Perspectives on the Past: A Study of the Spatial Perspectival Characteristics of Recollective Memories

Debus, Dorothea

doi:10.1111/j.1468-0017.2007.00305.x

Cited by 23 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 16 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…It does not, in particular, begin to explore the importance of the flipping of perspectives, a topic of increasing current interest (Rice and Rubin 2009), or to construct a positive account of observer perspectives in personal memory and their significance. Here I argue that observer memories are genuine cases of remembering, analyzing the puzzling neglect of observer memories in Richard Wollheim's treatment of a range of closely related phenomena, and extending one of the few more recent philosophical treatments of the topic to date by Debus (2007). One might accept my case to that point, yet think that a field or 'own-eyes' visuospatial perspective is still the canonical or privileged form of personal memory: I examine and criticize versions of this idea in relation to memory for skilled movement and memory for trauma.…”

Section: Field and Observer Perspectives In Personal Memorymentioning

confidence: 98%

Observer perspective and acentred memory: some puzzles about point of view in personal memory

Sutton

2010

Philos Stud

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Sometimes I remember my past experiences from an 'observer' perspective, seeing myself in the remembered scene. This paper analyses the distinction in personal memory between such external observer visuospatial perspectives and 'field' perspectives, in which I experience the remembered actions and events as from my original point of view. It argues that Richard Wollheim's related distinction between centred and acentred memory fails to capture the key phenomena, and criticizes Wollheim's reasons for doubting that observer 'memories' are genuine personal memories. Since field perspectives in personal memory are also likely to be the product of constructive processes, we should reject the common assumption that such constructive processes inevitably bring distortion and error. Yet field perspectives tend to be treated as privileged also in the domains of memory for skilled movement, and memory for trauma. In each case, it is argued that visuospatial perspective in personal memory should be distinguished from other kinds of perspective such as kinesthetic perspective and emotional perspective.

show abstract

Section: Field and Observer Perspectives In Personal Memorymentioning

confidence: 98%

Observer perspective and acentred memory: some puzzles about point of view in personal memory

Sutton

2010

Philos Stud

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Hoerl takes up the datum that Debus (2007) also isolates, and which I mentioned earlier with her conception of unmediated recollection. Unlike Debus, however, Hoerl proposes that such experience should count as a distinct species of recollectionmemory for what x looks like.…”

Section: The Positive Thesismentioning

confidence: 97%

“…12 Now, prima facie, encounters with visual art may seem different in this respect. Debus (2007) considers a recollected experience of the seeing of a correctlypositioned Mondrian on a gallery wall, and a hypothesised memory of a seeing the same work up-side down. Both experiences have as their object the same stripy, colourful formal object, but they have different phenomenal vehicles.…”

Section: Time-travel and The Transportative Phenomenology Of Phasic Mmentioning

confidence: 99%

Still Life, a Mirror: Phasic memory and re-encounters with artworks

Cumhaill

2020

Rev.Phil.Psych.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Re-encountering certain kinds of artworks in the present (re-listening to music, rereading novels) can often occasion a kind of recollection akin to episodic recollection, but which may be better cast as 'phasic', at least insofar as one can be said to remember 'what it was like' to be oneself at some earlier stage or phase in one's personal history. The kinds of works that prompt such recollection, I call 'still lives'-they are limited wholes whose formal properties are stable over time. In the first part of the paper, I spell out a way of making sense of the peculiar power that certain artworks have to occasion such recollectionit is, as I explain, a power or ductus that derives from the form of the artwork, though possession of such a power is not limited to art. I then detail three dimensions along which episodic recollection and phasic recollection as occasioned by re-encountering 'still lives' differ: metaphysical, phenomenological, and descriptive. In the second half, I explore a challenge for my account of phasic recollection, which in turn helps make more vivid my proposal as well as the spectral analogy at the heart of it: Just as one can see regions behind one by looking in the direction of a mirror located in the same space in which one is, sometimes by re-encountering certain kinds of artworks now, past intervals or phases 'behind one' can be 'made present' in a way that the paper aims to make plain. I also explain to what extent phasic recollection might be understood as a form of mental time travel, and what the attendant phenomenology of 'transportation' involves.

show abstract

“…Philosophers have asked whether there can in fact be genuine memories in cases where past events are recalled from an external perspective that diverges from that of the agent's perceptual experience at the time (Vendler ; Debus ; Sutton ). But this distinction between field (internal) and observer (external) perspectives in remembering and imagining has also been studied intensively in applied domains of considerable independent interest.…”

Section: Perspective In Dreamsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self‐Representation and Perspectives in Dreams

Rosen

Sutton

2013

Philosophy Compass

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Integrative and naturalistic philosophy of mind can both learn from and contribute to the contemporary cognitive sciences of dreaming. Two related phenomena concerning self-representation in dreams demonstrate the need to bring disparate fields together. In most dreams, the protagonist or dream self who experiences and actively participates in dream events is or represents the dreamer: but in an intriguing minority of cases, self-representation in dreams is displaced, disrupted, or even absent. Working from dream reports in established databanks, we examine two key forms of polymorphism of self-representation: dreams (or dream episodes) in which I take an external visuospatial perspective on myself, and those in which I take someone else's perspective on events. In remembering my past experiences or imagining future or possible experiences when awake, I sometimes see myself from an external or 'observer' perspective. By relating the issue of perspective in dreams to established research traditions in the study of memory and imagery, and noting the flexibility of perspective in dreams, we identify new lines of enquiry. In other dreams, the dreamer does not appear to figure at all, and the first person perspective on dream events is occupied by someone else, some other person or character. We call these puzzling cases 'vicarious dreams' and assess some potential ways to make sense of them. Questions about self-representation and perspectives in dreams are intriguing in their own right and pose empirical and conceptual problems about the nature of self-representation with implications beyond the case of dreaming.

show abstract

Perspectives on the Past: A Study of the Spatial Perspectival Characteristics of Recollective Memories

Abstract: The following paper considers one important feature of our experiential or ' recollective ' memories, namely their spatial perspectival characteristics.

Cited by 23 publications

References 16 publications

Observer perspective and acentred memory: some puzzles about point of view in personal memory

Observer perspective and acentred memory: some puzzles about point of view in personal memory

Still Life, a Mirror: Phasic memory and re-encounters with artworks

Self‐Representation and Perspectives in Dreams

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About