The Epistemic Innocence of Irrational Beliefs

Lisa Bortolotti argues that some irrational beliefs are epistemically innocent and deliver significant epistemic benefits that could not be easily attained otherwise. While the benefits of the irrational belief may not outweigh the costs, epistemic innocence helps to clarify the epistemic and psychological effects of irrational beliefs on agency.

Lisa Bortolotti is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham. Her research is in the philosophy of the cognitive sciences, with a particular focus on the limitations of human cognition and human agency. She is the author of Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs (OUP 2009), for which she was awarded the APA Book Prize in 2011, and Irrationality (Polity 2014). She is also editor of Delusions in Context(Palgrave 2018).

1: The Epistemic Innocence Project
2: Distorted Memory Beliefs
3: Confabulated Explanations
4: Elaborated Delusional Beliefs
5: Motivated Delusional Beliefs
6: Optimistically Biased Beliefs
7: The Significance of Epistemic Innocence