How to distinguish long-term individual memory representations? A historical and critical journey. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Fernández, J. (2019). Memory: a self-referential account. Oxford University Press
Estudios de Filosofía, No 64, 2021
Fernández’ most recent book constitutes an articulated development of several philosophical considerations on memory displayed in previous, and forthcoming publications. The result of such articulated development ends up being a consistent account that provides an innovative and thought-provoking perspective on episodic remembering. This volume not only gathers and articulates the author’s previous ideas, but also provides new reflections, and objections that encompasses four significant domains in the philosophy of memory. In the first part of the book (Chapters 1, 2, and 3), Fernández offers an account of both the metaphysics and the intentionality of episodic memory; in the second part (Chapters 4 and 5), the author deals with certain phenomenological aspects involved in remembering; in the third part (Chapters 6 and 7), two important debates in the epistemology of memory are discussed.
2014
Although episodic memory is a widely studied form of memory both in philosophy and psychology, it still raises many burning questions regarding its definition and even its acceptance. Over the last two decades, cross-disciplinary discussions between these two fields have increased as they tackle shared concerns, such as the phenomenology of recollection, and therefore allow for fruitful interaction. This editorial introduction aims to provide a comprehensive and up-to-date presentation of the main existing conceptions and issues on the topic. After delineating Tulving's chief theoretical import and multifaceted legacy, it goes on to chart the different attempts to capture the episodicity feature of memory according to three categories: a first approach aims to show the cognitive abilities required for a subject to episodically remember; the second defines episodicity as a stage-specific feature; the last explains episodicity in terms of the epistemological properties of episodic memory. This state of the art thereby sets the stage for the contributions of the present volume, which will be introduced in conclusion.
The questions of whether episodic memory is a propositional attitude , and of whether it has propositional content, are central to discussions about how memory represents the world, what mental states should count as memories, and what kind of beings are capable of remembering. Despite its importance to such topics, these questions have not been addressed explicitly in the recent literature in philosophy of memory. In one of the very few pieces dealing with the topic, Jordi Fernández (2006) provides a positive answer to the initial questions by arguing that the propositional attitude view of memory, as I will call it, provides a simple account of how memory possesses truth-conditions. A similar suggestion is made by Alex Byrne (2010) when he proposes that perception and episodic memory have the same kind of content, differing only in degree. Against the propositional attitude view, I will argue that episodic memory does not have propositional content, and therefore, that it is not a propositional attitude. My project here is, therefore, mainly critical. I will show that, if empirical work is to inform our philosophical theories of memory in any way, we have good reasons to deny, or at least to be skeptical, of the prospects of the propositional attitude view of episodic memory.
The Phenomenology of Remembering Is an Epistemic Feeling
Frontiers in Psychology
This paper aims to provide a psychologically-informed philosophical account of the phenomenology of episodic remembering. The literature on epistemic or metacognitive feelings has grown considerably in recent years, and there are persuasive reasons, both conceptual and empirical, in favour of the view that the phenomenology of remembering-autonoetic consciousness, as Tulving influentially referred to it, or the feeling of pastness, as we will refer to it here-is an epistemic feeling, but few philosophical treatments of this phenomenology as an epistemic feeling have so far been proposed. Building on insights from the psychological literature, we argue that a form of feeling-based metacognition is involved in episodic remembering and develop an integrated metacognitive feelingbased view that addresses several key aspects of the feeling of pastness, namely, its status as a feeling, its content, and its relationship to the first-order memories the phenomenology of which it provides.
On the Difference Between Episodic and Autobiographical Memories
Aporia, 2021
Is there a di erence between recollecting episodes from the past and recalling autobiographically? Both in the philosophical and psychological literature, it does not seem that there is a consensus on whether autobiographical memories should be considered as a metaphysically equivalent concept to episodic memories or a di erent category of memory entirely. In this article, I give reasons to believe that autobiographical memories do not relate to the recollection of past episodes since they do not have an associated subjective experience and the consequential experience of mental time travel. Autobiographical memories, I argue, are presented as a narrative that is constructed propositionally, thus di ering substantially from episodic memory in its subjective property, the reference to the self, and the content in which each one is grounded. To do so, first I use data from the psychological literature on amnesic patients as evidence for both the di erence in phenomenology and content. And second, I use insights from recent philosophical literature on memory and the self, to defend that what is referred here as "autobiographical memory" is indeed a di erent kind of memory that di ers substantially from episodic memory and slightly from semantic memory.
Memory (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2010
Winter 2012 Edition 3 memory and the non-conscious ways in which we are influenced by the past does not drive a useful wedge between philosophy and the sciences. On the one hand, scientific psychology is not, either in principle or in practice, restricted to the study of implicit learning and the varieties of conditioning: indeed, the study of our rich, socially-embedded capacities to remember our personal experiences is at the heart of much current research. On the other hand, philosophers too want to understand the operations of habit memory, skill memory, and involuntary memory, and their implications for expanded notions of agency and identity.
S. Bernecker and K. Michaelian (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Memory, 2017
The most salient aspect of memory is its role in preserving previously acquired information so as to make it available for further activities. Anna realizes that something is amiss in a book on Roman history because she learned and remembers that Caesar was murdered. Max turned up at the party and distinctively remembers where he was seated, so he easily gets his hands on his lost cell phone. The fact that information is not gained anew distinguishes memory from perception. The fact that information is preserved distinguishes memory from imagination. But how do acquisition and retrieval of information contribute to the phenomenology of memory?The exclusive aim of this chapter is to sketch a map of the phenomenology of memory. It is structured as follows. In section 1, I introduce the contrast between content (what is remembered) and psychological attitude (remembering). This distinction will be helpful in disentangling issues in the phenomenology of memory. Section 2 is devoted to the contribution of memory content to phenomenology, section 3 to the contribution of the attitude of remembering.