ABSTRACT
S ubjects with delusions profess to believe some extremely peculiar things. Patients with the Capgras delusion sincerely assert that, for example, their spouses have been replaced by impostors. Patients with the Cotard delusion sincerely assert that they are dead. Many philosophers and psychologists are hesitant to say that delusional subjects genuinely believe the contents of their delusions.1 One way to reinterpret delusional subjects is to say that we’ve misidentied the content of the problematic belief. For example, we might say that rather than believing that his wife has been replaced by an impostor, the victim of the Capgras delusion believes that it is, in some respects, as if his wife has been replaced by an impostor. Another is to say that we’ve misidentied the attitude that the delusional subject bears to the content of the delusion. For example, Gregory Currie and coauthors have suggested that rather than believing that his wife has been replaced by an impostor, we should say that the victim of the Capgras delusion merely imagines that his wife has been replaced by an impostor.2
