Topoi 39 (1):229-241 (2020)
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Recent literature on epistemic innocence develops the idea that a defective cognitive process may nevertheless merit special consideration insofar as it confers an epistemic benefit that would not otherwise be available. For example, confabulation may be epistemically innocent when it makes a subject more likely to form future true beliefs or helps her maintain a coherent self-concept. I consider the role of confabulation in typical cases of interpersonal gaslighting, and argue that confabulation will not be epistemically innocent in such cases even if it does preserve a coherent self-concept or belief-set for the subject. Analyzing the role of confabulation in gaslighting illustrates its role in on-going interpersonal relationships, and augments already growing evidence that confabulation may be quite widespread. The role of confabulation in gaslighting shows that whether confabulation confers epistemic benefits will depend greatly on the interpersonal context in which it is deployed, while whether a coherent self-concept is epistemically beneficial will depend to a great extent on the content of that self-concept. This shows that the notion of an epistemically harmful or beneficial feature of a cognitive process can and should be further clarified, and that doing so has both theoretical and practical advantages in understanding epistemic innocence itself.
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DOI | 10.1007/s11245-018-9611-z |
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References found in this work BETA
Telling More Than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes.Richard E. Nisbett & Timothy D. Wilson~ - 1977 - Psychological Review 84 (3):231-59.
Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy in Belief.Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski - 2012 - Oup Usa.
Telling More Than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes.Richard E. Nisbett & Timothy D. Wilson - 1977 - Psychological Review; Psychological Review 84 (3):231.
Disagreement as Evidence: The Epistemology of Controversy.David Christensen - 2009 - Philosophy Compass 4 (5):756-767.
Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice.Thomas S. Kuhn - 1977 - In The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change. University of Chicago Press. pp. 320--39.
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Citations of this work BETA
Epistemic Dimensions of Gaslighting: Peer-Disagreement, Self-Trust, and Epistemic Injustice.Andrew D. Spear - 2018 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 62:1-24.
Expanding the Scope of Reflective Knowledge: From MINE to OURS.Joseph Shieber - 2019 - Philosophical Issues 29 (1):241-253.
Confabulations in the Case of Gaslighting Are Not Epistemically Beneficial, But They Are Instructive. A Commentary on Spear, A. (2020). Gaslighting, Confabulation, and Epistemic Innocence. [REVIEW]Maja Białek - 2022 - Topoi 41 (1):227-233.
View all 6 citations / Add more citations
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