A knowledge-first approach to episodic memory

Abstract

This paper aims to outline, and argue for, an approach to episodic memory broadly in the spirit of knowledge-first epistemology. I discuss a group of influential views of epsiodic memory that I characterize as ‘two-factor accounts’, which have both proved popular historically (e.g., in the work of Hume, 1739-40; Locke 1690; and Russell 1921) and have also seen a resurgence in recent work on the philosophy of memory (see, e.g., Dokic 2014; Michaelian, 2016; Owens, 1996). What is common to them is that they try to give an account of the nature of episodic memory in which the concept of knowledge plays no explanatory role. I highlight some parallels between these two-factor accounts and attempts to give a reductive definition of knowledge itself. I then discuss some problems two-factor accounts of episodic memory face in explaining the distinctive sense in which episodic recollection involves remembering personally experienced past events, before sketching an alternative approach to episodic memory, which takes as basic the idea that episodic memory involves the retention of knowledge. I argue that we can give an exhaustive constitutive account of what episodic memory is, and how it differs from other types of mental states, by considering what particular type of knowledge is retained in episodic memory, and what exactly having that knowledge consists in.

Autonoesis and episodicity: Perspectives from philosophy of memory

“…In the background here is a disjunctivist view of perception that denies that veridical and hallucinatory experiences are experiential states of the same kind (Martin, 2004; see Soteriou, 2020 for an overview). 14 The relationship between the epistemic account articulated in Hoerl (2022) and the representational account defended in Hoerl (2001) (see Section 3.1. 1) is an open question.…”

“…The idea that episodic memory involves the retention of a specific kind of knowledge has recently and independently been developed by Soteriou (2008) and Hoerl (2022). Both authors argue that episodic memory involves the retention of knowledge of what it was like to experience an event, which is to be understood in terms of the retention of an ability .…”

“…For Soteriou, such an ability consists in one's being able to “to do something that can put oneself in a state of knowledge whose propositional content is a distinctive kind of answer to the question, ‘what was it like to apprehend that event?’” (2008: 481). For Hoerl, it consists in the ability to conjure up a mental image of a previously experienced event (2022: 20) 14 . Despite these potentially different ways of characterizing the ability in question, both views offer similar explanations of what makes episodic memory distinctive at the level of consciousness: while both semantic memory and episodic memory may involve retention of knowledge that such‐and‐such was the case, only episodic memory involves retention of knowledge of how one came to know that such‐and‐such was the case—more specifically, because the exercise of one's retained ability allows one to experience now what it was like to experience the event in a particular way, one becomes aware that the information remembered was acquired by means of experiencing it in the past.…”

Memory belief is weak

“…Accordingly, if one remembers that p, then one knows that p. The broad sense might include any theory that analyses remembering in terms of a wider range of epistemic notions such as justification and warrant, or other types of knowledge apart from propositional knowledge. For example, Hoerl's (2022) knowledge-first account of memory argues that episodic memory is the retention of experiential knowledge of the remembered event, which refers to "a specific type of knowledge made available by the subject's own experience of the event and retained over time" (2022, p. 16). This paper only focuses on the narrow sense of ETM, although the broad sense is also philosophically interesting (and perhaps, arguably more plausible).…”

(In defence of) preservationism and the previous awareness condition: What is a theory of remembering, anyway?

“…And losing track of these differences gives rise to cross-purpose talk. From the point of view of those who take remembering to be a success notion, for example, simulationists are really just eliminativists (Hoerl 2022). And from the point of view of simulationists, causalists and epistemic theorists rely atavistically on armchair intuitions and are not sufficiently deferential to the psychology of memory (Michaelian 2022).…”