The role of confabulation in collective cognition - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

The role of confabulation in collective cognition

Sophie Stammers,

Research Fellow,

Project PERFECT

The University of Birmingham

Slide2

Overview 17.06Introduce confabulationEvaluating confabulationEpistemic costsIntroduce “epistemic innocence”Collective cognitionUbiquitousDelivers substantial epistemic benefitsConfabulation preserves collective cognitive partnershipsEpistemic benefitsConfabulation in these instances is epistemically innocent

Slide3

1. Confabulation

Slide4

ConfabulationThe phenomenon in which a person gives an account of an experience, choice or action that is not grounded in evidence, where: the confabulator does not intend to deceive they sincerely believe their account Hirstein (2004)

Slide5

Clinical casesE.g. Split-brain patients; Korsakoff’s syndrome; Alzheimer’s; schizophrenia (Gazzaniga 1995 & 2000; Kessels et al. 2008; Moscovitch 1989; Cooper et al. 2006, and Kramer et al. 1998). Moscovitch (1989): H. W., a Korsakoff’s patient Claims married for 4 months (false) 4 adult children? H. W.: “They are adopted"

Slide6

Confabulation in split brain patientImage presentedChicken clawSnow sceneTo…Right visual field Left visual fieldProcessed by(processed by left hemisphere)Controls verbal responses(processed by right hemisphere)

Image chosen

Chicken

Shovel

By

…

right

hand

by

left hand

P.S.:

“Oh, that’s simple. The chicken claw goes with the chicken, and you need a shovel to clean out the chicken shed.”

(in

Gazziniga

1995: 255).

Slide7

Confabulation in split brain patientGazziniga:“Immediately, the left brain, observing the left hand’s response without the knowledge of why it had picked that item, put it into a context that would explain it. It interpreted the response in a context consistent with what it knew, and all it knew was: chicken claw. It knew nothing about the snow scene, but it had to explain the shovel in his left hand. Well, chickens do make a mess, and you have to clean it up. Ah, that’s it! Makes sense.” (2011: 129-130)

Slide8

Non-clinical confabulatione.g. Consumer choices (Nisbett and Wilson 1977) Position effectPlausible sounding (but false) explanatione.g. Policy support (Green 2003)Frame effectPlausible sounding (but false) explanationAlso: hiring decisions; moral convictions; physical attraction; emotional states (Brasil-Neto et al. 1992; Ulhmann & Cohen 2005; Hall et al. 2012; Johansson et al. 2005; and Aucouturier et al. 2016).

Slide9

2. Evaluating confabulation

Slide10

CostsPractical: goal frustrationEpistemic: falsity (- not grounded in evidence)A and B are shopping. Case 1A: Why did you choose those socks?B: Because they are of a better quality knit than the alternative options. FALSE Case 2A: Why did you buy those socks?B: I realise that I don’t have a reason for why I chose those socks. I chose them for no good reason.

Slide11

Practical benefitsRamachandran 1996: - Maintaining coherence in the experience of one’s mental lifeFotopoulou 2008: - FILL IN Fotopoulou, A., Conway, M. A., Tyler, S., Birchall, D., Griffiths, P., & Solms, M. (2008). Is the content of confabulation positive? An experimental study. Cortex,44, 764–772.Summers, forthcoming:- Work out good reasons for acting- Make our actions meaningful

Slide12

Epistemic innocenceBortolotti (2015); Sullivan-Bissett (2015)Two conditions:Epistemic Benefit: The cognition confers a significant epistemic benefit to an agent at the time of its adoption.No Alternatives: Other cognitions that would confer the same benefit are not available to that agent at that time.

Slide13

“unavailability”Sullivan-Bissett: An alternative cognition might be:- Strictly unavailable- Explanatorily unavailable- Motivationally unavailableLater: “Capacitorially unavailable”

Slide14

Epistemic benefits of confabSullivan-Bissett 2015, focusing on confab in implicit bias:- Vocalising reasoning as an enabling condition for further reflection:“confabulatory explanations are epistemically beneficial insofar as in offering them as explanations they become open to attack. This might then start a thinking process, where I might end up with a less epistemically faulty explanation. So the confabulation is epistemically good insofar as it acts as an enabling condition for further reflection”- Avoiding inconsistency -> greater willingness to exchange information“at the very least the apparent maintaining of consistency might be indirectly epistemically beneficial. Not experiencing an inconsistency might have indirect epistemic consequences. Just like the prevention of embarrassment (see Section 4.1.1), perhaps by not suffering the discomfort which an inconsistent set of cognitions might bring, I might be more willing and able to investigate my environment and participate in the exchange of information.”

Slide15

3. Collective cognition

Slide16

Collective (practical) goal pursuitCollectives can access goods that would be unavailable to individuals/available at a much greater cost per head.Animals that burrow together (Wilschut et al. 2013) Three cheetah brothers Planet Earth Humans in shared housesTo save money, split chores, etcTo enable access to a certain location (e.g. London!) unavailable to individuals working alone.Governed (in part) by game theoretic principles

Slide17

Collective (epistemic) goal pursuitCollectives can access goods that would be unavailable to individuals/available at a much greater cost per head.- Larger ant colonies find the best nesting sites faster than smaller colonies (Franks et al. 2006)  - Larger groups of house sparrows are more successful at innovative problem solving than smaller groups of individuals (Liker and Bókony 2009) - Individuals flying within larger flocks will arrive reliably at their destination more often than will individuals within smaller flocks (Simons, 2004 – mathematical model)

Slide18

Collective (epistemic) goal pursuit- Groups working together to reconstruct the a fragmented message perform better than individuals working on the same task alone (Clément et al. 2013). - Observation of the choices of others increases true positives and decreases false positives on an object recognition task, (Wolf et al. 2013). - Some couples develop shared memories in recall tasks which are prompted through iterative conversation (Harris et al. 2014)

Slide19

Collective (epistemic) goal pursuitTask distribution (+ knowledge by testimony)- Across professional organisations, research groups- Education- From media outlets- With friends, family, partners… -E.g. Planning to see a film, share the big shop…Game theoretic rules (e.g. false alarm calling, Breznitz 1984); Defeaters to k by testimonyClaim: Cognitive collectives are ubiquitous. We depend on these collective cognitive partnerships for great swathes of our knowledge.

Slide20

Epistemic benefits of collectives Where: A: Individual cognising alone C: Member of a cognitive collective Gi, Gii: Epistemic goals R: Resource unit used for epistemic goal attainment  Efficiency advantage: C expends 1R in the attainment of Gi A expends 1+nR in the attainment of Gi - C attains

Gi with n fewer epistemic resources than A. - Where

nR is sufficient for attainment of Gii, for the same expenditure 1+

n

R, C attains

G

i

and

G

ii

, whilst A attains only

Gi.

A

ttainment advantage

:

C expends 1R in the attainment of

G

i

For no

n

is

n

R

sufficient for A’s attainment of

G

i

C attains

G

i

, A does not.

Slide21

4. Confabulation preserves collective cognitive partnerships

Slide22

The sock shopA and B are in a collective cognitive partnershipDistribute epistemic responsibilities of the big shopCase 1A: Why did you choose those socks?B: Because they are of a better quality knit than the alternative options.  Case 2A: Why did you buy those socks?B: I realise that I don’t have a reason for why I chose those socks. I chose them for no good reason.Here, B is defecting from her share of the collective duties Defeater for K by testimony from B

A should reduce confidence in B’s testimony. To what extent?

Slide23

Local confidence reductionLoss of confidence across domain of relevant decision/judgement:A: “Wow, so you just make consumer choices for no reason, I guess I’d better not rely on you to do the joint shop and make good choices anymore. I’ll do the shopping on my own now.” Compare:Case 1: B has a false belief about why she acted as she did. Case 2: B loses access to A’s future judgements in this domain.How far into the future A and B plan to partner cognitively in this domainIf planning to continue the partnership, epistemically better off in Case 1, than 2 = better confabulating

Slide24

Epistemic innocenceEpistemic Benefit: The cognition confers a significant epistemic benefit to an agent at the time of its adoption.No Alternatives: Other cognitions that would confer the same benefit are not available to that agent at that time. Suggested admitting no reason does not confer the same epistemic benefits as confabulation in at least some cases.How available is not making a cognitive mistake in the first place? - Choosing for a genuine reason?

Slide25

Cognitive reality: limited consc. processing powerRather than queue up the central processor with jobs, we rely on heuristics, assumptions, idealisations, biases, built (often) from past experience.They can be apt or not-aptThis repertoire of short-cuts running in the background keeps our conscious processes from “buffering” whilst allowing us to assimilate and respond to further information from our environment. However, in at least some cases, devoting attention and concentration to a task prevents these short-cuts from featuring in processing.Is this available to us in the sock case?

Slide26

The sock connoisseur Moral: you can’t be the everything connoisseur!A better cognition is only available at great cognitive expense. Can’t prevent confabulation everywhere.

Slide27

Epistemic innocenceEpistemic Benefit: The cognition confers a significant epistemic benefit to an agent at the time of its adoption.No Alternatives: Other cognitions that would confer the same benefit are not available to that agent at that time. Could say that there is a sense in which a better cognition is available, but only at a large cognitive expense, which it may not always be practical to undertake. In most cases, “No alternatives” is met : confabulation here is epistemically innocent

Slide28

To sum up1. We confabulate in a wide range of areas2. Confabulation has epistemic costs, as it results in false belief(s)3. Meanwhile, collective cognition is ubiquitous, and a great deal of our knowledge is gleaned through collective cognitive partnerships. 4. Confabulation preserves collective cognitive partnerships on which we rely for knowledge acquisition- Some of this K is unavailable to us outside these partnerships- Some would only be available at a (often considerably) greater cognitive expense Non-confabulation is not (always) available to us.Confabulation in these instances is epistemically innocent