"The Dynamic Structure of Delusion"
Delusions are currently defined in both diagnostic manuals and psychiatry textbooks as fixed beliefs that a person comes to hold even though they never had any adequate evidence to support them and stubbornly holds onto in the face of manifest counterevidence. This orthodox conception of delusion treats it as a type of static condition, or psychological state that naturally persists over time. This is the conception of delusion that is engrained in many leading theoretical paradigms throughout cognitive neuropsychiatry, which, for years, has developed primarily content-based explanations of various delusions—explanations that appeal explicitly to the delusion’s content. In this essay, I shall argue against this standard theoretical framework and claim that we have compelling reasons to adopt a more dynamic conception of what a delusion is. I shall also show how adopting a dynamic conception of delusion has several philosophically interesting consequences.