Causation and mnemonic roles: on Fernández’s Functionalism

Abstract

Debates about causation have dominated recent philosophy of memory. While causal theorists have argued that an appropriate causal connection to a past experience is necessary for remembering, their opponents have argued that this necessity condition needs to be relaxed. Recently, Jordi Fernández (2018; 2019) has attempted to provide such a relaxation. On his functionalist theory of remembering, a given state need not be caused by a past experience to qualify as a memory; it only has to realize the relevant functional role in the subject’s mental economy. In this comment, I argue that Fernández’s theory doesn’t advance the debate about memory causation. I propose that this debate is best understood as being about the existence of systems, which support kinds of interactions that map onto the relations dictated by (causal) theories. Since Fernández’s functionalism tells us very little about this empirical question, the theoretical gains from endorsing it are minimal.

Causation in memory: necessity, reliability and probability

“…6 In addition, a good case can be made that the thesis should be understood as involving a ceteris paribus clause and be taken to hold only in conditions in which the subject's memory systems functions normally (cf. Andonovski, 2021a). With all the caveats and qualifications on the table, proponents of NECESSITY will undoubtedly agree about one thing.…”

“…InAndonovski (2021a), I propose that Fernández's FTM may only reject the necessity of appropriate causation in abnormal circumstances. Depending on whether one takes NECESSITY to include a ceteris paribus clause, then, FTM may turn out not to be a post-causal theory at all.…”

Experimental philosophy of memory

“…Versions of causalism designed to address problems for the classical causal theory have proliferated in recent years (e.g.,Michaelian, 2011a;Perrin, 2021; Sutton & O'Brien forthcoming;Werning, 2020); some of these (e.g.,Bernecker 2008Bernecker , 2010Debus, 2010) are designed primarily to address conceptual problems and thus may provide suitable targets for experimental philosophy.4 Fernández' argument for the functionalist theory of memory(Fernández, 2018(Fernández, , 2019(Fernández, , 2020(Fernández, , 2021a, which is distinct from both the causal theory and the simulation theory, appeals explicitly to our intuitions about hypothetical cases and may thus be of interest to experimental philosophers. SeeAndonovski (2021),James (2021),Robins (2021), andViera (2021) for objections to the functionalist theory.5 Causalism is standardly taken to align with discontinuism and simulationism with continuism, but seeLangland-Hassan (2021) and Sant'Anna (2021) for more nuanced takes on the relationship between the two pairs of views.6 The edited collections cited above focus primarily on the metaphysics of memory. SeeSenor (2019) for a systematic treatment of the epistemology of memory.…”

“…Andonovski (2021) points out, for example, that Fernández' (2019) argument for the functionalist theory of memory relies heavily on intuition. 9 Note that Craver himself is not very explicit on which theories might best capture the two senses of 'memory'.…”