Alfred Peacock? Reincarnation fantasies about the Titanic
by Titus Rivas
Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, Volume 58, 1991, 10-15.
The article is mentioned by Ian Stevenson in his "European Cases of the Reincarnation Type".
A retired technical engineer claimed he could prove that he had been a drowned passenger of the Titanic. The person he... more
A retired technical engineer claimed he could prove that he had been a drowned passenger of the Titanic. The person he would have been was the infant Alfred Peacock. However, his proof was shown to be invalid and attributable to inaccurate research. The subject also had some clear and verifiable memories of his claimed previous life. These too turned out to be incorrect.
The reincarnation fantasies are partly explained by his experience with sea-journeys and by fascination with the Titanic catastrophe, which took place only a few years before his birth. However, his choice of an infant and the dissociative certainty with which his fantasies imposed themselves as memories remain unexplained..
Rationality and self-knowledge in delusions and confabulations: implications for autonomy as self-governance
co-authored with R Cox, M Broome, M Mameli, and to appear in L. Radoilska (ed.) "Autonomy and Mental Health", OUP
The main purpose of this paper is to explore the implications of the epistemic faults of delusions and confabulations... more
The main purpose of this paper is to explore the implications of the epistemic faults of delusions and confabulations for the autonomy of the people affected by these conditions. The issue whether autonomy is compromised and to what extent is of great practical relevance. Do people affected by psychiatric disorders that manifest with delusions and confabulations have capacity to consent to treatment? More generally, should they be allowed to make, and deemed responsible for, significant decisions that affect their well-being?
We propose to look at autonomy as self-governance and to make a distinction between (a) whether one has the capacity to govern oneself and (b) whether one is successful at governing oneself. We argue that the capacity for self-governance depends on the capacity to develop a self-narrative which encompasses the capacity to endorse attitudes and actions on the basis of reasons. Success in self-governance depends on the coherence of self-narratives and on their correspondence to real life events.
Our thesis is that, in most cases, people with delusions or confabulations have the capacity for self-governance, but are unlikely to be successful at governing themselves. This is because they are likely to demonstrate failures of rationality and self-knowledge that impact on the coherence of their self-narratives and the correspondence between these narratives and real life events. Although in some cases the very capacity for self-governance may be compromised (e.g., in ‘primary’ delusions where no reasons are offered in support of the delusion or in delusions and confabulations which occur at advanced stages of dementia) our claim is that having delusions and confabulations does not necessarily imply a lack of capacity for self-governance. That said, delusions and confabulations interfere with the exercise of self-governance.
Psychiatric classification and diagnosis. Delusions and confabulations
Published in Paradigmi in 2011
In psychiatry some disorders of cognition are distinguished from instances of normal cognitive functioning and from... more
In psychiatry some disorders of cognition are distinguished from instances of normal cognitive functioning and from other disorders in virtue of their surface features rather than in virtue of the underlying mechanisms responsible for their occurrence. Aetiological considerations often cannot play a significant classificatory and diagnostic role, because there is no sufficient knowledge or consensus about the causal history of many psychiatric disorders. Moreover, it is not always possible to uniquely identify a pathological behaviour as the symptom of a certain disorder, as disorders that are likely to differ both in their causal histories and in their overall manifestations may give rise to very similar patterns of behaviour.
Consider delusions as an example. It wouldn’t be correct to define delusions as those beliefs people form as a result of a neurobiological deficit and a hypothesis-evaluation deficit (as some versions of the two-factor theory of delusions suggest), because for some delusions no neurobiological deficit may be found, and reasoning biases and motivational factors may be contributors to the formation of the delusion (e.g. McKay et al., 2005). Moreover, it would be a mistake to define delusions as symptoms of schizophrenia alone, because they occur also in other disorders, including dementia, amnesia, and delusional disorders. Thus, aetiological considerations may appear in the description and analysis of delusions, but do not feature prominently in their definition.
In this paper I argue that the surface features used as criteria for the classification and diagnosis of disorders of cognition are often epistemic in character. I shall offer two examples: confabulations and delusions are defined as beliefs or narratives that fail to meet standards of accuracy and justification. Although classifications and diagnoses based on features of people’s observable behaviour are necessary at these early stages of neuropsychiatric research, given the variety of conditions in which certain phenomena appear, I shall attempt to show that current epistemic accounts of confabulations and delusions have limitations. Epistemic criteria can guide both research and clinical practice, but fail to provide sufficient conditions for the identification of delusions and confabulations, and fail to demarcate pathological from non-pathological narratives or beliefs.
Another limitation of current epistemic accounts – which I shall not address here – is the excessive focus on epistemic faults of confabulations and delusions at the expense of their epistemically neutral or advantageous features (see Bortolotti and Cox, 2009). This may lead to a misconception of delusions and confabulations, and to an oversimplification in the assessment of the needs of people who require clinical treatment for their psychotic symptoms.
In section 1, I shall introduce epistemic definitions of delusions and confabulations. In section 2, I shall detail three ways in which delusions and confabulations infringe norms of rationality for beliefs. In section 3, I shall ask whether the pathological character of delusions and confabulations can be cashed out in terms of their epistemic faults. I shall conclude that it cannot, because even if delusions and confabulations are irrational, most non-pathological beliefs are also irrational, maybe to a lesser extent, but in qualitatively similar ways. In order to make this point, I shall show how the conditions listed in current epistemic definitions are not sufficient to distinguish clinical cases of delusions and confabulations from beliefs and behaviours that are common in the general population and are not necessarily associated with any psychiatric disorder.
'Faultless' ignorance: strengths and limitations of epistemic definitions of confabulation
Co-authored with Rochelle Cox and published in Consciousness and Cognition in 2009
There is no satisfactory account for the general phenomenon of confabulation, for the following reasons: (1)... more There is no satisfactory account for the general phenomenon of confabulation, for the following reasons: (1) confabulation occurs in a number of pathological and non-pathological conditions; (2) impairments giving rise to confabulation are likely to have different neural bases; and (3) there is no unique theory explaining the aetiology of confabulations. An epistemic approach to defining confabulation could solve all of these issues, by focusing on the surface features of the phenomenon. However, existing epistemic accounts are unable to offer sufficient conditions for confabulation and tend to emphasise only its epistemic disadvantages. In this paper, we argue that a satisfactory epistemic account of confabulation should also acknowledge those features which are (potentially) epistemically advantageous. For example, confabulation may allow subjects to exercise some control over their own cognitive life which is instrumental to the construction or preservation of their sense of self.
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