Illusions of memory: what referential confabulation can tell us about remembering

Abstract

Recent philosophy of memory tends to treat confabulation as a distinctive type of representational error, marked by reference failure, often via direct analogy with the traditional conception of sensory hallucination. I argue that this model misrepresents the phenomenon. Drawing on the empirical possibility of referential confabulation—wherein confabulators mnemically refer to events in their past—I argue that mnemic reference and genuine remembering come apart. This, in particular, challenges causalist theories for which one element—appropriate causation—purports to secure reference and to separate genuine remembering from confabulation. Acknowledging referential confabulation requires causalists to complicate their story in a way that has implications on what remembering is. More generally, referential confabulation prompts a broader rethinking of memory error debates. Rather than being a distinctive type of content-level error, confabulation is better characterised as a processing malfunction: a breakdown in strategic retrieval and monitoring, but not necessarily in referential success. Appreciating this calls us to aim at a more nuanced conception of remembering and its frailties.