Academic literature on the topic 'Episodic memory – Philosophy'

AbstractThis paper deals with the distinction between factual and episodic memory (memory that p vs. memory of particular x). The following theses are defended, (i) Episodic memory is internally related to a particular past experience. (ii) Factual memory about x does not imply episodic memory ofx. (iii) Episodic and factual memory may carry the same kind of information about the past. Finally, (iv) episodic memories are reflexive factual memories. When I remember x in the episodic sense, I have a collection of factual memories not only about x, but equally and simultaneously about the fact that this same collection comes directly from my past experience.

ABSTRACT: In this paper, I carry out an application of the debate between simulationism and theory theory to the issue of episodic memory. I first criticize the approach favored by the theory theory. Then I advance a simulationist conception of the relationship between the phenomenology of episodic memory and its specific kind of self-consciousness. On my view, subjectivity belongs to the very content of episodic memory, not as an element of its content, but as the perspective it gives to the content that makes the simulation of past experience possible. In support of that view, I provide an analysis inspired by J. Perry of the semantics of de se thought. It gives the remembering subject a non-representational presence in the mnesic content.

Numerous species use different forms of communication in order to successfully interact in their respective environment. This article seeks to elucidate limitations of the classical conduit metaphor by investigating communication from the perspectives of biology and artificial neural networks. First, communication is a biological natural phenomenon, found to be fruitfully grounded in an organism’s embodied structures and memory system, where specific abilities are tied to procedural, semantic, and episodic long-term memory as well as to working memory. Second, the account explicates differences between non-verbal and verbal communication and shows how artificial neural networks can communicate by means of ontologically non-committal modelling. This approach enables new perspectives of communication to emerge regarding both sender and receiver. It is further shown that communication features gradient properties that are plausibly divided into a reflexive and a reflective form, parallel to knowledge and reflection.

The view of working memory as a conscious process has allowed to define consciousness as the content of working memory. However, concerns have emerged over comparisons between consciousness and working memory. Although the relationship between these two study fields has been the matter of psychology, philosophy and neuroscience, a theoretical review addressing the core elements of highly cited perspectives would enrich the discussion in this study area. This review focuses on three theoretical frameworks: 1) the multi-component model of working memory, 2) the global workspace theory, 3) the hierarchical framework. The multi-component model of working memory contributes a basic functional description on how mental representations remain on-line during complex cognitive processing. Thereby, the information exchange between the central executive and the episodic buffer, in one sense, and the phonological loop and the visuo-spatial sketchpad in the other is given trough conscious processing. Likewise, the central executive controls and changes attention but the episodic buffer allows multimodal information availability.

Dans cette thèse, je propose de repenser la mémoire afin de repenser l'identité personnelle. Je pars de la question suivante : Comment est-il possible que les personnes, malgré les changements qui les affectent, se reconnaissent comme mêmes à différents moments du temps ? Une réponse classique à la question diachronique de l'identité personnelle est qu’elle repose sur la mémoire : les souvenirs fondent notre continuité psychologique. Cependant, les récentes recherches empiriques sur la mémoire épisodique montrent qu'elle a une dimension constructive et qu'elle n'est pas seulement une capacité de stockage fidèle du passé. Qu'est-ce que cela change à la question de l'identité personnelle ? J’explore d’abord la théorie mémorielle de l'identité personnelle de John Locke, et je soutiens qu'être une personne, selon Locke, c'est se reconnaître comme telle à différents moments du temps et donc, dans cet acte d'auto-reconnaissance, constituer son identité personnelle. Je soutiens cependant que la vision conservatrice de la mémoire de Locke doit être révisée et je propose de repenser le concept de mémoire en m’appuyant sur les sciences contemporaines de la mémoire. Je soutiens qu’elle a une dimension constructive et propose une théorie de la mémoire constructive de l'identité personnelle. La mémoire épisodique est à la fois une capacité qui me permet de me reconnaître et, parce que cette reconnaissance n'est pas une simple reconnaissance mais la construction d'une représentation de moi-même à travers la collecte d'informations provenant de diverses sources, elle peut produire et constituer mon identité personnelle
In this thesis, I propose to rethink memory in order to rethink personal identity. I start from an interrogation about personal identity. How is it possible that people, despite the changes that affect them, recognize themselves as themselves? A common answer to the diachronic question of personal identity is that memory is what makes the self: memories allow us to connect with ourselves and to have an idea of our diachronic personal identity. But interestingly, the recent empirical research on episodic memory shows that it has a constructive dimension and is not only a storage capacity that allows one to preserve and retrieve accurate representations of the past. What does it change for the question of personal identity? I start with an exploration of John Locke’s memory theory of personal identity, and argue that to be a person, in Locke's view, is to recognize oneself as same at different moments of time and thus, in this act of self-recognition, to constitute oneself as a person with a temporal dimension. I argue that Locke’s preservative view of memory has to be revised, and I propose an empirically informed discussion on the concept of memory. I contend that episodic memory has a constructive dimension and has both epistemic functions and functions related to the constitution of diachronic personal identity. I propose a constructive memory theory of personal identity. Episodic memory is at the same time a capacity which allows me to recognize myself and, because this recognition is not a simple recognition but a construction of a representation of myself through the gathering of information from various sources, it can produce and constitute my personal identity

Les recherches récentes ont cherché à appréhender la contribution de la théorie de l'esprit – appréhension du monde mental en termes d'états mentaux – au développement de la métacognition – connaissances sur le fonctionnement cognitif. C'est dans ce contexte que nous avons réalisé une étude longitudinale auprès d'enfants français scolarisés et âgés de 4 ans au premier temps. Les enfants (N=31) ont été rencontrés tous les 4 mois pendant deux années scolaires – moyenne et grande section de maternelle. L'objectif de notre étude était d'appréhender le développement de la métamémoire déclarative au cours de la période préscolaire, mais également celui de trois de ces précurseurs cognitifs – théorie de l'esprit, langage et mémoire épisodique. Les analyses de régression linéaire multiple nous ont permis d'appréhender les liens développementaux entre ces compétences, mais également de déterminer la contribution de chacun de ces trois précurseurs au développement de la métamémoire déclarative. Les résultats soulignent l'importance de distinguer soi/autrui dans l'évaluation des compétences et confirment que la théorie de l'esprit a un impact dans le développement de la métamémoire, principalement pour la compréhension de l'influence du nombre sur la mémorisation
Until recently, two different kinds of research have been separately conducted on knowledge about mental world: those on metacognition that have studied knowledge about cognition and research on theory-of-mind, which refers to knowledge about mental states. A novel perspective of research tends to study the link between metacognition and theory-of-mind developments. The assumption is that theory-of-mind is a cognitive tool for understanding the cognitive functioning – i.e. metacognition. In this framework, we conducted a longitudinal study to investigate the developmental relationships between a special kind of metacognition – metamemory which is knowledge about memory functioning – and theory-of-mind, and the contribution of some cognitive precursors on declarative metamemory – language and episodic memory. Thirty-one children were recruited and evaluated on these four competencies every four months during two school years. Multiple regression analyses conducted on metamemory scores confirmed that theory-of-mind competences play a role in the declarative metamemory emergence

Attention is of fundamental importance in the philosophy of mind, in epistemology, in action theory, and in ethics. This book presents an account in which attention, not self, explains the experiential and normative situatedness of human beings in the world. Attention consists in an organization of awareness and action at the centre of which there is neither a practical will nor a phenomenological witness. Attention performs two roles in experience, a selective role of placing and a focal role of access. Attention improves our epistemic standing, because it is in the nature of attention to settle on what is real and to shun what is not real. When attention is informed by expertise, it is sufficient for knowledge. That gives attention a reach beyond the perceptual: for attention is a determinable whose determinates include the episodic memory from which our narrative identities are made, the empathy for others that situates us in a social world, and the introspection that makes us self-aware. Empathy is other-directed attention, placed on you and focused on your states of mind; it is akin to listening. Empathetic attention is central to a range of experiences that constitutively require a contrast between oneself and others, all of which involve an awareness of oneself as the object of another’s attention. An analysis of attention as mental action gainsays authorial conceptions of self, because it is the nature of intending itself, effortful attention in action, to settle on what to do and to shun what not to do.

The constructive episodic simulation hypothesis is a prominent view in cognitive neuroscience. It postulates that episodic simulations of past, future, and counterfactual events engage similar neural processes because they share a common cognitive function: planning and executing future actions. From this, it follows that the utility of episodic simulations critically depends on retrieving their content at the appropriate time. However, very little work has characterized how humans retrieve the various contents of previously entertained mental simulations. This chapter focuses on the retrieval of one class of these contents: temporal contents, which convey information about the temporal location of a simulated event (e.g. recalling that an imagined future event is to occur next Tuesday at 3 p.m., or that a simulated counterfactual event would have occurred last Christmas). It reviews existing theoretical and empirical work on retrieval of temporal contents from episodic memory, and proposes an extension to explain retrieval of temporal contents from episodic simulations more broadly. It corroborates the theoretical claims with a novel demonstration of asymmetries in retrieval of temporal information for previously imagined versus previously remembered events, and then discusses how ideas from this framework can be leveraged to improve planning and decision making.