Confabulating Reasons

Abstract

In this paper, I will focus on a type of confabulation that emerges in relation to questions about mental attitudes (e.g. belief, emotion, decision) whose causes we cannot introspectively access. I argue against two popular views that see confabulations as mainly offering a psychological story about ourselves. On these views, confabulations are the result of either a cause-tracking mechanism or a self-directed mindreading mechanism. In contrast, I propose the view that confabulations are mostly telling a normative story: they are arguments primarily offered to justify one's attitudes, and they are produced by our argumentative reasoning mechanism driven by the biological goal of presenting ourselves as good reasoners and as reliable sources of information.

Socially adaptive belief

“…A very different answer argues that confabulations are in large part optimised for social consumption (Bergamaschi Ganapini, 2020; Haidt, 2013; Kurzban, 2012; Mercier & Sperber, 2011, 2017; Simler & Hanson, 2017). On this view, although agents harbour no conscious intention to deceive in cases of confabulation, a primary function of confabulation is social , enabling agents to present their attitudes and choices as rational and morally justifiable (Bergamaschi Ganapini, 2020; Haidt, 2013). As Mercier and Sperber (2017) put it, ‘[t]he reasons people attribute to themselves … are chosen less for their accuracy than for their high … value as justifications’ (p. 186).…”

“…Most fundamentally, it fails to explain why confabulation is so selective in the reasons that are identified as causes of the agent's attitudes, and why confabulators are often positively resistant to acknowledging the actual causes of those attitudes when they are presented as possibilities (Mercier & Sperber, 2017). As Bergamaschi Ganapini (2020) puts it, the standard view ‘overlooks that confabulations are generally presented as good (or proper) grounds’ (p. 6). That is, confabulations typically consist of post hoc rationalisations designed to show that the relevant attitude or choice was justified .…”

“…Confabulations seem to satisfy both conditions. First, they are almost always advanced in interactive contexts in response to a request for explanation from another agent (Bergamaschi Ganapini, 2020). Second, as per the comments from Mercier and Sperber above, the reasons identified in confabulations are typically advanced to explain our attitudes and choices, not to guide them.…”

Science as a moral system

“…Reasons usually function as post hoc rationalizations, justifying the outcome of processes that crucially do not depend on reasons. The function of reasons is not to accurately describe our mental states or attitudes, but we employ them as social tools to manage our reputation (Bergamaschi Ganapini, 2020;Dennett, 2017;Haidt, 2001;Kurzban, 2010;Mercier & Sperber, 2017). In fact, scientific processes tend to be a lot messier than scientists pretend when they provide reasons (Latour & Woolgar, 1986[1976).…”