experimental psychology and neuroscience indicating moral and cognitive deficits in psychopaths and have argued that they should be excused from moral responsibility. However, having opposite views concerning psychopaths’ moral responsibility, on the one hand, and criminal responsibility, on the other, seems unfortunate given the assumption that the law should, at least to some extent, react to the same desert-based considerations as do ascriptions of moral responsibility. In response, Stephen Morse has argued that the law should indeed be reformed so as to excuse those with severe psychopathy from blame, but that psychopaths who have committed criminal offences should still be subject to some legal repercussions such as civil commitment. We argue that consequentialist and norm-expressivist considerations analogous to those that support punishing psychopaths, or at least retaining some legal liability, might also be drawn on in favour of holding psychopaths morally accountable.
Slippery slope arguments are frequently dismissed as fallacious or weak arguments but are neverth... more Slippery slope arguments are frequently dismissed as fallacious or weak arguments but are nevertheless commonly used in political and bioethical debates. This paper gives an overview of different variants of the argument commonly found in the literature and addresses their argumentative strength and the interrelations between them. The most common variant, the empirical slippery slope argument, predicts that if we do A, at some point the highly undesirable B will follow. I discuss both the question which factors affect likelihood of slippage and the relation between the strength of the prediction and the justificatory power of the argument.
This paper discusses how information about existing pathologies and specifically findings from ne... more This paper discusses how information about existing pathologies and specifically findings from neuroscience should influence judgments concerning the moral responsibility of individuals with mental disorders. I argue that the causal contribution of brain dysfunction to immoral behaviour does not provide an excusing condition because it does not address the criteria relevant for ascriptions of moral responsibility. Rather, the relevant criteria for evaluating moral responsibility are psychological capacities. However, neuroscience plays an important role in increasing our understanding of mental disorders and specific psychological incapacities. It is also crucial in supplementing our moral imagination and bringing home the point just how different and impaired certain individuals' psychological capacities are. While there are positions which hold that 'moral responsibility' is a concept which should be dispensed with altogether, the majority position we are justified in ascribing moral responsibility to individuals and that most individuals are morally responsible while some, for example very young children, are not. It is the marginal cases which are most hotly debated. So, for example, psychopaths, drug addicts and people with significant self-control problems are seen as having diminished or no responsibility by some authors. Psychiatric and neuroscientific data are often cited as evidence to support claims of reduced responsibility. The purpose of this paper is to consider more and less helpful ways in which the empirical insights regarding mental disorders, specifically neuroscientific findings, can be fitted into discussions of moral responsibility. I will argue that arguments purporting to show that pathological conditions excuse because they constitute conditions which are outside the agent's control are unhelpful as they implicitly posit an untenable distinction between aspects of the agents personality and behaviour that fall under the agent's control and those which do not. That way, metaphysical madness, or at the very least confusion lies. A more promising common strategy is to look at the individual's psychological profile and assess whether or not it has the rational and emotional capacities which are requisite for moral responsibility. In this context, the question of the relevance of data from neuroscience is particularly important. Where neuroscientific evidence is employed, there is a tendency to take the fact that some brain-dysfunction is constitutive of the disorder to show that the normal reasons for action and grounds for accountability are not present in the individuals under consideration. In other words, the action under consideration is better explained as the result of brain dysfunction rather than as that of a culpable mental state. I will show that this is an ill-considered conclusion to draw and give some reason why it is still a tempting one. Control and the ability to do otherwise Discussions concerning the moral responsibility of agents with mental disorders for the most part stay clear of the metaphysical debates about free will and moral responsibility. This is unsurprising, the question whether a certain condition diminishes or waives and individual's moral responsibility only makes sense against a background where the attributability of moral responsibility is the default assumption. However, there is a tendency for confusions from the free will debate to sneak back in.
Both pre-theoretically and on many philosophical accounts of belief, representing the world accur... more Both pre-theoretically and on many philosophical accounts of belief, representing the world accurately is taken to be the purpose of belief. However, the literature on psychological biases shows that our beliefs about the world and ourselves are often systematically skewed. One example for this is the optimism bias, the tendency to think that we are better than average, that we are less likely to experience negative life events than others and more likely to experience positive ones. In this context, two important questions arise: are optimistically biased beliefs actually false and if, so, is this a problem or is it in fact a desirable and useful feature of our thinking? There are a number of methodological and epistemological problems in establishing the falsity of specific cases of optimistically biased belief: For example, when 70% of the population take themselves to be better than average drivers, 20 percent must be wrong. However, it is less easy to establish which individuals have made an error. Similarly, there are cases where it is hard to assess whether people’s assessments of risks, and failure to respond to evidence that suggests a high risk of bad things happening to them, is a case of mistaken thinking or whether they have information unavailable to the outside observer. There is however sufficient evidence to be able to say that frequently, people’s views are unrealistically positive and they are mistaken when they assess their own abilities and prospects. What is more, psychologists argue that unrealistic optimism is a desirable feature of human thinking. It has been argued that optimistically biased thinking is an evolutionary adaptation which has survived because it encourages risk taking, and where potential payoffs are high and risks low, taking risks is a good thing. Furthermore, it is frequently pointed out that unrealistic optimism is absent in depressive individuals, therefore, so the thinking goes, it is at the very least part of healthy human cognition. There is a perception that the optimism bias is beneficial in moderation, because it helps us persevere in our projects and makes us feel better about ourselves. If we were to take this psychological reasoning on board and incorporate it into a philosophical account of the purpose of belief, we would have to conclude that truth on its own is not the primary goal of belief. Rather, beliefs are representations that help us navigate the world, and frequently, it is truth that is most relevant to this purpose, but there are specific instances where falsity serves human needs and purposes better.
In everyday confabulation and rationalisation of behaviour, agents provide sincerely believed exp... more In everyday confabulation and rationalisation of behaviour, agents provide sincerely believed explanations of behaviour which are ill-grounded and normally inaccurate. In this paper, I look at the commonalities and differences between confabulations and rationalisations and investigate their moral costs and benefits. Following Summers and Velleman, I argue that both can be beneficial because they constrain future behaviour through self-consistency motivations. However, I then show that the same features that make confabulations and rationalisations beneficial in some cases can also make them morally costly, when behaviour is explained and justified through the endorsement of bad moral principles. I show that these effects are most likely to occur where the central element of confabulation, self-explanation, and the central element of rationalisation, self-justification, coincide.
In this paper, I address the question whether mental disorders should be understood to be brain d... more In this paper, I address the question whether mental disorders should be understood to be brain disorders and what conditions need to be met for a disorder to be rightly described as a brain disorder. I defend the view that mental disorders are autonomous and that a condition can be a mental disorder without at the same time being a brain disorder. I then show the consequences of this view. The most important of these is that brain differences underlying mental disorders derive their status as disordered from the fact that they realize mental dysfunction and are therefore non-autonomous or dependent on the level of the mental. I defend this view of brain disorders against the objection that only conditions whose pathological character can be identified independently of the mental level of description count as brain disorders. The understanding of brain disorders I propose requires a certain amount of conceptual revision and is at odds with approaches which take the notion of brain disorder to be fundamental or look to neuroscience to provide us with a purely physiological understanding of mental illness. It also entails a pluralistic understanding of psychiatric illness, according to which a condition can be both a mental disorder and a brain disorder.
When individuals display cognitive biases, they are prone to developing systematically false beli... more When individuals display cognitive biases, they are prone to developing systematically false beliefs. Evolutionary psychologists have argued that rather than being a flaw in human cognition, biases may actually be design features. In my paper, I assess the claim that unrealistic optimism is such a design feature because it is a form of error management. Proponents of this theory say that when individuals make decisions under uncertainty, it can be advantageous to err on the side of overconfidence if the potential gains through success are high and the costs of failure are low. I argue that there are a number of conceptual problems in matching the theory with the existing data. I also show that there is empirical evidence against the error management hypothesis.
Here we consider the nature of unrealistic optimism and other related positive illusions. We are ... more Here we consider the nature of unrealistic optimism and other related positive illusions. We are interested in whether cognitive states that are unrealistically optimistic are belief states, whether they are false, and whether they are epistemically irrational. We also ask to what extent unrealistically optimistic cognitive states are fixed. Based on the classic and recent empirical literature on unrealistic optimism, we offer some preliminary answers to these questions, thereby laying the foundations for answering further questions about unrealistic optimism, such as whether it has biological, psychological, or epistemic benefits. In this paper we are interested in the nature of unrealistic optimism and other positive illusions as discussed in the psychological literature. There is an ongoing debate in philosophy and psychology as to whether false beliefs are epistemically irrational and whether they can have pragmatic benefits, even if they are epistemically irrational (Bortolotti & Sullivan-Bissett, 2015; Craigie & Bortolotti, 2014; Haselton & Nettle, 2006). Beliefs exhibit epistemic irrationality to the extent that they are badly supported by the evidence available to the agent, or are maintained despite counter-evidence which is available to the agent. It is sometimes claimed that positive illusions generally, and unrealistic optimism specifically, are systematic tendencies to form beliefs that are biased, and often false, but have significant benefits (Taylor & Brown, 1988, 1994), because they increase wellbeing, contribute to mental and physical health, and support productivity and motivation (cf. Bortolotti & Antrobus, 2015). In order to assess such claims, we need to explain what unrealistic optimism is, whether the cognitive states that are unrealistically optimistic are belief states, and to what extent they are false. If such cognitive states can be said to be false or epistemically irrational beliefs, then they are candidates for being false or epistemically irrational beliefs that are useful. Whether they do indeed have positive effects is beyond the scope of this paper. In Section 1, we distinguish between unrealistic optimism and other positive illusions and explain different ways of oper-ationalizing unrealistic optimism. In Section 2, we ask how we should think about positive illusions. Are they tendencies to adopt and maintain positive beliefs and to make predictions that are optimistically biased, or to express desires and hopes about the self and the future? We suggest that we should understand optimistically biased cognitive states as beliefs and predictions. In Sections 3 and 4, we consider their epistemic status. Are they typically false? Are they epistemically irra-tional? The answers to these questions will be informed by an analysis of the extent to which optimistically biased beliefs
In this brief response to Etzioni’s paper we argue that satisfying one’s preferences and seeking ... more In this brief response to Etzioni’s paper we argue that satisfying one’s preferences and seeking to live up to one’s moral standards are not incompatible ways of living one’s life, and that choosing to act morally need not involve self-sacrifice.
People are motivated to adopt the most favorable beliefs about their future because positive beli... more People are motivated to adopt the most favorable beliefs about their future because positive beliefs are experienced as rewarding. However, it is so far inconclusive whether brain regions known to represent reward values are involved in the generation of optimistically biased belief updates. To address this question, we investigated neural correlates of belief updates that result in relatively better future outlooks, and therefore imply a positive subjective value of the judgment outcome. Participants estimated the probability of experiencing different adverse future events. After being provided with population base rates of these events, they had the opportunity to update their initial estimates. Participants made judgments concerning themselves or a similar other, and were confronted with desirable or undesirable base rates (i.e., lower or higher than their initial estimates).
Belief updates were smaller following undesirable than desirable information, and this optimism bias was stronger for judgments regarding oneself than others. During updating, the positive value of self-related updates was reflected by neural activity in the subgenual ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) that increased both with increasing sizes of favorable updates, and with decreasing sizes of unfavorable updates. During the processing of self-related undesirable base rates, increasing activity in a network including the dorsomedial PFC, hippocampus, thalamus and ventral striatum predicted decreasing update sizes.
Thus, key regions of the neural reward circuitry contributed to the generation of optimistically biased self-referential belief updates. While the vmPFC tracked subjective values of belief updates, a network including the ventral striatum was involved in neglecting information calling for unfavorable updates.
Current legal practice holds that a diagnosis of psychopathy does not remove criminal responsibil... more Current legal practice holds that a diagnosis of psychopathy does not remove criminal responsibility. In contrast, many philosophers and legal experts are increasingly persuaded by evidence from experimental psychology and neuroscience indicating moral and cognitive deficits in psychopaths and have argued that they should be excused from moral responsibility. However, having opposite views concerning psychopaths’ moral responsibility, on the one hand, and criminal responsibility, on the other, seems unfortunate given the assumption that the law should, at least to some extent, react to the same desert-based considerations as do ascriptions of moral responsibility. In response, Stephen Morse has argued that the law should indeed be reformed so as to excuse those with severe psychopathy from blame, but that psychopaths who have committed criminal offences should still be subject to some legal repercussions such as civil commitment. We argue that consequentialist and norm-expressivist considerations analogous to those that support punishing psychopaths, or at least retaining some legal liability, might also be drawn on in favour of holding psychopaths morally accountable.
Slippery slope arguments are frequently dismissed as fallacious or weak arguments but are neverth... more Slippery slope arguments are frequently dismissed as fallacious or weak arguments but are nevertheless commonly used in political and bioethical debates. This paper gives an overview of different variants of the argument commonly found in the literature and addresses their argumentative strength and the interrelations between them. The most common variant, the empirical slippery slope argument, predicts that if we do A, at some point the highly undesirable B will follow. I discuss both the question which factors affect likelihood of slippage and the relation between the strength of the prediction and the justificatory power of the argument.
This paper discusses how information about existing pathologies and specifically findings from ne... more This paper discusses how information about existing pathologies and specifically findings from neuroscience should influence judgments concerning the moral responsibility of individuals with mental disorders. I argue that the causal contribution of brain dysfunction to immoral behaviour does not provide an excusing condition because it does not address the criteria relevant for ascriptions of moral responsibility. Rather, the relevant criteria for evaluating moral responsibility are psychological capacities. However, neuroscience plays an important role in increasing our understanding of mental disorders and specific psychological incapacities. It is also crucial in supplementing our moral imagination and bringing home the point just how different and impaired certain individuals' psychological capacities are. While there are positions which hold that 'moral responsibility' is a concept which should be dispensed with altogether, the majority position we are justified in ascribing moral responsibility to individuals and that most individuals are morally responsible while some, for example very young children, are not. It is the marginal cases which are most hotly debated. So, for example, psychopaths, drug addicts and people with significant self-control problems are seen as having diminished or no responsibility by some authors. Psychiatric and neuroscientific data are often cited as evidence to support claims of reduced responsibility. The purpose of this paper is to consider more and less helpful ways in which the empirical insights regarding mental disorders, specifically neuroscientific findings, can be fitted into discussions of moral responsibility. I will argue that arguments purporting to show that pathological conditions excuse because they constitute conditions which are outside the agent's control are unhelpful as they implicitly posit an untenable distinction between aspects of the agents personality and behaviour that fall under the agent's control and those which do not. That way, metaphysical madness, or at the very least confusion lies. A more promising common strategy is to look at the individual's psychological profile and assess whether or not it has the rational and emotional capacities which are requisite for moral responsibility. In this context, the question of the relevance of data from neuroscience is particularly important. Where neuroscientific evidence is employed, there is a tendency to take the fact that some brain-dysfunction is constitutive of the disorder to show that the normal reasons for action and grounds for accountability are not present in the individuals under consideration. In other words, the action under consideration is better explained as the result of brain dysfunction rather than as that of a culpable mental state. I will show that this is an ill-considered conclusion to draw and give some reason why it is still a tempting one. Control and the ability to do otherwise Discussions concerning the moral responsibility of agents with mental disorders for the most part stay clear of the metaphysical debates about free will and moral responsibility. This is unsurprising, the question whether a certain condition diminishes or waives and individual's moral responsibility only makes sense against a background where the attributability of moral responsibility is the default assumption. However, there is a tendency for confusions from the free will debate to sneak back in.
Both pre-theoretically and on many philosophical accounts of belief, representing the world accur... more Both pre-theoretically and on many philosophical accounts of belief, representing the world accurately is taken to be the purpose of belief. However, the literature on psychological biases shows that our beliefs about the world and ourselves are often systematically skewed. One example for this is the optimism bias, the tendency to think that we are better than average, that we are less likely to experience negative life events than others and more likely to experience positive ones. In this context, two important questions arise: are optimistically biased beliefs actually false and if, so, is this a problem or is it in fact a desirable and useful feature of our thinking? There are a number of methodological and epistemological problems in establishing the falsity of specific cases of optimistically biased belief: For example, when 70% of the population take themselves to be better than average drivers, 20 percent must be wrong. However, it is less easy to establish which individuals have made an error. Similarly, there are cases where it is hard to assess whether people’s assessments of risks, and failure to respond to evidence that suggests a high risk of bad things happening to them, is a case of mistaken thinking or whether they have information unavailable to the outside observer. There is however sufficient evidence to be able to say that frequently, people’s views are unrealistically positive and they are mistaken when they assess their own abilities and prospects. What is more, psychologists argue that unrealistic optimism is a desirable feature of human thinking. It has been argued that optimistically biased thinking is an evolutionary adaptation which has survived because it encourages risk taking, and where potential payoffs are high and risks low, taking risks is a good thing. Furthermore, it is frequently pointed out that unrealistic optimism is absent in depressive individuals, therefore, so the thinking goes, it is at the very least part of healthy human cognition. There is a perception that the optimism bias is beneficial in moderation, because it helps us persevere in our projects and makes us feel better about ourselves. If we were to take this psychological reasoning on board and incorporate it into a philosophical account of the purpose of belief, we would have to conclude that truth on its own is not the primary goal of belief. Rather, beliefs are representations that help us navigate the world, and frequently, it is truth that is most relevant to this purpose, but there are specific instances where falsity serves human needs and purposes better.
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Belief updates were smaller following undesirable than desirable information, and this optimism bias was stronger for judgments regarding oneself than others. During updating, the positive value of self-related updates was reflected by neural activity in the subgenual ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) that increased both with increasing sizes of favorable updates, and with decreasing sizes of unfavorable updates. During the processing of self-related undesirable base rates, increasing activity in a network including the dorsomedial PFC, hippocampus, thalamus and ventral striatum predicted decreasing update sizes.
Thus, key regions of the neural reward circuitry contributed to the generation of optimistically biased self-referential belief updates. While the vmPFC tracked subjective values of belief updates, a network including the ventral striatum was involved in neglecting information calling for unfavorable updates.
In this context, two important questions arise: are optimistically biased beliefs actually false and if, so, is this a problem or is it in fact a desirable and useful feature of our thinking? There are a number of methodological and epistemological problems in establishing the falsity of specific cases of optimistically biased belief: For example, when 70% of the population take themselves to be better than average drivers, 20 percent must be wrong. However, it is less easy to establish which individuals have made an error. Similarly, there are cases where it is hard to assess whether people’s assessments of risks, and failure to respond to evidence that suggests a high risk of bad things happening to them, is a case of mistaken thinking or whether they have information unavailable to the outside observer.
There is however sufficient evidence to be able to say that frequently, people’s views are unrealistically positive and they are mistaken when they assess their own abilities and prospects. What is more, psychologists argue that unrealistic optimism is a desirable feature of human thinking. It has been argued that optimistically biased thinking is an evolutionary adaptation which has survived because it encourages risk taking, and where potential payoffs are high and risks low, taking risks is a good thing. Furthermore, it is frequently pointed out that unrealistic optimism is absent in depressive individuals, therefore, so the thinking goes, it is at the very least part of healthy human cognition. There is a perception that the optimism bias is beneficial in moderation, because it helps us persevere in our projects and makes us feel better about ourselves. If we were to take this psychological reasoning on board and incorporate it into a philosophical account of the purpose of belief, we would have to conclude that truth on its own is not the primary goal of belief. Rather, beliefs are representations that help us navigate the world, and frequently, it is truth that is most relevant to this purpose, but there are specific instances where falsity serves human needs and purposes better.
Belief updates were smaller following undesirable than desirable information, and this optimism bias was stronger for judgments regarding oneself than others. During updating, the positive value of self-related updates was reflected by neural activity in the subgenual ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) that increased both with increasing sizes of favorable updates, and with decreasing sizes of unfavorable updates. During the processing of self-related undesirable base rates, increasing activity in a network including the dorsomedial PFC, hippocampus, thalamus and ventral striatum predicted decreasing update sizes.
Thus, key regions of the neural reward circuitry contributed to the generation of optimistically biased self-referential belief updates. While the vmPFC tracked subjective values of belief updates, a network including the ventral striatum was involved in neglecting information calling for unfavorable updates.
In this context, two important questions arise: are optimistically biased beliefs actually false and if, so, is this a problem or is it in fact a desirable and useful feature of our thinking? There are a number of methodological and epistemological problems in establishing the falsity of specific cases of optimistically biased belief: For example, when 70% of the population take themselves to be better than average drivers, 20 percent must be wrong. However, it is less easy to establish which individuals have made an error. Similarly, there are cases where it is hard to assess whether people’s assessments of risks, and failure to respond to evidence that suggests a high risk of bad things happening to them, is a case of mistaken thinking or whether they have information unavailable to the outside observer.
There is however sufficient evidence to be able to say that frequently, people’s views are unrealistically positive and they are mistaken when they assess their own abilities and prospects. What is more, psychologists argue that unrealistic optimism is a desirable feature of human thinking. It has been argued that optimistically biased thinking is an evolutionary adaptation which has survived because it encourages risk taking, and where potential payoffs are high and risks low, taking risks is a good thing. Furthermore, it is frequently pointed out that unrealistic optimism is absent in depressive individuals, therefore, so the thinking goes, it is at the very least part of healthy human cognition. There is a perception that the optimism bias is beneficial in moderation, because it helps us persevere in our projects and makes us feel better about ourselves. If we were to take this psychological reasoning on board and incorporate it into a philosophical account of the purpose of belief, we would have to conclude that truth on its own is not the primary goal of belief. Rather, beliefs are representations that help us navigate the world, and frequently, it is truth that is most relevant to this purpose, but there are specific instances where falsity serves human needs and purposes better.