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.
Highlights
Memory errors can be grouped into two categories: errors from omissions and errors from commission
The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM for short), the “bible” for psychiatric diagnosis, does not explicitly define confabulation but states that confabulation is “often evidenced by the recitation of imaginary events to fill in gaps in memory” (The American Psychiatric Association, 1994, p. 157)
The defining characteristic of mnemic confabulation vis-à-vis genuine memory is that the state of seeming to remember fails to counterfactually depend on the corresponding past representation, provided there is a past representation
Summary
This paper attempts to answer the question of what defines mnemonic confabulation visà-vis genuine memory. 207) follows Goldman (1998) in demanding that a justified belief be based in a reliable belief-forming process and that and there be no reliable or conditionally reliable process available to the subject which, had it been used by the subject in addition to the process used, would have resulted in his not believing p Given this version of reliabilism, it is highly unlikely that there could be confabulations that meet the justification condition. A key epistemic feature of confabulations is that they are ill-grounded or poorly supported by evidence.” 25The causal theory of memory sketched is developed in Bernecker For a state of seeming to remember to be memory-related to a past representation it has to be the case that, if the past representation had been different, one would not occupy the very state of seeming to remember that one does occupy
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