Our memories are not simple recordings of past experiences; they can be affected by our current context as well as background beliefs and other memories. Almost all of the things we remember are not explicitly stored, but are instead constructed or reconstructed when we attempt to recall them. This poses a problem for one of the dominant views of the justification of memory beliefs, preservationism. Preservationism is the view that memory cannot generate justification, but only preserve any original justification a belief had when it was first formed.
Since reconstructive memory is an inferential process, the beliefs it produces are justified in the same way that other inferential beliefs are justified. I will argue that we can retain a preservationist account of reproductive memory as long as we supplement it with an inferential account of reconstructive memory. I will provide just such an integrated account based on a process reliabilist framework. Finally, I will consider alternative views and respond to several objections.

Philosophy Seminar Series.
Date: Thursday, 13 Mar 2014
Time: 2 pm – 4 pm
Venue: Philosophy Resource Room (AS3 #05-23)
Speaker: Mary Salvaggio, Rutgers University
Moderator: Dr. Ben Blumson

About the Speaker:

Mary is a doctoral candidate in Philosophy at Rutgers University. Her dissertation work is focused on updating epistemological views of memory in light of the contemporary psychological understanding of human memory as an active, reconstructive process.