A Causal Theory of Mnemonic Confabulation

Abstract

This paper attempts to answer the question of what defines mnemonic confabulation vis-à-vis genuine memory. The two extant accounts of mnemonic confabulation as “false memory” and as ill-grounded memory are shown to be problematic, for they cannot account for the possibility of veridical confabulation, ill-grounded memory, and well-grounded confabulation. This paper argues that the defining characteristic of mnemonic confabulation is that it lacks the appropriate causal history. In the confabulation case, there is no proper counterfactual dependence of the state of seeming to remember on the corresponding past representation.

Thinking About Events: A Pragmatist Account of the Objects of Episodic Hypothetical Thought

“…One might worry that the fact that it does not require the presence of a trace connecting remembering to a past perceptual experience renders the account unable to distinguish cases of remembering from cases of veridical confabulation (see Michaelian 2016b;Bernecker 2017). A veridical confabulation is a mental state such that its pragmatic object recruits habits of action that allows for true inferences of the past but such that the subject has never been perceptually related to the relevant event.…”

Unsuccessful Remembering: A Challenge for the Relational View of Memory

“…For more discussions about misremembering and its relationship to current theories of remembering, see Robins (2016a) and Michaelian (2016b). For discussions about confabulation in particular, see Hirstein (2005), Robins (2018), and Michaelian (2018), and for discussions about the relationship of confabulation to current theories of remembering, see Michaelian (2016b;, Bernecker (2017), and Robins (2017;. 13 As I will argue below, it fails to account for cases of veridical confabulations (Michaelian 2016b).…”

“…As De Brigard (2014) points out, occurrences of what I have called misremembering should not be seen as "bad" products of our memory systems; instead, they are the expected outcomes given how those systems work. Confabulations, in contrast, occur in situations where something has clearly gone wrong, such as when subjects suffer head injuries that lead to some sort of brain damage (see Hirstein 2005;Bernecker 2017; Michaelian 2018 for more discussion). As Michaelian (2016b) points out, while both misremembering and confabulations share the feature of being both erroneous-in his terminology, they are both "inaccurate"-unlike misremembering, which is produced by mechanisms that are working in a reliable manner, confabulations are produced by mechanisms that are working unreliably (see also Hirstein 2005 for a similar account of confabulations).…”

Introduction: Philosophical Perspectives on Confabulation

“…Confabulation is tightly linked to some core notions in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of psychology, such as those of self-knowledge and rationality, and raises interesting epistemological questions about the coherence, accuracy, and justification of our reports. However, until recently and with some exceptions (Hirstein 2005;Bortolotti and Cox 2009;Strijbos and de Bruin 2015;Scaife 2014;Sandis 2015;Sullivan-Bissett 2015;Bernecker 2017;Bortolotti 2017), the notion of confabulation has been largely underexplored in philosophy.…”