Delusion and Doxasticism

The chapter focuses on whether one should be doxasticist about delusion. It has the following structure. First, we will consider the nature of belief. The conclusion of this section is that a particular type of functional theory is to be preferred (independently of a commitment to physicalism or functionalism generally). In the second section, we will outline the arguments that have been offered against delusions involving beliefs and explain how the functional theory may deal with them without any substantial adjustment. The conclusion will be that the general arguments against delusions involving beliefs don’t work although there may be cases in which there are no grounds for attributing to a subject a belief with delusion-characterising content.