Defending functionalism and self-reference in memory

Abstract

In recent work, Sarah Robins, Gerardo Viera and Steven James have provided some insightful objections to the ideas offered in my book, Memory: A Self-Referential Account. In this paper, I put forward some responses to those objections. Robins challenges the idea that being a memory could be a matter of having a particular functional role within the subject’s cognitive economy. Viera challenges the idea that the content of a memory could explain some of its phenomenological properties. And James challenges the idea that our memories could be immune to error through misidentification. All three commentators are targeting, not tangential aspects of, but fundamental assumptions in the account of memory proposed in the book. For that reason, modifying some of those assumptions would amount to proposing a whole different account of memory. I hope to show, however, that such a radical move is not necessary. For there are possible responses to the objections from all three commentators which are available within the constraints of the account proposed in the book.

Experimental philosophy of memory

“…In addition to explicitly anti-causalist simulation theories(Michaelian 2016c(Michaelian , 2021b, versions of simulationism that may be compatible with causalism have been proposed(De Brigard, 2014;Hopkins, 2018;Shanton & Goldman, 2010). 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.…”