In this talk, I motivate understanding memory as a cognitive capacity with memory beliefs as the results of exercising this capacity. Memory beliefs have traditionally been understood as either stored and retrieved content with a certain causal history or content with a particular phenomenal character. First, I show that these conceptions are not extensionally equivalent and they disagree on cases of special interest to epistemologists. Then, I argue that the capacity conception can best accommodate the psychological discovery that memory is radically constructive, focusing on cases of false memory.

Finally, I claim that Michaelian’s attempt to capture constructive memory with a causal account does not go far enough to include central cases of interest.

Philosophy Seminar Series
Date: Monday, 23 Nov 2015
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Venue: AS3 #05-23
Speaker: Mary Salvaggio, Rutgers University
Moderator: Dr Qu Hsueh Ming

About the Speaker:

Mary Salvaggio is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at Rutgers University. Her dissertation is focused on updating epistemological views of memory in light of the contemporary psychological understanding of human memory as an active, constructive process. She is currently a graduate tutor at Nanyang Technological University.