Interpretivism, First-Person Authority, and Confabulation

Abstract

Psychological experiments allegedly show that people have a tendency to confabulate explanations of their behavior, because their conscious selves do not know why they do what they do, and therefore create the explanations that make most sense. This article explains why confabulation is neither a threat to interpretivist social science nor a threat to the presumption of first-person authority in Davidson’s interpretation theory. The reason is that the interpretative endeavor, which is necessary in order to identify and provide evidence for confabulation is governed by a presumption of first-person authority. Explanations of confabulation thus depend on prior interpretations.