Abstract
There is a widespread assumption that we have direct access to our own decision-making processes. Empirical demonstrations of confabulation, a phenomenon where individuals construct and themselves believe plausible but inaccurate accounts of why they acted, have been used to question this assumption. Those defending the assumption argue cases of confabulation are relatively rare and that in most cases, we still have direct insight into our own decision-making. This paper reviews this debate and introduces two novel points. Firstly, I will point out that a rich source of evidence of confabulation is often overlooked. Secondly, I will argue that our inability to distinguish confabulations from cases in which we gain accurate information about the reasons for our actions gives rise to an empirically motivated scepticism which gives us grounds to doubt the accuracy of all our introspective insights into our own decision-making processes.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks are due to George Botterill who made helpful comments on several drafts of this paper and to the Leverhulme Trust whose research project grant awarded to the “bias and blame” project funds my current position.
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Scaife, R. A Problem for Self-Knowledge: The Implications of Taking Confabulation Seriously. Acta Anal 29, 469–485 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-014-0226-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-014-0226-8