Krisztina Biber
Department of Philosophy
Coordinator
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Central European University
Nador u. 9. | 1051 Budapest, Hungary
The CEU Department of Philosophy cordially invites you to a talk
(as part of its Departmental Colloquium series)
by
Lisa Bortolotti (University of Birmingham)
on
Stranger than Fiction: Costs and Benefits of Confabulatory Explanations
Tuesday, 27 October 2015, 5.30 PM, Zrinyi 14, Room 412
ABSTRACT
The phenomenon of confabulation is receiving increasing philosophical attention, and its relationship with self-interpretation and deliberation in the light of its epistemic costs and benefits are controversial in the literature. Here I start developing an account of confabulation that is compatible with the empirical evidence by focusing on one form of confabulation, that is, confabulatory explanations for one’s own attitudes and choices.
In section 1 I present one way of understanding confabulation, building on the existing philosophical and psychological literature on the topic. In section 2 I consider examples of explanations for one’s attitudes and choices that can be interpreted as instances of confabulation. In section 3 I focus on the epistemic costs of confabulatory explanations, and in section 4 on their potential epistemic benefits. In section 5 I draw some implications from the previous discussion for debates about rationality and self-knowledge.
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