title: Knowledge and Belief in Placebo Effect.
abstract: The beliefs involved in the placebo effect are often assumed to be self-fulfilling, that is, the truth of these beliefs would merely require the patient to hold them. Such a view is commonly shared in epistemology. Many epistemologists focused, in fact, on the self-fulfilling nature of these beliefs, which have been investigated because they raise some important counterexamples to Nozick's "tracking theory of knowledge." We challenge the self-fulfilling nature of placebo-based beliefs in multi-agent contexts, analyzing their deep epistemological nature and the role of higher-order beliefs involved in the placebo effect.
authors.affiliation: University of Padua, Padua, Italy Tallinn University of Technology, Tallin, Estonia chiffidaniele@gmail.com.|University of Padua, Padua, Italy chiffidaniele@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Daniele
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Chiffi
authors.affiliation: University of Padua, Padua, Italy Tallinn University of Technology, Tallin, Estonia.|University of Padua, Padua, Italy.
authors.forename: Renzo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Zanotti
mesh_terms: D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic / Q000379:methods / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D019359:Knowledge; D015990:Placebo Effect
keywords: belief; clinical reasoning; epistemology; placebo; placebo effect