Do confabulatory explanations and memory distortions occurring in the clinical population have any epistemic benefits? Let’s start by considering evidence for the view that autobiographical memory is instrumental to self-knowledge and identity formation processes. Autobiographical memory encompasses memories of specific events (e.g. how I felt when I passed my driving …
In the last post I offered examples of confabulatory explanations as attempts to give reasons for attitudes whose source might escape introspection or be otherwise difficult or impossible to access. The interesting philosophical question for me is whether confabulation carries any epistemic benefit.
Here are some examples of confabulatory explanations in the clinical population. In anosognosia people deny some serious impairment. When a person with a paralysed leg is asked why she cannot climb stairs, she may say she suffers from arthritis and she is less mobile as a result. In the Capgras delusion, people believe …
In my previous post I suggested that the epistemic faults listed in most definitions of delusions are not distinctive of delusions. Although delusions may diverge from norms of rationality to a greater extent than non-delusional beliefs, they are irrational in no special way. Excessively positive beliefs about ourselves, and widespread …
First of all, my thanks to John for a very generous introduction. I’m glad to be blogging on Brains when I’m about to start a brand new project. Come September, I’ll be on an AHRC Fellowship exploring the possibility that, in some contexts, cognitions with obvious epistemic pitfalls (such as …
On 11 June 2010 the Philosophy Department at the University of Birmingham (UK) will host a Graduate Workshop on Pain, sponsored by the British Society for the Philosophy of Science and supported by the Royal Institute of Philosophy. Keynote speakers will be: Dr David Bain, Lecturer in Philosophy, University of …
