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Self-Deception and Confabulation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

William Hirstein
William Hirstein*
Affiliation:
Elmhurst College
*
†Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of Philosophy, Elmhurst College, 190 Prospect Ave., Elmhurst, IL 60126.
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Abstract

Cases in which people are self-deceived seem to require that the person hold two contradictory beliefs, something which appears to be impossible or implausible. A phenomenon seen in some brain-damaged patients known as confabulation (roughly, an ongoing tendency to make false utterances without intent to deceive) can shed light on the problem of self-deception. The conflict is not actually between two beliefs, but between two representations, a ‘conceptual’ one and an ‘analog’ one. In addition, confabulation yields valuable clues about the structure of normal human knowledge-gathering processes.

Type
Philosophy of Biology, Psychology, and Neuroscience
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 67 , Issue S3: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1998 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers Sep., 2000 , 2000 , pp. S418 - S429
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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