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Articles

Why False Beliefs Are Not Always Bad

Sally Latham argues that sometimes it’s better to be wrong.

It is a fairly common assumption that factually correct beliefs are to be strived for and factually incorrect beliefs are to be avoided. In fact, for many philosophers, the very cornerstone of the discipline is that true beliefs are good and false beliefs are bad.

Yet this assumption is being challenged by Project PERFECT (Pragmatic and Epistemic Role of Factually Erroneous Cognitions and Thoughts). Headed by Professor Lisa Bortolotti at the University of Birmingham, this project aims to establish whether cognitions that are in some important way inaccurate can ever be good for us. Delusional beliefs, distorted memories, beliefs that fail to reflect social realities, and so forth, are frequent in the non-clinical population; and are also listed as symptoms of clinical psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia and dementia.

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