Epistemic Generation in Memory

2018

Rev.Phil.Psych.

The debate over the objects of episodic memory has for some time been stalled, with few alternatives to familiar forms of direct and indirect realism being advanced. This paper moves the debate forward by building on insights from the recent psychological literature on memory as a form of episodic hypothetical thought (or mental time travel) and the recent philosophical literature on relationalist and representationalist approaches to perception. The former suggests that an adequate account of the objects of episodic memory will have to be a special case of an account of the objects of episodic hypothetical thought more generally. The latter suggests that an adequate account of the objects of episodic hypothetical thought will have to combine features of direct realism and representationalism. We develop a novel pragmatist-inspired account of the objects of episodic hypothetical thought that has the requisite features.

Section: Pragmatism and Autonoesismentioning

confidence: 99%

Thinking About Events: A Pragmatist Account of the Objects of Episodic Hypothetical Thought

Sant’Anna

2018

Rev.Phil.Psych.

“…Going further back, there are few clear discussions of the issue, though Vosgerau (2010) does presage recent developments in some respects.19 The preservationism/generationism debate is multifaceted, and "preservationism" and "generationism" have been used to refer to a variety of pairs of views related to but distinct from those discussed here. See, e.g.,Fernández (2016) on whether episodic memory generates (second-order) knowledge of the source of one's (first-order) knowledge in past experience (cf. Dokic 2014) andLackey (2005) andSenor (2007) on whether memory generates knowledge via the coming and going of defeaters Frise (2017).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Memory without content? Radical enactivism and (post)causal theories of memory

Sant’Anna

2019

Synthese

Radical enactivism, an increasingly influential approach to cognition in general, has recently been applied to memory in particular, with Hutto and Peeters (2018) providing the first systematic discussion of the implications of the approach for mainstream philosophical theories of memory. Hutto and Peeters argue that radical enactivism, which entails a conception of memory traces as contentless, is fundamentally at odds with current causal and postcausal theories, which remain committed to a conception of traces as contentful: on their view, if radical enactivism is right, then the relevant theories are wrong. Partisans of the theories in question might respond to Hutto and Peeters' argument in two ways. First, they might challenge radical enactivism itself. Second, they might challenge the conditional claim that, if radical enactivism is right, then their theories are wrong. In this paper, we develop the latter response, arguing that, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, radical enactivism in fact aligns neatly with an emerging tendency in the philosophy of memory: radical enactivists and causal and postcausal theorists of memory have begun to converge, for distinct but compatible reasons, on a contentless conception of memory traces. * Thanks for feedback to audiences at the Naturally Evolving Minds conference at the University of Wollongong in February 2018 and the Memory and Perception: Fishing for Connections workshop at the University of Otago in May 2018. Thanks also for written comments to Carl Craver and John Sutton and for extremely interesting reports to two referees.

“…The remembered first-order content provides him with knowledge of the target event. And accompanying meta-level autonoetic phenomenology (Dokic, 2014) or self-reflexive content (Fernández, 2016) provides him with knowledge that the first-order content originates in his experience of the event. Episodic memory, in other words, provides the subject both with first-order knowledge of what happened in the past and with meta-level knowledge of how he knows that it happened.…”

Section: Toward a Simulationist Taxonomymentioning

confidence: 99%

Confabulating, Misremembering, Relearning: The Simulation Theory of Memory and Unsuccessful Remembering

2016

Front. Psychol.

This article develops a taxonomy of memory errors in terms of three conditions: the accuracy of the memory representation, the reliability of the memory process, and the internality (with respect to the remembering subject) of that process. Unlike previous taxonomies, which appeal to retention of information rather than reliability or internality, this taxonomy can accommodate not only misremembering (e.g., the DRM effect), falsidical confabulation, and veridical relearning but also veridical confabulation and falsidical relearning. Moreover, because it does not assume that successful remembering presupposes retention of information, the taxonomy is compatible with recent simulation theories of remembering.