Autonoesis and episodicity: Perspectives from philosophy of memory.

The idea that episodic memory is distinguished from semantic memory by the fact that it involves autonoetic consciousness, initially introduced by Tulving, has been influential not only in psychology but also in philosophy, where a variety of approaches to autonoesis and to its relationship to episodicity have been developed. This article provides a critical review of the available philosophical approaches. Distinguishing among representational, metacognitive, and epistemic accounts of autonoesis, it considers these in relation to objective and subjective conceptions of episodicity and assesses them against immediacy and source criteria that any philosophical account of autonoesis should arguably aim to satisfy. This article is categorized under: Philosophy > Psychological Capacities Philosophy > Consciousness Psychology > Memory.

Accounting for the strangeness, infrequency, and suddenness of déjà vu.

Barzykowski and Moulin argue that déjà vu is a natural product of autobiographical memory retrieval. Their proposal fails to account for three salient properties of déjà vu experiences: Their strangeness, their infrequency, and their characteristically sudden onset. Accounting for these properties is necessary for proper integration of déjà vu into autobiographical memory research.

Are observer memories (accurate) memories? Insights from experimental philosophy.

A striking feature of our memories of the personal past is that they involve different visual perspectives: one sometimes recalls past events from one's original point of view (a field perspective), but one sometimes recalls them from an external point of view (an observer perspective). In philosophy, observer memories are often seen as being less than fully genuine and as being necessarily false or distorted. This paper looks at whether laypeople share the standard philosophical view by applying the methods of experimental philosophy. We report the results of five studies suggesting that, while participants clearly categorize both field and observer memories as memories, they tend to judge that observer memories are slightly less accurate than field memories. Our results suggest, however, that in lay thought, the difference between field and observer memories is not nearly as clear-cut as philosophers have generally taken it to be.

The Phenomenology of Remembering Is an Epistemic Feeling.

This article 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 favor 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 feeling-based 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.

Autonoesis and reconstruction in episodic memory: Is remembering systematically misleading?

Mahr & Csibra (M&C) view autonoesis as being essential to episodic memories and construction as being essential to the process of episodic remembering. These views imply that episodic memory is systematically misleading, not because it often misinforms us about the past, but rather because it often misinforms us about how it informs us about the past.

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

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.

Identifying and individuating cognitive systems: a task-based distributed cognition alternative to agent-based extended cognition.

This article argues for a task-based approach to identifying and individuating cognitive systems. The agent-based extended cognition approach faces a problem of cognitive bloat and has difficulty accommodating both sub-individual cognitive systems ("scaling down") and some supra-individual cognitive systems ("scaling up"). The standard distributed cognition approach can accommodate a wider variety of supra-individual systems but likewise has difficulties with sub-individual systems and faces the problem of cognitive bloat. We develop a task-based variant of distributed cognition designed to scale up and down smoothly while providing a principled means of avoiding cognitive bloat. The advantages of the task-based approach are illustrated by means of two parallel case studies: re-representation in the human visual system and in a biomedical engineering laboratory.

Opening the doors of memory: is declarative memory a natural kind?

Klein's target article argues that autonoetic consciousness is a necessary condition for memory; this unusually narrow view of the scope of memory implies that only episodic memory is, strictly speaking, memory. The narrow view is opposed to the standard broad view, on which causal connection with past experience is sufficient for memory; on the broad view, both declarative (i.e., episodic and semantic) and procedural memory count as genuine forms of memory. Klein mounts a convincing attack on the broad view, arguing that it opens the 'doors of memory' too far, but this commentary contends that the narrow view does not open them far enough. It may be preferable to adopt an intermediate view of the scope of memory, on which causal connection is sufficient for memory only when it involves encoding, storage, and retrieval of content. More demanding than the simple causal condition but less demanding than the autonoesis condition, the encoding-storage-retrieval condition implies that both episodic and semantic memory count as genuine forms of memory but that procedural memory does not.

Is external memory memory? Biological memory and extended mind.

Clark and Chalmers (1998) claim that an external resource satisfying the following criteria counts as a memory: (1) the agent has constant access to the resource; (2) the information in the resource is directly available; (3) retrieved information is automatically endorsed; (4) information is stored as a consequence of past endorsement. Research on forgetting and metamemory shows that most of these criteria are not satisfied by biological memory, so they are inadequate. More psychologically realistic criteria generate a similar classification of standard putative external memories, but the criteria still do not capture the function of memory. An adequate account of memory function, compatible with its evolution and its roles in prospection and imagination, suggests that external memory performs a function not performed by biological memory systems. External memory is thus not memory. This has implications for: extended mind theorizing, ecological validity of memory research, the causal theory of memory.