Professor emerita Brenda Almond
Humanities, Philosophy: Moral and Social Philosophy, Applied Ethics, Bioethics
Humanities
Philosophy of the Cognitive Sciences
The limitations of human cognition and human agency including faulty reasoning, delusions, confabulations, irrational beliefs, poor knowledge of the self, distorted memories, unreliable self narratives, self deception, implicit bias, inconsistencies between attitudes and behaviour, unrealistic optimism and positive illusions.
American Philosophical Association Book Prize for "Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs" (OUP, 2009), 2011
English, Italian, Spanish
In 1997 I received my first degree in Philosophy (Laurea summa cum laude in Filosofia) at the Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna with a dissertation on conceptual relativism. For five months during my degree I was an Erasmus student at the University of Leeds. Then I got an MA in Philosophy with distinction from King's College London where I wrote a dissertation on the rationality of scientific revolutions. Next, I obtained the BPhil in Philosophy at the University of Oxford in 2000 with a dissertation on the rationality debate in philosophy and the cognitive sciences. For my PhD, I moved to the Philosophy Programme in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University in Canberra. My thesis was a challenge to Donald Davidson's rationality constraint on the ascription of beliefs.
Irrationality (Polity, 2014). Key Concepts Series.
Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs (OUP, 2009). Monograph.
Psychiatry as Cognitive Neuroscience: Philosophical Perspectives (OUP, 2009). Collection co-edited with Matthew R. Broome.
Philosophy and Happiness (Palgrave, 2009). Edited collection.
An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (Polity, 2008). Textbook.
PERFECT (2014-2019), Pragmatic and Epistemic Role of Factually Erroneous Cognitions and Thoughts, European Research Council Consolidator Grant. http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/generic/perfect/index.aspx
Costs and Benefits of Optimism (2015-2016), Non-residential fellowship from the University of Notre Dame, Templeton Foundation.
https://sites.google.com/site/philosophyofoptimism/project
Epistemic Innocence of Imperfect Cognitions (2013-2014), Research Fellowship, Arts and Humanities Research Council.
https://sites.google.com/site/epistemicinnocence/
Mind Association Executive committee (2010-2015)
British Society for the Philosophy of Science (2010-2013)
April 2015, 13th: Interviewed for Philosophy for the Curious: Why Study Philosophy? Extract posted on the Philosophy@Birmingham blog.
February 2015, 23rd: author of the article “Project PERFECT” for Aimee Wilson’s blog I'm NOT disordered.
February 2015, 17th: Author of the article “The Upside of Delusional Beliefs” on web-zine Scientia Salon (which attracted 103 comments).
December 2014: guest on Bridget Kendall’s radio programme, The Forum, in an episode on Unintended Consequences, BBC World Service.
October 2014, 30th: Author of “Reverse Othello Syndrome and Epistemic Innocence” on the Philosop-her blog.
October 2014, 23rd: Author of “What is it to be irrational?” on the Polity Independent blog.
October 2015, 5th: Author of “Anosognosia and Epistemic Innocence” on the Psychiatric Ethics blog. Finalist for the 3 Quarks Daily Philosophy Prize 2014.
March 2014: Featured scholar at the Saving Humans blog where I wrote about my Epistemic Innocence project.
February 2014, 18th: Author of the article Madness, Rationality and Epistemic Innocence on the Oxford University Press Blog.
November 2013, 20th: Author of the Perspective (University of Birmingham website): Lessons from the Breivik Case.
July 2013: Featured scholar at the Brains blog where I wrote about my past and future research on delusions.
February 2013, 8th: Author of the Birmingham Brief: Making Sense of Psychiatry: The Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Debate.
May-Jun 2012: Guest blogger for A Kolber’s Neuroethics & Law blog on the moral responsibility of people with a diagnosis of a psychiatric disorder in the context of criminal action.
August 2011: Guest blogger for the Wellcome Trust blog on the right not to know in psychiatry:
August-September 2010: Guest blogger for E Schwitzgebel’s The Splintered Mind blog on the philosophical significance of the phenomenon of clinical delusions.
May 2010, 26th: Interviewed by M Beckford about forced treatment on incapacitated cancer patient for the Daily Telegraph (front page story).
September 2009, 20th: Interviewed by J Elder about striving for perfection for the Sunday Age Melbourne (article with quote).
June 2009, 4th: Wrote “Should human reproductive cloning be allowed?”, an article for BBC Focus Magazine (issue 204, How to Live Forever or Die Trying).
February 2008, 28th: Wrote “A moral claim not to feel pain”, an article for the New Statesman.
October 2007, 7th: Joined the expert panel of The Big Questions, BBC1 weekly show by Nicky Campbell debating topical religious and ethical questions (series 1, episode 4, live from Birmingham).
Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (PGCHE), University of Manchester, UK. Awarded 24 February 2006.
Since May 2013, I maintain a Twitter account with information about research projects funded by AHRC and ERC (@epistinnocence).
Since May 2013, I run a group blog, Imperfect Cognitions. It hosts discussion of themes relevant to my research projects.
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Humanities, Philosophy: Moral and Social Philosophy, Applied Ethics, Bioethics
Humanities, Social, modern political, and environmental history
Languages, Humanities, Formal semantics and pragmatics, philosophy of language, logic
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