Gaslighting, Confabulation, and Epistemic Innocence

Abstract

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 (and so is epistemically innocent) 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.

Full text

Vol.:(0123456789)
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Topoi (2020) 39:229–241
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-018-9611-z
Gaslighting, Confabulation, andEpistemic Innocence
AndrewD.Spear1
Published online: 8 November 2018
© The Author(s) 2018
Abstract
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 (and so is epistemically innocent) 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.
Keywords Confabulation· Gaslighitng· Epistemic innocence· Peer-disagreement· Epistemic benefit
This essay is about the role of confabulation in prototypi-
cal cases of gaslighting, and about whether such confabula-
tion is epistemically innocent. In Sect.1, I introduce Kate
Abramson’s analysis of gaslighting, and argue that gas-
lighting has an essential epistemic dimension. I then argue
(Sects.2 and 3) that confabulation plays a central role in
many prototypical cases of gaslighting. The case of gaslight-
ing shows how confabulation can play a role in ongoing
interpersonal relationships. I take this to be interesting in
its own right, but also to suggest that confabulation may
be even more pervasive than is already thought. Finally,
in Sect.4, I consider whether or not the confabulation that
occurs in prototypical gaslighting is epistemically innocent
as understood in recent work by Lisa Bortolotti and oth-
ers. I argue that confabulation in the context of gaslighting
confers positive epistemic harms rather than benefits, and
so is not epistemically innocent. This is not a challenge to
the notion of epistemic innocence. Rather, the reasons why
confabulation in the context of gaslighting fails to be epis-
temically innocent themselves point to specific ways that the
component notion of an epistemically beneficial cognitive
process can be further clarified, which is important for both
theoretical and practical reasons.
1 Gaslighting
The term ‘gaslighting’ originates with Patrick Hamilton’s
1938 play, “Gaslight”, and has more recently become a
fixture in cultural discourse,1 featuring in publications in
self-help psychology (Stern 2008) and political commentary
(Carpenter 2018). The idea has been treated in academic
publications first in psychoanalysis (Calef and Winshel
1981), and more recently in philosophy by Kate Abram-
son (2014). I will follow Abramson’s analysis closely here.
However, Abramson focuses on the role of manipulation
in gaslighting, and downplays the role of epistemic factors
such as testimony, evidence, and reasons. I think these lat-
ter are equally essential to a complete understanding of the
* Andrew D. Spear
speara@gvsu.edu
1 Grand Valley State University, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale,
MI49401, USA
1 A casual Google search for ‘gaslighting’ turns up 3,470,000 hits,
more even than confabulation, which comes in at 1,130,000.
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230
A.D.Spear
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phenomenon. In this section I introduce my preferred char-
acterization of gaslighting, discuss two central examples of
gaslighting, and explain my difference with Abramson con-
cerning the epistemic dimension of gaslighting.
1.1 Characterizing Gaslighting
Gaslighting involves (i) the attempt by the gaslighter to
undermine his victim’s self-trust: her conception of herself
as an autonomous locus of experience, thought, and judg-
ment.2 The gasligther’s (ii) motivation is a strong desire to
neutralize his victim’s ability to criticize him and to ensure
her consent to his way of viewing things (specifically with
regard to issues relevant to the relationship, perhaps in gen-
eral), and thus to maintain control over her. The gaslighter
(iii) pursues this goal by means of a strategy of manipula-
tion, fabrication, and deception that (iv) specifically relies
upon his victim’s trust in him as a peer or authority in some
relevant sense.3
The most distinctive feature of gaslighting is that it is
not enough for the gaslighter simply to control his victim or
have things go his way: it is essential to him that the victim
herself actually come to agree with him (Abramson 2014,
pp. 10–12). Gaslighting is thus distinct from (though not
unrelated to) silencing, as well as from creating an envi-
ronment where everyone else believes the victim is wrong,
and also from creating a situation where the victim has no
choice but to acquiesce, even while not agreeing or seeing
things his way.
From the standpoint of social psychology, it makes sense
to think of gaslighting as a type of abuse. The motives
of the gaslighter are consistent with “power and control”
motives typically ascribed to abusers (Wagers 2015). Like
other forms of abuse, gaslighting is also typically persistent,
and deployed over a long period. Also, abusers are often
characterized as having difficulty identifying, managing and
expressing emotions, and as suffering from a strong sense
of vulnerability and low sense of self-worth (Smith 2007;
Wagers 2015). Someone with a psychology of this sort is
likely to be motivated to gaslight insofar as a partner who
(as a result of gaslighting) assents to the gaslighter’s view
of things is unlikely to offer emotional or other challenges.
I will consider additional similarities between gaslighting
and other types of abuse in Sect.3. However, so far as I am
aware, there do not exist empirical studies focusing specifi-
cally on the phenomenon of gaslighting. This being the case,
in the next section I will consider two examples of gaslight-
ing that have played an important role in recent discussions
in order to illustrate the phenomenon.
1.2 Gaslighting: Two Cases
In the 1944 film Gas Light, Paula (Ingrid Bergman) is the
victim of gaslighting on the part of her husband, Gregory
(Charles Boyer).4 Unbeknownst to herself, Paula is in pos-
session of priceless jewels that belonged to her aunt, a
famous opera singer mysteriously murdered when Paula
was a girl. Gregory, in fact the murderer of Paula’s aunt and
now bent on gaining possession of the jewels, romances and
marries Paula, then convinces her to return to London to live
in her aunt’s old house. Confident the jewels are in the attic,
Gregory “goes out on business” often, when in reality he
goes to the attic by a back staircase. His use of the gaslights
in the attic dims the gaslight in the house. Paula sees this,
and often hears mysterious footsteps in the attic. Gregory
repeatedly assures her that she is imagining things, sug-
gests that she is “over-tired”, and questions her memory and
perceptions. He arranges things so that it appears that she
has been stealing, hiding, or moving objects in the house.
When confronted, Paula has no recollection of having done
this, which only confirms Gregory’s “suspicion” that she
is mentally unstable. As a result, Paula’s confidence in her
own judgment and mental faculties gradually deteriorates.
Gregory’s goal is to drive her to the point where she believes
she is mad so that he can get her out of the way in order to
search for the jewels more efficiently.
A second example comes from the1952 Film Pat and
Mike, and is used extensively by Abramson (2014). Pat is
an aspiring female golfer, while her fiancée, Collier, wants
her to give up her golf career so they can get married and
she can assume wifely duties of household and children.
After a close tournament loss in which Collier’s less than
supportive approach has played a clear role, Pat finds herself
in crisis. Her confidence and life-goals shaky, Collier takes
advantage of the opportunity to press her to give up her
2 Here and throughout I use ‘she’, ‘her’, etc. to refer to the victim of
gaslighting and ‘he’, ‘his’, etc. to refer to the perpetrator. This usage
helps to avoid pronoun-confusion throughout, and fits with the situ-
ations in key examples of gaslighting (the films Gas Light and Pat
and Mike) and with the feminist slant of Abramson’s 2014 analysis
of the phenomenon. In adopting this usage, I do not mean to take a
stand concerning whether gaslighting is particularly or predominantly
perpetrated by men against women. I think that the agent and patient
of gaslighting can be mixed in any number of ways in terms of gender
(men to women, men to men, women to men, etc.) and other social
relations. Who gaslights who predominantly or the most, in terms of
social category, is an empirical question that I expect depends rather
heavily on social and cultural factors. The analysis being offered here
should apply regardless.
3 Gaslighting is not limited to intimate partners in a relationship.
As characterized here, gaslighting is possible in many interpersonal
contexts involving trust or authority, such as employee-employer rela-
tionships and relationships amongst peers of various sorts (friends,
co-workers, fellow students, etc.).
4 The film is itself based on Patrick Hamilton’s (1938) play of the
same name.
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231Gaslighting, Confabulation, andEpistemic Innocence
1 3
career (something Pat clearly does not want) and marry him
(“Why don’t you just let me take charge!” says Collier at one
point). During their conversation, Collier refuses to express
support for Pat, tacitly but persistently suggests doubt in her
ability to make judgments for herself, and issues the sub-
tle threat that her failure to see things his way might result
in the end of their relationship (“Just make sure you don’t
think it under…” Collier says, then abruptly shuts down the
conversation). Whereas Gregory’s gaslighting of Paula is
about gaining control over her by means of providing her
with significant but false evidence against trust in her own
agency, Collier’s gaslighting of Pat attempts to undermine
her sense of her own agency largely by marshalling her emo-
tional commitment to him (as well as her own diminished
self-confidence), but with the clear goal of ensuring that she
comply with his vision of their future together.
1.3 Abramson onGaslighting
On the basis of examples such as these,5 Abramson argues
that gaslighters are individuals who cannot tolerate even the
possibility of disagreement with or criticism of their way of
viewing things, at least not from certain individuals (friends,
loved ones, romantic partners, etc.). The purpose of gas-
lighting, she suggests, is not only to neutralize particular
criticisms, but to eliminate the very possibility of such criti-
cism by undermining the victim’s conception of herself as
an autonomous locus of thought and judgment.6
On Abramson’s view, gaslighting essentially involves
manipulation. It involves the gaslighter establishing a con-
text in which the victim’s standpoint has been challenged
as untrustworthy or dysfunctional (by responding with
something such as “that’s crazy”, or “you’re not seeing this
right at all!”), then issuing a demand to the victim (that she
see things the way the gaslighter sees them) where the vic-
tim’s motive for assent to the demand comes in the form of
implicit or explicit manipulative threats on the part of the
gaslighter (2014, pp. 14–15). Thus, Collier, having already
called into question Pat’s grasp of the situation, issues his
demand to Pat, and tacitly makes it clear that if she fails to
see the situation properly, he may end the relationship.
Abramson sees the manipulation in gaslighting as cen-
tral. (2014, p. 16). Rather than enlisting the victim’s consent
by offering her a genuine reason with normative force as
motive, the gaslighter enlists her consent by offering her a
threat to something she cares about, where the threat doesn’t
have genuine normative force. So, in the case of Pat and
Collier, the reason that Pat is supposed to stop trusting her-
self and give up her career is simply because of the fear
she feels at the possibility of their relationship ending. Yet,
breaking off a relationship completely is not a fair response
to someone who resists one’s unilateral demand that they
give up on something important to them: the reason Collier
offers doesn’t have genuine normative force. It only seems or
feels like it does to Pat because of her emotional investment.
Collier’s pretending to offer reasons with genuine norma-
tive force when he is really just playing on Pat’s emotional
commitment and insecurities is what makes this a type of
manipulation.
Abramson is critical of the idea that important aspects
of gaslighting are epistemic. She rejects the idea that the
gaslighter is claiming a special epistemic status (as knowing
better than his victim), or that mere lying plays a defining
role in gaslighting. She points out that the gaslighter himself
is not a sincere interlocutor concerned with getting at the
truth (2014, p. 13). Further, she argues that the gaslighter
typically uses assertions and manipulative threats rather than
offering reasons to his victim, and that the victim herself
only has “motive to assent” to the gaslighter in virtue of
the personal or professional harm that he threatens (tacitly
or explicitly) to cause her (2014, p. 15).7 While I agree the
gaslighter is typically insincere in these ways, I disagree
with Abramson concerning her apparent view that these
and other epistemic factors are not relevant, central even, to
understanding gaslighting.
In typical cases of gaslighting, the gaslighter wants the
victim to accept his views about two things. First and fore-
most, he is attempting to convince her that she should not
trust herself: that she is “crazy” or “oversensitive”, that her
grasp of the situation is too defective for her to make reliable
judgments about it, or that her judgments themselves can’t
be trusted. Second, there is typically also a specific further
claim that the victim is supposed to accept: that she has
been moving things around in the apartment and then forget-
ting, or that Pat should give up her career and marry Collier.
The gaslighter thus, arguably, has a twofold project. There
is the ongoing project of convincing his victim that she is,
in general, not competent to make certain (or most) kinds of
5 As well as others; Abramson presents an array of similar cases
meant to illuminate the phenomenon in her (2014).
6 As Abramson puts it, “…he [the gaslighter] aims to destroy the
possibility of disagreement by so radically undermining another per-
son that she has nowhere left to stand from which to disagree, no
standpoint from which her words might constitute genuine disagree-
ment.” (2014, p. 10).
7 As Abramson puts it, “…he [the gaslighter] isn’t in the first
instance claiming for himself a epistemic authority (I see this rightly,
you don’t)…what he’s doing is issuing a demand that one see things
his way…this isn’t a case of, for instance, testimonial credence (i.e.
the gaslighter isn’t asking his/her target to take it on testimony that
it’s true that “that’s crazy”). If that were the scenario, there’d be no
explanation for the gaslighter’s use of manipulative threats (implicit
or explicit). It’s the explicit or implicit manipulative threats…that
give the target anything like motive for assent” (2014, p. 15).
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232
A.D.Spear
1 3
judgments and so should not trust herself, and then there is
the appeal to the results of this project as a sort of premise
to compel compliance or ward off critique from the victim
on particular occasions. On Abramson’s view, gaslighting
is only happening if the gaslighter attempts to motivate his
victim to accept these attitudes toward herself and what he
wants by means of manipulation. Yet it seems clear that
gaslighting at least can be about the epistemic status of the
gaslighter and about giving the victim primarily epistemic
reasons to distrust her own experience and judgment. This
is precisely the scenario of Gregory and Paula in the 1944
film. It is because Paula trusts Gregory as a reliable judge of
how things are, and because he systematically manufactures
plausible evidence that her faculties are untrustworthy, that
she is brought to the point where she is no longer confident
in her own judgments. This doesn’t preclude his use of more
manipulative appeals to Paula’s emotions and insecurities at
various points, but even when the reasons he gives her are
purely (fabricated) epistemic ones, I see no reason to say that
what he is doing isn’t gaslighting.
The point just made about Paula’s trust in Gregory is cru-
cial, for it indicates a broader respect in which all gaslight-
ing involves issues of epistemic status and trust. Whether
the gaslighter challenges his victim’s self-trust primarily
manipulatively, by playing upon her emotional commitments
or insecurities, primarily epistemically (by offering reasons
or relying on his perceived credibility), or by means of some
mix of these two strategies (probably the typical case),
from the victim’s standpoint his challenges to her epistemic
agency place her in a situation of epistemic controversy or
epistemic peer disagreement, where what she and her gas-
lighter disagree about is precisely the trustworthiness or reli-
ability of her own cognitive faculties (Christenson 2009, p.
760). He maintains that she is incapable of seeing and so
responding to the situation properly, and thus that she should
trust him rather than her own grasp of what is going on.
Even if he doesn’t say it in just these terms, by making the
assertions that he does concerning his victim’s grasp of the
situation, the gaslighter is, contra Abramson, laying claim to
a special or privileged epistemic status relative to his victim
(even if this is not all that he is doing). However, from the
victim’s own standpoint, it seems her cognitive faculties are
in good order. On the plausible assumption that it is default
rational to believe that one’s cognitive faculties are basi-
cally reliable (see Zagzebski 2012, Chap.2), the victim must
adjudicate the question of whether her gaslighter’s behavior
and say-so constitute sufficient defeating reasons for her to
downgrade or abandon entirely her own epistemic self-trust
(her confidence in her cognitive abilities),8 or whether his
claims instead constitute grounds for trusting him less and
so downgrading her confidence in him.9 Indeed, part of the
vertigo experienced by victims of gaslighting seems to be
explainable precisely by the fact that it is not possible to
provide a non-question-begging justification for relying on
one’s own cognitive faculties once they have been called
into question in the way that the gaslighter does (Zagzebski
2012, Chap. 2). Whether the victim capitulates or not, what
is crucial is that the dilemma the gaslighter’s gaslighting
confronts her with has an essential epistemic dimension
having to do with trust, status, and credibility. It is the chal-
lenge to the victim’s epistemic self-trust itself, essential to
all gaslighting, and the correlated (if tacit) assertion of a
kind of epistemic privilege on the part of the gaslighter, that
gives the phenomenon of gaslighting an essential epistemic
dimension.10
In short, while I agree with the lion’s share of Abram-
son’s analysis of gaslighting, I think that she is wrong not
to recognize the possibility of offering false or misleading
reasons as a possible strategy for the gaslighter, and not to
recognize issues of trust, epistemic status, and the epistemic
dilemma confronted by the victim as essential dimensions
of every case of gaslighting. I agree that manipulation plays
8 It seems clear that there are cases where the reasonable thing for a
subject to do is accept that her cognitive agency has been impaired
on the basis of testimony and other evidence from a trusted friend
or authority (perhaps a close family member takes one aside and
9 I do not claim that the victim goes through all of this in these exact
words, or that her thought process is anything so deliberate or con-
scious as this. However, she does take her gaslighter to be basically
trustworthy, and trustworthy not just in a moral, but in an epistemic
sense. Emotional attachment is not the same as trusting someone as
basically epistemically credible. It is perfectly possible to love or be
deeply invested in someone, and yet to be confident that they are not a
reliable judge on many or most matters. Even if the victim has never
really distinguished these two questions, the gaslighter’s challenge
to her grasp of the situation de facto distinguishes them. She must
take him to be minimally sincere and reliable in an epistemic sense
in order to take his challenge to her grasp of the situation seriously.
If she did not think he was epistemically trustworthy or had some
reason to doubt that he was, she might still go along with what he
wanted for moral or prudential reasons, but she would simply have no
good reason, even from her own standpoint, to change her mind about
her own credibility and agency.
10 It is because of the way in which trust is at issue in all gaslight-
ing that I explicitly include in my characterization above that the gas-
lighter (iv) relies upon his victim’s trust in him as a peer or author-
ity in some relevant sense. Even a stranger could gaslight someone,
as long as the person being gaslighted believed that the stranger was
essentially informed and sincere in his claims: as long as she trusted
him. But without this basic threshold of trust, gaslighting simply
wouldn’t get off the ground. If the victim doesn’t trust the person who
is attempting to gaslight her, doesn’t think that he is a basically sin-
cere source of accurate information or evaluation, then the gaslighting
project gets no traction.
suggests that one appears to be suffering from early stages of Alz-
heimer’s, providing specific instances in recent months as partial
support). In gaslighting, the gaslighter presents himself as such an
authoritative source of information, and the victim must decide
whether his authority or her own is more trustworthy.
Footnote 8 (continued)
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233Gaslighting, Confabulation, andEpistemic Innocence
1 3
a fundamental role in gaslighting, but this is compatible
with acknowledging the epistemic dimensions just outlined.
Indeed, a pre-condition for successful manipulation is pre-
cisely that the victim have some degree of trust in the gas-
lighter’s credibility. It is the fact, as I take it, that gaslighting
involves both a manipulative and an epistemic dimension
that helps make clear the role played in it by confabulation.
I introduce and discuss confabulation in the next section, and
explain its role in gaslighting in Sect.3.
2 Confabulation
Confabulation is a multi-faceted phenomena being studied
from a large number of disciplinary perspectives (Hirstein
2009a, b). In psychology, confabulation first had to do with
false reports about memory issued by patients suffering from
neurological disorders, though confabulation is recognized
to occur in a range of pathological cases including reports
about emotions, perceptions, somatic awareness (particularly
of paralyzed limbs), and intentions (Kopelman 2010; Hirst-
ein 2009b). In the case of memory, patients might report,
when asked what they had done during the day, a series
of events or activities that are inconsistent or implausible
relative to each other, or relative to the context in which
the question was asked (though the patient has been in the
hospital for days or weeks, she may report having gone to
see friends or visiting a city a significant distance away). In
the case of perceptual awareness, patients with a paralyzed
limb may deny that the limb is paralyzed and even tell stories
about why they “choose not to use it” when asked.11
While confabulation originates in the context of psychol-
ogy and pathology, researchers have been quite successful in
prompting confabulation in subjects with no underlying neu-
rological lesions or damage. Nisbett and Wilson famously
prompted subjects to confabulate by offering them a row of
retail objects (e.g. a row of socks) to choose from, then ask-
ing them why they chose the object that they did (rather than
the others). In one version of this study subjects were offered
four identical pairs of nylon stockings to choose from, while
in another they were offered four different nightgowns (Nis-
bett and Wilson 1977, pp. 243–234). In both versions of the
experiment, subjects consistently chose the object furthest to
the right (the right-most pair of socks was particularly popu-
lar), yet no subject cited the object’s location as their reason
for choosing. Instead, the subjects confabulated. When asked
why they chose the object they had, they generated plausible
but, when seen in light of the data generated by the experi-
ment, false reasons for their choices (Nisbett and Wilson
1977). Responses elicited in some social psychology experi-
ments have also been labelled confabulatory. For example,
Jonathan Haidt presented subjects with a vignette describ-
ing consensual incestuous sex between two adult siblings
and asked them about the moral acceptability of what the
individuals described had done (Haidt 2001). A majority of
subjects objected morally to the behavior described in the
vignette. When asked to explain their judgment, they per-
sisted in pointing to possible harm to future off-spring as a
reason even when the case had been described in such a way
as to rule this possibility out completely. These responses
seem confabulatory insofar as they involve subjects sin-
cerely asserting as reasons things that, given the evidence
they themselves are aware of (the vignette) are unsupported.
Max Coltheart has recently proposed a basic framework
for understanding confabulation of both the pathological
and the non-pathological sort (2017). On Coltheart’s view,
all confabulation has the following two things in common.
First, a subject is asked a question concerning something
about which it is generally expected people are able to give
answers. However, in cases that elicit confabulation the sub-
ject does not know the answer. This places the subject in a
quandary. Despite a strong felt need for an answer to the
question, no answer is forthcoming. This sets the second part
of the confabulation process into motion. Coltheart argues
that there is a “deep human drive for causal understand-
ing”, one that motivates subjects to attempt to make sense
out of or provide an explanation for things.12 We want to
understand things, and in cases where we don’t, the desire
to understand sets abductive reasoning (inference to the
best explanation) into motion in order to provide us with
a more or less satisfying understanding (2017, pp. 67–68).
On Coltheart’s view, confabulation is just the ordinary drive
for causal understanding deploying abductive reasoning in
a situation that is abnormal. Lacking direct access to the
answer, the subject considers some part of the evidence that
she does have relevant access to and formulates a plausible
(from her standpoint) response based on it: she confabulates.
Ema Sullivan-Bissett, in her discussion of confabulation
and implicit bias, offers an account that is consistent with
Coltheart’s, but more nuanced. She identifies five major
features of confabulation: confabulations are (1) false or ill-
grounded, (2) offered in response to a question, (3) they have
11 The most prominent neurophysiological explanation of confabula-
tion is that it is the result of two related or interconnected pieces of
cognitive damage: (i) damage to some relatively modular cognitive
process (memory, perception, somatic awareness, object-recognition,
emotional response) coupled with (ii) damage to some less-modular
executive system that would, normally, facilitate recognition of the
damage/malfunction in (i). This leaves the subject with a cognitive
impairment that she is unable to recognize, leading her to confabulate
or fill in gaps when questioned (Hirstein 2005, 2009b, pp. 4–5).
12 Coltheart relies here in particular on the work of Alison Gopnik
(2000).
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234
A.D.Spear
1 3
a motivational component (subjects have desires or interests
that push them to confabulate), (4) they fill in a “gap” in
the subject’s cognitive system, a perceived dissonance or
incongruity in the subject’s understanding, and (5) they are
reported with no intention to deceive (Sullivan-Bissett 2015,
pp. 551–553).
Sullivan-Bissett offers the example of Roger, a univer-
sity professor who has an implicit bias against women: he
tacitly thinks they are worse colleagues and scholars than
men. Roger is also on the committee reviewing CVs for a
position open in his department. Because of his implicit
bias, he declines to extend an offer for campus interview to
Katie, a woman whose CV is, as a matter of fact, as good as
or slightly better than those of the men who were selected.
When asked why he did not extend an offer to Katie, Roger
responds that he believed her CV was not as good as those of
the other candidates. The question at issue is why he believes
this. If Roger says “because the CV is worse than that of
other candidates”, then he is confabulating. Roger is wrong
in two ways here. First, he is wrong about the real cause of
his belief that Katie’s CV was worse than those of the other
candidates: he says the cause is that it is worse, but the fact is
that his implicit bias is what caused this belief. Second, he is
wrong in his apparent assessment that the evidence available
to him rationally supports or justifies the belief that Katie’s
CV is worse than those of the other candidates.
Roger here fulfills all of Sullivan-Bissett’s conditions. His
belief is (1) false and ill-grounded. (2) He was asked a ques-
tion, and issued a response. (3) We can suppose that Roger
has strong motivations not to believe that Katie’s CV was as
good as those of other candidates, stemming perhaps from
strong desires to be (and think of himself as being) objec-
tive and unbiased, in particular not to be a sexist person.
His response is thus motivated. (4) His response also fills
a gap in his available evidence. Roger knows he believes
Katie’s CV is worse and knows he did not invite her for an
interview. He also knows he has seen her CV. Were he to
admit that her CV is as good as or better than those of the
other candidates he would encounter cognitive dissonance, a
“gap”, that would force him to search for other hypotheses to
explain why he holds the belief he does (among which alter-
native hypotheses, of course, would be a failure of objectiv-
ity on his part, or that he is implicitly sexist). Finally, (5)
he responded sincerely. So far as Roger is able to tell, his
response is truthful and accurate.
I think that Sullivan-Bissett’s discussion gets both con-
fabulation and Roger essentially correct. I would emphasize,
as a further elucidation of confabulation, that both patho-
logical and non-pathological confabulation do seem specifi-
cally to involve “explanatory inference” or inference to the
best explanation. This is the point made by Coltheart above,
and Sullivan-Bissett’s discussion of false and ill-grounded
beliefs in confabulation specifically mentions “ill-grounded
explanations”, suggesting that she too sees explanatory
abductive inference as central to confabulation (2015, p.
551). I think that the “gap” that subjects who confabulate
confront is typically a form of dissonance resulting either
from incoherence within their belief set or from being con-
fronted with new evidence that challenges something they
already believe. In the philosophy of science, it is commonly
recognized that disconfirming evidence forces adjustment’s
in a subject’s belief-structure, but rarely strictly requires the
rejection of any one specific belief since auxiliary hypoth-
eses can always be rejected (or formulated, depending on the
case) instead.13 Even the question of which of two compet-
ing hypotheses is “the most” rational in light of available
evidence may not always have a clear answer (Kuhn 1977).
I do not think that hypothesis testing in science and
hypothesis testing in ordinary life are that different (ordinary
hypothesis testing is, if anything, typically less rigorous),
and it is thus not difficult to see how a subject who is moti-
vated to see (and not to see) things in a certain way might
confabulate, that is, fill in a gap in his belief structure with a
hypothesis that is more psychologically desirable rather than
with the one that a cool objective assessment of the evidence
might require.14
In what follows I will presuppose Sullivan-Bissett’s
analysis, adding the specification to her condition (1) that
confabulatory beliefs are typically ill-grounded in the sense
of being an abductive inference that ignores or misrepresents
important features of the subject’s total situation, under-
standing, or evidence. The next section examines how con-
fabulation is involved in prototypical cases of gaslighting.
13 The point is sufficiently common as to be included in introductory
texts on the history and philosophy of science, for example DeWitt
(2010, Chap. 4.) Thus, neo-Aristotelian Ptolemaists took the fact that
an object dropped from the top of a tower falls in a line parallel to the
tower and strikes the ground directly beneath where it was dropped as
decisive evidence that the Earth did not rotate on its axis, while Gali-
leo took this apparently disconfirming reasoning to be both question-
begging, and also explainable in terms of the Copernican hypothesis
of a moving Earth (Galileo 1632/1989, pp. 61–81).
14 This point is further driven home by so-called “theory-theory”
views of self-knowledge according to which subjects typically come
to know their own beliefs, desires, and commitments not by some
type of direct introspection, but rather in the same way as they do
those of others: by formulating hypotheses based on observed speech
and behavior (Carruthers 1996; McKinnon 2003). If self-knowledge
too is a largely abductive process subject to underdetermination and
to being compromised by motivated cognitions of various sorts, then
the scope of confabulation, both pathological and non-pathological,
in human cognition may be very great indeed (Carruthers 2010).
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235Gaslighting, Confabulation, andEpistemic Innocence
1 3
3 The Role ofConfabulation inGaslighting
In Sect.1 I proposed an analysis of gaslighting according to
which the phenomenon has an essential epistemic dimen-
sion. The victim of gaslighting finds herself confronted with
a dilemma concerning who to trust or view as more credible:
herself or her gaslighter. This is not merely a prudential or
normative question, but also an epistemic one. It should be
clear that there is also a very strong motivational component
in gaslighting. The victim is emotionally invested in the gas-
lighter and in their relationship. Further, the gaslighter will
typically be emotionally invested in the victim as well. In
Sect.2 I followed Sullivan-Bissett and Coltheart in treating
confabulation as an ill-grounded explanation of an apparent
gap in understanding where the ill-groundedness is due to
motivational factors on the part of the confabulator, and to
unusual or pathological features of the situation. Like gas-
lighting, confabulation thus has both epistemic and broadly
normative motivational components. In this section I bring
these two discussions together to argue that gaslighting will
typically involve confabulation on the part of both the victim
and the gaslighter. In the next section, I consider whether or
not such confabulation is epistemically innocent.
First, I say that confabulation is typically involved in gas-
lighting, but this suggests “not always”. Why not? Because
I think that a certain kind of “pure”, confabulation-free gas-
lighting is possible for both gaslighter and victim. Consider
again Gregory from the 1944 film Gas Light. He seems fully
aware of his intention to convince Paula she is losing her
mind. He is fully aware that she is not really crazy and that
he is methodically deceiving her and manipulating her by
means of the trust she has in him. There is no “gap” between
Gregory’s actual intentions and the intentions he would will-
ingly ascribe to himself (being the kind of man who would
engage in this sort of deception and manipulation does not
bother him), and no incongruence between how he thinks
Paula is and how she really is (he is aware she is not crazy).
Gregory has no need for confabulation, and none seems to
be going on. Consider then his victim.
Paula clearly confronts the epistemic challenge I identi-
fied above: she must decide whether to trust Gregory’s word
and interpretation of what is going on or to trust her own
cognitive faculties. Since Gregory is challenging her grasp
of things in a rather comprehensive way, she must choose.
Yet all appearances indicate that Gregory is trustworthy,
and he not only asserts that Paula is losing her mind, but
provides concrete instances where it seems clear that she is
(the lights seem to her to be dim, but he assures her they are
not; she does not remember moving or stealing something,
but both Gregory and other witnesses (at his orchestration)
testify that she has). There is nothing irrational about trust-
ing another person’s cognitive faculties over one’s own in
particular instances, and even about very important matters
(Zagzebski 2012, Chap.1).15 There is no reason why a per-
son should not even, under certain conditions, trust another
person to tell them that they are cognitively malfunctioning
in rather global ways, as when a close friend or trusted phy-
sician delicately informs someone that they may be suffering
from Alzheimer’s. Thus, there could be cases of gaslighting
in which the gaslighter is so effective in providing his victim
with good (though false) reasons to trust him, and in provid-
ing her with good (though false or fabricated) reasons not
to trust herself, that the on-balance most reasonable thing
for her to do is to accept his assessment. No gap in her evi-
dence, so no bad abductive inference, so no confabulation
is going on. Paula in the film Gas Light comes close to such
a case.16 Given the information available to her (as a result
of her particularly thorough and rational gaslighter), she has
reached an explanatorily adequate conclusion.
While Gregory of the Gas Light is possible, I think the
typical gaslighter probably lacks full awareness or apprecia-
tion of the nature of his motivations, intentions, and behav-
ior, and would strongly prefer not to think of himself as a
deceptive manipulator. Returning to the idea, discussed in
Sect.1, that gaslighting is a kind of abuse, the foregoing
characterization is consistent with the fact that participants
in court-ordered batterer intervention programs typically
display significant degrees of self-deception (Smith 2007;
Vecina etal. 2016). Indeed, such individuals typically
maintain that they have done nothing wrong, normalize
their actions, present their punishment as unfair or as part
of a system “rigged” against them, and present their partner
(and victim) as equally responsible, ungrateful, or outright
deserving of what happened (Smith 2007).
Transferring this model to the gaslighter, what seems
likely is that (a) he will typically be unaware of or fail to
fully grasp the nature of the motivations and intentions
15 A near-sighted person without corrective lenses may well trust a
normal-sighted person to help them navigate the park. Patients typi-
cally trust doctors to be better judges about health and disease.
16 I leave to the side here the paradoxical nature of someone ration-
ally deciding that their cognitive faculties are globally untrustworthy.
After all, since it is their own faculties that ultimately get them to this
conclusion, shouldn’t they immediately distrust it? I think this is an
interesting and significant issue and hope to make sense of it in future
work. For the moment, to alleviate the pressure it puts on my descrip-
tion of Paula, I think that it is possible for a person to reasonably con-
clude that they are untrustworthy in a vast majority of cases or about
the most important cases, even while retaining some trust in their
ability to draw and accept the consequences of this very conclusion.
All the gaslighter really needs, in order to feel that he has achieved
his goal, is that his victim view herself as cognitively deficient and
lacking a clear grasp of the situation relative to him. This is still a sig-
nificant loss in epistemic self-trust and an act of subordination on the
part of the victim, even if it does not amount to the total undermining
that the gaslighter aims for.
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236
A.D.Spear
1 3
guiding his behavior and (b) will not want to think of himself
as the kind of manipulative deceiver that would engage in
gaslighting. Given a gaslighter who satisfies these two con-
ditions, confabulation is likely. First, it will be hard for the
gaslighter to persistently ignore the fact that his behaviors
toward the victim are atypical, condescending, or cruel.17
Since he is committed to (b), this introduces a gap into his
understanding that must be explained. That the victim in fact
deserves this treatment because she is deeply wrong or mis-
taken about the situation would be a natural, if ill-grounded,
explanation for the gaslighter to give, and hence confabula-
tion. If, in addition, there are good reasons for the gaslighter
to think that his victim is not so hopelessly out of touch with
reality as his behavior suggests (as I take it there typically
will be), then he confronts another gap in his understanding
which will, in turn, require more confabulation.18 Such a
gaslighter is motivated to confabulate by two sets of desires:
his desire not to think of himself as a deceptive manipulator,
and his desire to have his victim accept his way of viewing
things absolutely and without objection. These two desires
conflict, so it would take a truly unaware gaslighter to never
notice gaps or inconsistencies in his behavior toward his
partner (victim), hence in the typical case such an individual
will be driven to confabulate in one way or another. I don’t
insist that all gaslighters will have to confabulate in this way,
but I think that many will and do, and this will be enough for
the points I want to make below.
Concerning the role of confabulation in the victim’s
response to gaslighting, I think that most cases, and nearly
all cases of successful gaslighting, will involve confabula-
tion on the part of the victim. While it is possible that the
best explanation for her available evidence really is that her
own faculties cannot be trusted (as in the case of Gregory
and Paula perhaps), this seems unlikely. In the typical case,
the victim of gaslighting will have to rationalize or explain
away some of the gaslighter’s behaviors, at least early on.
His comments, criticisms, and demands will strike her,
rightly so, as a bit odd, out of place, or inappropriate. Per-
haps, given her total evidence concerning him, it will even
be reasonable at the beginning to ascribe such behavior to
stress or tiredness on his part, or to some inadvertent and
momentary failing on her own. However, as his gaslight-
ing behavior persists and she finds herself under more and
more emotional and psychological duress when she interacts
with him, the growing evidence against his trustworthiness
will call out for an explanation (she finds herself confronted
with a “gap” in her understanding), and after a certain point
this explanation will have to be confabulatory: an explana-
tion that is not consistent with the victim’s total available
evidence, but adopted as a result of her strong desire e.g. to
maintain the relationship with the gaslighter. Under these
conditions, when the gaslighter is successful, he is so in part
in virtue of the victim’s having told herself a confabulatory
story according to which he remains trustworthy while the
trustworthiness of her own cognitive faculties or agency are
downgraded in her own estimation. This is arguably the case
of Pat from Pat and Mike. Unlike Paula, Pat does not find
herself confronted with an intricate web of fabricated but
convincing evidence for the conclusion that she shouldn’t
trust herself but should trust Collier. On the contrary, the
gaslighting is rather transparent. Pat’s total available evi-
dence doesn’t favor trust in Collier’s sincerity or good judg-
ment over trust in herself, so if she goes along with him
(by actually believing what he says) she must tell herself an
ill-grounded story about how he is right.
There is also empirical support for the idea that victims
of abuse will rationalize or confabulate. It is relatively well-
established that victims of childhood abuse develop strate-
gies to isolate, minimize, or internalize (blame themselves
for) abusive behavior on the part of someone they trust, and
that this affects their ability to identify or label experiences
as abuse (Goldsmith and Freyd 2005). These same strate-
gies, specifically normalization of abuse and blaming one’s
self for the abuse, are found in adult victims of verbal abuse
and domestic violence (Hannem etal. 2015). Victims of ver-
bal abuse tend to normalize their verbal abuser’s behavior
and view themselves as at least partially responsible for it,
explicitly calling it “abusive” only in retrospect after events
have escalated resulting in more serious (and obvious) abuse.
It is not hard to see how there would be parallels to this
for typical victims of gaslighting. While the victim’s best
available evidence concerning her gaslighter may be that
it is he, and not she, that should not be trusted (something
she can’t quite name is wrong with how he is treating her),
her strong attachment to the gaslighter and fear of potential
social stigma, coupled with the challenging nature of passing
judgments of this sort to begin with, provide her with ample
motivation to come up with an alternative explanation for the
situation, one according to which the gaslighter’s behavior
is normal and it is she, not he, who is in some way at fault.
It is in this sense that victims of gaslighting can and, I think,
typically will confabulate.
17 See Holroyd (2015), especially 514, and 519–521 for a discussion
of how even a subject who is not fully aware of his precise intentions
and motivations might nevertheless be held responsible for failing to
identify morally relevant features of his own behavior and actions.
18 Presumably a minimization of these reasons, or a reinterpretation
of them that is consistent with his gaslighting behavior and view of
the victim.
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237Gaslighting, Confabulation, andEpistemic Innocence
1 3
4 Epistemic Innocence
Recent research by Lisa Bortolotti and others has begun
challenging the assumption that defective cognitive pro-
cesses such as delusions and confabulations are blamewor-
thy or categorially epistemically bad (Bortolotti and Cox
2009; Bortolotti 2015; Sullivan-Bissett 2015; Bortolotti and
Sullivan-Bissett 2018). First, it is not clear that individuals
who have confabulatory or delusional beliefs are responsi-
ble or should be blamed for this. For example, pathological
confabulation seems to occur as a result of factors of which
the confabulator is unware and that he is unable to access. At
least some cases of non-pathological confabulation are simi-
lar.19 Second, though not ideal, it turns out that processes
such as confabulation and delusion can sometimes confer
epistemic benefits not available by other means (Bortolotti
and Cox 2009; Bortolotti 2015). This is significant because
it suggests that merely condemning such processes, or dis-
couraging them at all costs, may do more harm than good.
This point, in turn, may have consequences for the correct
way of treating patients who confabulate or are delusional in
clinical (and perhaps non-clinical) contexts (Bortolotti and
Sullivan-Bissett 2018).
When a cognitive process, such as confabulation, is
indeed both the best or only option available to the subject
and confers some epistemic benefit rather than none, that
process is epistemically innocent. Bortolotti models epis-
temic innocence on the innocence excuse in law (2015, p.
495). A normally illegal action might be excused if the sub-
ject did not intend to perform the action, or if she took the
action knowingly but in a context where taking it brought
about some good or prevented some harm that no alterna-
tive available action could have. By analogy with this, a
cognitive process is epistemically innocent if it meets two
conditions:
Epistemic Benefit: The delusional belief confers a sig-
nificant epistemic benefit to an agent at the time of its
adoption.
No Alternatives: Other beliefs that would confer the
same benefit are not available to that agent at that time.
(Bortolotti 2015, p.496)
If a cognitive process and the beliefs it produces are epis-
temically innocent in this sense then, Bortolotti argues, we
should at the very least give it a second look in order to
understand what is epistemically valuable about it, and how
that value might be recovered and optimized even in the non-
ideal situations where such cognitions occur.
4.1 Confabulation asEpistemically Innocent
Sullivan-Bissett has argued that confabulation, in cases such
as her case of Roger and his confabulation due to implicit
bias (discussed above), can be epistemically innocent. This
is so first because Roger has no better alternative available
to him at the moment when he must explain why he believes
that Katie has a worse CV than the other candidates. While
we may all have a general duty to become aware of and con-
trol for our implicit biases, Roger has not done this, so at the
moment he confabulates concerning his belief he is unaware
of the role of his implicit bias in causing it. Thus, while there
are alternative and better explanations for Roger’s total evi-
dence (and thus alternative beliefs that would be more rea-
sonable or better grounded for him), his implicit bias renders
these unavailable to him at the moment he confabulates.
Second, Sullivan-Bissett argues that confabulation such
as Roger’s is epistemically innocent because it provides two
types of epistemic benefit. First, in confabulating, a subject
is at least forced to think about and provide explanations for
his beliefs or actions in an explicit way, and doing this has
a general tendency to lead agents to more true beliefs in the
long run (p. 555). Insofar as confabulation is an occasion for
reflection, and insofar as it forces the subject to confront the
“gap” in his evidence or beliefs, this seems like a positive
from an epistemic standpoint.20
The second epistemic benefit is that confabulation pre-
serves coherence in a subject’s beliefs and conception of
themselves (Sullivan-Bissett (2015) p. 556). Confabulators
don’t tell just any story, they tell a story that closes a gap in
their beliefs, and they typically do so in a way that maintains
consistency among their beliefs and in their conceptions of
themselves. Sullivan-Bissett recognizes the point, already
raised by Bortolotti and Cox (2009, p. 557), that maintaining
such coherence of self-concept in the case of confabulation
typically comes at the expense of truth, challenging the idea
that it is epistemically beneficial. However, she points out
that confabulation can also have benefits of a non-epistemic
sort that themselves may sustain or support epistemic ben-
efits indirectly (pp. 555, 557). While maintaining a coher-
ent self-concept by means of confabulation may come at
the price of truth, there is value, perhaps even independ-
ent value, in self-trust (Pasnau 2015). If having a coherent
20 Imagine if Roger went on forming beliefs based on his implicit
biases and was never challenged to explain himself. This would
surely be epistemically bad, whereas having to confabulate is argua-
bly epistemically good insofar as doing so, or doing so often, encour-
ages reflection which itself is more likely, all things being equal, to
get the subject (Roger) to epistemically better beliefs in the future.
19 e.g. Subjects who confabulated reasons for choosing the object
furthest to the right in Nisbett and Wilson’s experiment can hardly be
blamed for failing to cite a “cognitive bias for objects located near the
right hand” as the reason for their selection.
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238
A.D.Spear
1 3
self-concept is the precondition for such self-trust, and so for
the possibility of engaging in meaningful epistemic practices
at all, then confabulation for this purpose at least keeps the
confabulator “in the epistemic game”.
4.2 Confabulation, Gaslighting, andEpistemic
Innocence
I think Sullivan-Bissett is right that some cases of confabu-
lation are epistemically innocent. However, considering the
role of confabulation in gaslighting can help tighten up in
helpful ways what it means for a practice to be epistemically
beneficial. I’ve argued above that gaslighting will typically
involve confabulation on the part of both gaslighter and vic-
tim. Here I will explain why such confabulation, even if the
best alternative available, is not only not epistemically ben-
eficial, but positively epistemically harmful. I don’t take the
fact that confabulation in gaslighting fails to be epistemically
innocent to be a counter-example to Sullivan-Bissett’s point
about its epistemically innocent role in confabulation result-
ing from implicit bias. Sullivan-Bissett follows the literature
on epistemic innocence in claiming that confabulation can
be beneficial under certain circumstances, not that it always
is (Bortolotti and Cox 2009, p. 557; Bortolotti and Sullivan-
Bissett 2018). What the case of gaslighting does illustrate,
however, is that whether or not a defective process such as
confabulation will confer the cognitive benefits that the epis-
temic innocence literature typically identifies—namely (i)
a greater likelihood of continued reflection and inquiry and
(ii) maintenance of a coherent and efficacious self-concept
which will, in turn, underwrite further inquiry—will depend
in very specific ways on the context in which such faulty
cognitions are deployed. While the literature thus far has
used the key conditions of epistemic innocence to determine
when it does apply to specific faulty cognitions (confabu-
lation, delusion, clinical memory distortions, etc.), under-
standing more precisely when it does not apply is equally
important. At least if the goal of developing the notion of
epistemic innocence is, in part, to deploy it to positive effect
in social and clinical contexts.21
That being said, why does the confabulation involved in
typical forms of gaslighting fail to be epistemically inno-
cent? First, it is plausible that, in many cases of gaslight-
ing, no alternative and less faulty cognitions are available
to either the perpetrator or the victim of gaslighting than
the confabulations that they engage in.22 Thus it probably
isn’t the “no alternatives” condition that confabulation in
gaslighting violates. Sullivan-Bissett distinguishes between
three types of availability: a cognition is “strictly unavail-
able” if it is “based on information that is opaque to intro-
spection, or otherwise irretrievable”; a cognition is “motiva-
tionally unavailable” if it is inhibited or cannot be accessed
due to motivational factors; and a cognition is “explanatorily
unavailable” if it is, from the subject’s point of view, so
implausible that she is not even willing to entertain it (Sul-
livan-Bissett 2015, p. 554). She stresses the importance of
taking particular factors of individual cases into account, but
seems willing to consider the “no alternatives” condition of
epistemic innocence satisfied as a result of any of these three
types of unavailability, so long as the subject’s confabula-
tion is sincere and her confidence in it is sufficiently high
to preclude her seriously doubting it (2015, pp. 557–558).
For the confabulating gaslighter and his victim, the una-
vailability at issue will most likely be either motivational
or explanatory, or perhaps some mix of these two. If the
strength of their motivations is sufficient to preclude serious
consideration of alternatives to their confabulated beliefs,
then the confabulation at issue satisfies the “no alternatives”
condition. Similarly, if the degree to which alternative expla-
nations are implausible to either the gaslighter or his victim
is sufficiently great as to preclude serious consideration of
them, then the confabulation at issue satisfies the “no alter-
natives” condition also. I do not think this will always be so.
However, the type of gaslighter who is likely to confabulate
is one who simultaneously has and acts on the motives and
intention to gaslight, but is not explicitly aware of this fact,
even while possessing a strong desire not to view himself as
a manipulative deceiver. It is not difficult to imagine such
an individual being sufficiently strongly motivated in both
of these ways as to both confabulate about himself and his
victim, and be unwaveringly sure that his confabulation is
correct [as the self-deceiving abusers discussed above seem
clearly to be (Sect.3), and (Smith 2007)].
As for the confabulating victim of gaslighting, her
confabulation seems to leave alternative cognitions both
motivationally and explanatorily unavailable. The victim
has trust in the gaslighter and also, typically, a strong per-
sonal investment. Her confabulated hypothesis is that the
gaslighter’s seemingly unusual and inappropriate behav-
ior is, as he himself tells her, not actually unusual but is
rather occasioned by shortcomings or failures in herself
that she is unable to appreciate. While the victim may
initially be unsure about her confabulation in this case,
21 A project that seems to be quite productively afoot in (Bortolotti
and Sullivan-Bissett 2018).
22 It is not crucial to the point I want to make that alternative cogni-
tions be unavailable to confabulators in the context of gaslighting. If
such alternative cognitions are available, then their confabulations are
obviously not epistemically innocent by this token alone. However, as
I argue, I do think that alternative cognitions are often unavailable in
this context, and I think that this being the case is better, as it places
the focus squarely on the question of whether or not these candidates
for epistemic innocence really are epistemically beneficial.
Footnote 22 (continued)
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239Gaslighting, Confabulation, andEpistemic Innocence
1 3
she has strong motivations to accept it and, once she does
give it credence, she actually undermines her ability to
trust future doubts concerning it. At this point she too
seems to satisfy the “no alternatives” condition.
Concerning the “epistemic benefit” condition, how-
ever, the confabulation of gaslighter and of victim alike
not only fail to confer epistemic benefits, but are posi-
tively harmful to them, and so clearly fail to satisfy this
condition. The primary function of the gaslighter’s con-
fabulation is to enable his gaslighting activity, to under-
write and support his effort at gaslighting his victim.
Further, it provides him with defeating evidence for the
legitimacy of his victim’s otherwise reasonable resistance
to his actions. Confabulation epistemically enables the
gaslighter, and if his victim begins to concede to his con-
fabulation, even marginally, the confabulation becomes a
self-fulfilling prophecy. While it is true that the confabu-
lation allows the gaslighter to maintain a coherent and
positive sense of himself as an epistemic agent, this seems
to be precisely a case that raises doubts concerning the
epistemic value of such “reflective agential coherence”
taken by itself.
Similarly, the victim’s confabulation gains her no
epistemic benefit, as the confabulation she is most likely
to engage in only aids and abets someone who is push-
ing her toward a total breakdown of epistemic self-trust.
Whether the victim’s confabulation simply rationalizes
some instance of her gaslighter’s behavior without under-
mining her trust in him, or involves conceding that some
part of her experience, thought, or judgment concerning
the situation is indeed defective, her confabulation either
preserves the gaslighter’s project unchallenged or actively
assists it by providing her with the very beliefs that he
desires her to have. Interestingly, the victim’s confabula-
tion does not allow her to maintain a coherent view of
herself as an epistemic agent, though it does preserve
coherence in other areas of her belief set and commit-
ments by providing a rationale that renders consistent her
trust in her gaslighter with his otherwise seemingly objec-
tionable behavior. Thus, as in the case of the gaslighter,
the fact that confabulation preserves some kind of coher-
ence in the victim’s belief set does not seem, in itself, to
confer any epistemic benefit. The victim’s confabulated
story also does not seem likely to lead her to more true
beliefs in the future. Indeed, it seems uniformly epistemi-
cally bad. After a certain point what may have begun as
mere assertion and manipulation by the gaslighter takes
on an evidential character and generates an epistemically
poisonous feedback loop as both gaslighter and victim
acquire self-perpetuating evidence for the truth of what
they are each inclined to believe in any case.
4.3 Consequences forEpistemic Innocence
andConfabulation
The upshot of this consideration of confabulation and gas-
lighting is that whether or not a defective cognitive practice
counts as epistemically beneficial will depend greatly on the
context, especially the social and interpersonal context in
which it is deployed. In the case of gaslighting, the primary
occasion for confabulation arises when the gaslighter and the
victim interact with each other. However, this is a situation
that is quite rigged, one where even protracted discussion
is unlikely to result in more true beliefs, or even a tendency
toward this. What this seems to show is that whether confab-
ulation has positive epistemic benefits at all depends a great
deal on the interpersonal context in which the confabulation
is elicited. Merely having the occasion to provide confabu-
latory reasons for one’s actions may have no tendency to
produce more true beliefs in the long run if the context in
which confabulation occurs also sustains and validates the
explanations the confabulator offers. For example, one tacit
racist might confabulate his reasons for not hiring an African
American applicant for a position to another tacit racist only
to find his confabulation confirmed and endorsed: it turns
out they both think, contrary to the available evidence, that
the candidate’s CV was inferior to those of his non-African
American competitors for the position. The epistemic ben-
efits or harms of cognitions of the sort under consideration
are particularly vulnerable to how others respond to them,
both at a time and across time. Ideally, the reactions of oth-
ers will minimize the epistemic harms of the cognition,
while encouraging and assisting in the maximization of its
epistemic benefits, but there is no guarantee of this.
Concerning maintaining a coherent sense of one’s self
and one’s situation in the world by means of confabulation,
the case of gaslighting seems to suggest that mere coherence
is not sufficient for epistemic benefit, but only a coherent
self-understanding that has some tendency toward the sub-
sequent forming of true beliefs, or at least a tendency toward
cultivating a greater openness to evidence and responsive-
ness to reasons on the part of the subject. Once again, if two
tacit racists confabulate together and, in doing so, maintain a
coherent sense of themselves and the world that leaves their
racism entirely intact, it is not clear what if any epistemic
benefit has been obtained. Not only do they sustain their
false beliefs, but they also sustain the tendency to confabu-
late precisely in the way that is epistemically bad, as a way
of avoiding or cutting off further reflection and questioning
rather than engaging in it. I would propose, speculatively,
that it should be possible to distinguish between coherent
self-concepts that do confer some epistemic benefits, those
that confer neither epistemic benefits nor harms, and those
that confer epistemic harms, and to try to provide some char-
acterization of the epistemic virtues and vices of each, and
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.

240
A.D.Spear
1 3
of how these might be cultivated. The problem with con-
fabulation in gaslighting is that, in the context it is deployed,
it is not just epistemically neutral, but harmful in the types
of self-concept that it sustains, and in the types of inquiry
that it rules out. I imagine there may well be analogues of
this in other cases.23
5 Conclusion
In the foregoing, I have developed two main lines of argu-
ment. The first is that prototypical cases of gaslighting
involve confabulation on the part of both gaslighter and vic-
tim. Such confabulation is continuous with other instances
of confabulation discussed in the literature, but provides a
more detailed look at how confabulation might be deployed
and sustained in the context of interpersonal relationships.
Considering the role of gaslighting in interpersonal rela-
tionships, even deformed ones such as those involved in
gaslighting, raises the possibility that the phenomenon of
confabulation may be even more widespread than currently
thought. Second, I have used the example of confabulation
in gaslighting to motivate considering the role of contex-
tual and psychological factors in determining when a defec-
tive cognitive process is epistemically innocent. In many
prototypical cases of gaslighting, confabulations will be the
only cognitions available, while also being epistemically
harmful because they actually perpetuate the subject’s epis-
temically harmful beliefs, practices, and dispositions. Seeing
that and why this is so helps to more fully articulate the con-
ditions under which a cognitive process such as confabula-
tion is likely to be (or not be) epistemically beneficial, which
is helpful both in clarifying the concepts of epistemic benefit
(and so epistemic innocence) itself, and when considering
possible applications of the notion of epistemic innocence
in social and clinical contexts.
Acknowledgements For suggestions and conversation about gaslight-
ing in all its forms I am especially grateful to Katherine Tullmann. An
earlier version of this paper received helpful comments and criticism
from all of the participants at the Grand Valley State Philosophy Sum-
mer Research Group, and from participants at the very stimulating
Workshop on Confabulation and Epistemic Innocence organized by
Elisabetta Lalumera. The final version of this essay is far better than it
otherwise would have been thanks to generous and insightful comments
from two anonymous referees for the journal.
Compliance with Ethical Standards
Conflict of interest The author declares that he has no conflict of inter-
est.
Research Involving Human Participants or Animals The article does
not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed
by any of the authors.
Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Crea-
tive Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creat iveco
mmons .org/licen ses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribu-
tion, 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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