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Epistemic innocence and the production of false memory beliefs

Puddifoot, Katherine; Bortolotti, Lisa

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Authors

Lisa Bortolotti



Abstract

Findings from the cognitive sciences suggest that the cognitive mechanisms responsible for some memory errors are adaptive, bringing benefits to the organism. In this paper we argue that the same cognitive mechanisms also bring a suite of significant epistemic benefits, increasing the chance of an agent obtaining epistemic goods like true belief and knowledge. This result provides a significant challenge to the folk conception of memory beliefs that are false, according to which they are a sign of cognitive frailty, indicating that a person is less reliable than others or their former self. Evidence of memory errors can undermine a person’s view of themselves as a competent epistemic agent, but we show that false memory beliefs can be the result of the ordinary operation of cognitive mechanisms found across the species, which bring substantial epistemic benefits. This challenge to the folk conception is not adequately captured by existing epistemological theories. However, it can be captured by the notion of epistemic innocence, which has previously been deployed to highlight how beliefs which have epistemic costs can also bring significant epistemic benefits. We therefore argue that the notion of epistemic innocence should be expanded so that it applies not just to beliefs but also to cognitive mechanisms.

Citation

Puddifoot, K., & Bortolotti, L. (2019). Epistemic innocence and the production of false memory beliefs. Philosophical Studies, 176(3), 755-780. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-018-1038-2

Journal Article Type Article
Online Publication Date Jan 19, 2018
Publication Date Mar 31, 2019
Deposit Date Oct 22, 2018
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Philosophical studies
Print ISSN 0031-8116
Electronic ISSN 1573-0883
Publisher Springer
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 176
Issue 3
Pages 755-780
DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-018-1038-2

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Advance online version © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.





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