Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T21:47:48.119Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Confabulation and epistemic authority

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2018

Sarah Robins*
Affiliation:
Psychology Department, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045. [email protected]

Abstract

Mahr & Csibra (M&C) claim that episodic remembering's autonoetic character serves as an indicator of epistemic authority. This proposal is difficult to reconcile with the existence of confabulation errors – where participants fabricate memories of experiences that never happened to them. Making confabulation errors damages one's epistemic authority, but these false memories have an autonoetic character.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Clancy, S. A., McNally, R. J., Schacter, D. L., Lenzenweger, M. F. & Pittman, R. K. (2002) Memory distortions in people reporting abduction by aliens. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 111:455–61.Google Scholar
Loftus, E. F. & Pickrell, J. E. (1995) The formation of false memories. Psychiatric Annals 25:720–25.Google Scholar
Michaelian, K. (2016a) Confabulating, misremembering, relearning: The simulation theory of memory and unsuccessful remembering. Frontiers in Psychology 7:1857. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01857.Google Scholar
Robins, S. K. (2016a) Misremembering. Philosophical Psychology 29(3):432–47. Available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09515089.2015.1113245.Google Scholar
Robins, S. K. (2017) Confabulation and constructive memory. Synthese. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1315-1.Google Scholar