Lisa Bortolotti is a project partner in Logic and unconscious mentation led by Luis Augusto and based at the University of Porto (Portugal).
Lisa Bortolotti’s work has focused so far on two aspects of cognition that are especially relevant to the Logic and Unconscious Mentation project:
- reasoning and belief formation/maintenance in people with delusions;
- the interaction between conscious and unconscious mentation in the context of people reporting attitudes, defending them with reasons and acting upon them.
Within the project, this work will be expanded to include a study of reason-giving, motivation and autonomy in people with delusions, which will shed light on whether the commitment to the content of the delusion is something the subject is consciously aware of and can become epistemically responsible for.
One research question to be addressed in the first year of the project and discussed at the first colloquium is whether the non-conscious information processing operates differently in the clinical population affected by delusions. Another question is whether illogicality is part of the irrationality commonly ascribed to people with delusions.