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\title{I am philosopher Lisa Bortolotti - AMA anything about rationality and
the philosophy of mind!}



\author[1]{LisaBortolotti }%
\author[1]{r/Science AMAs}%
\affil[1]{Affiliation not available}%


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  \date{April 24, 2026}


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\begin{abstract}
Thank you everybody for participating in this session! I really enjoyed
it. Logging off now! Hello! I am Professor of Philosophy at the
University of Birmingham. At Birmingham I work mainly in the philosophy
of psychology and psychiatry. At the moment I am not teaching
undergraduates because I am in charge of a major project that takes most
of my time, but I have ten PhD students working on very interesting
issues, from the rationality of emotions to the nature and the
consequences of loneliness. I have been at Birmingham for most of my
career as a philosopher. Before getting a lectureship there in 2005, I
was in Manchester for one year, working as a Research Associate on a
European project led by Professor John Harris, and I mainly wrote about
bioethical issues and the question whether and to what extent scientific
research should be ethically regulated. I always loved Philosophy, since
as a teenager in school I encountered Plato's dialogues featuring
Socrates. I was fascinated by how Socrates could get his audience to
agree with him, starting from very innocent-sounding questions and
gradually getting people to commit to really controversial theses! I
wanted that talent. So, at university I chose Philosophy and studied in
my hometown, Bologna. For half a year I was an Erasmus student at the
University of Leeds and immersed myself in the history and philosophy of
science. Then I went back to Bologna to complete my degree, and moved to
the UK afterwards, where I got a Masters in Philosophy from King's
College London (with a thesis on the rationality of scientific
revolutions) and the BPhil from the University of Oxford (with a thesis
on the rationality debate in cognitive science). For my PhD I went to
the Australian National University in Canberra. My doctoral thesis was
an attempt to show that there is no rationality constraint on the
ascription of beliefs. This means that I don't need to assume that
you're rational in order to ascribe beliefs to you. I used several
examples to make my point, reflecting on how we successfully ascribe
beliefs to non-human animals, young children, and people experiencing
psychosis. Given my history, it won't be not a big surprise for you to
hear that I'm still interested in rationality. I consider most of my
work an exercise in empirically-informed philosophy of mind. I want to
explore the strengths and limitations of human cognition and focus on
some familiar and some more unsettling instances of inaccurate or
irrational belief, including cases of prejudice and superstition,
self-deception, optimism bias, delusion, confabulation, and memory
distortion. To do so, I can't rely on philosophical investigation alone,
and I'm an avid reader of research in the cognitive sciences. I believe
that psychological evidence provides useful constraints for our
philosophical theories. Although learning about the pervasiveness of
irrational beliefs and behaviour is dispiriting, I've come to the
conviction that some manifestations of human irrationality are not all
bad. Irrational beliefs are not just an inevitable product of our
limitations, but often have some benefit that is hidden from view. In
the five-year project I'm currently leading, funded by the European
Research Council, I focus on the positive side of irrational beliefs.
The project is called Pragmatic and Epistemic Role of Factually
Erroneous Cognitions and Thoughts (acronym PERFECT) and has several
objectives, including showing how some beliefs fail to meet norms of
accuracy or rationality but bring about some dimension of success;
establishing that there is no qualitative gap between the irrationality
of those beliefs that are regarded as symptoms of mental health issues
and the irrationality of everyday beliefs; and, on the basis of the
previous two objectives, undermining the stigma commonly associated with
mental health issues. There are not many things I'm genuinely proud of,
but one is having founded a blog, Imperfect Cognitions, where academic
experts at all career stages and experts by experience discuss belief,
emotion, rationality, mental health, and other related topics. The blog
reflects my research interests, my commitment to interdisciplinary
research, and my belief that the quality of the contributions is
enhanced in an inclusive environment. But nowadays it is a real team
effort, and post-docs and PhD students working for PERFECT manage it,
commissioning, editing, scheduling posts and promoting new content on
social media. Please check it out, you'll love it! I wrote two books,
Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs (OUP 2009), which was awarded the
American Philosophical Association Book Prize in 2011, and Irrationality
(Polity 2014). I have several papers on irrationality and belief, and
the most recent ones are open access, so you can read them here. Shorter
and more accessible versions of the arguments I present in the papers
are often available as blog posts. For instance, you can read about the
benefits of optimism, and the perks of Reverse Othello syndrome. Some
Recent Links of Interest: Are We Biased About Love? - Philosophy247
podcast ``Agency Without Rationality'' - Inaugural Lecture, University
of Birmingham, 9 May 2016 ``Us and Them'' no longer: mental health
concerns us all - blog post Philosophy Bites podcast on irrationality
The Upside of Delusional Beliefs%
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