When recalling events that one personally experienced, sometimes one sees oneself in the remembered scene: from an external, detached 'observer perspective'. In such cases one remembers from-the-outside. Remembering from-the-outside is a common yet curious case of personal memory. This book disentangles the puzzles posed by such memories.

We argue that the causal theory of memory and the simulation theory of memory are not as straightforwardly incompatible as they are usually taken to be. Following a brief review of the theories, we describe alternative normative and descriptive perspectives on memory, arguing that the causal theory aligns better with the normative perspective and the simulation theory with the descriptive perspective. Taking explanatory contextualism about perception as our starting point, we then develop a form of explanatory contextualism about memory, arguing (...) that, depending on the context in which we find ourselves, either the normative perspective or the descriptive perspective may be appropriate. It follows that, while the causal theory and the simulation theory cannot both be right with respect to a given perspective, and while it is necessary to choose one perspective or the other in a given context, there an important sense in which we need not choose between causalism and simulationism. We conclude by differentiating our position from and critiquing a related position developed by Craver (2020) and defending our position against objections. (shrink)

When faced with intertemporal choices, which have consequences that unfold over time, we often discount the future, preferring smaller immediate rewards often at the expense of long-term benefits. How psychologically connected one feels to one’s future self-influences such temporal discounting. Psychological connectedness consists in sharing psychological properties with past or future selves, but connectedness comes in degrees. If one feels that one is not psychologically connected to one’s future self, one views that self like a different person and is less (...) likely to wait for the future reward. Increasing perceived psychological connectedness to one’s future self may lead to more far-sighted decisions. Episodic prospection may help in this regard. Episodic prospection is our ability to ‘pre-experience’ the future by mentally simulating it, drawing on information from episodic memory and other sources. Episodic memory and prospection are thought to involve a special form of consciousness, which underpins the capacity to appreciate the connection between one’s past, present, and future selves. Simulating the future self through prospection may increase felt psychological connectedness and support future-oriented decision-making. Yet this is where a puzzle arises. The imagery of episodic memory and prospection is perspectival: often one views the visualised scenario from a detached perspective, seeing oneself from-the-outside as if viewing another person. The aim of this paper is to characterise how the perspectival imagery of prospection relates to psychological connectedness, and to show that even though such imagery involves a detached perspective it can still be used to help reward one’s future self. (shrink)

Both Marya Schechtman and Galen Strawson appeal to autobiographical memory in developing their accounts of personal identity. Although both scholars share a similar conception of autobiographical memory, they use it to develop theories of personal identity that are radically distinct. Memories that are relevant for personal identity are generally considered to be personal (autobiographical) memories of those events in one’s lifetime to which one can gain first-personal access: memories from-the-inside. Both Schechtman and Strawson base their discussion of personal identity on (...) exactly this type of memory. Empirical evidence shows, however, that personal memory imagery is not only visualised from-the-inside, from a “field” perspective. Personal memories may also involve “observer” perspectives, in which one sees oneself from-the-outside in the remembered scene. Both Schechtman and Strawson appeal to the notion of remembering from-the-inside, but they remain silent on the phenomenon of observer perspectives in personal memory. I suggest that accounts of personal identity that appeal to memory should consider observer perspectives as one aspect of personal memory. I explore the implications that the acknowledgment and inclusion of observer perspectives would have for both Schechtman’s and Strawson’s accounts. Even though autobiographical memory is not their theoretical target, both Schechtman and Strawson base their accounts of personal identity on their understanding of autobiographical memory. Therefore, their depictions of the nature of personal identity are founded upon an incomplete picture of autobiographical memory. (shrink)

There is thought to be a rich connection between the self and the phenomenology of episodic memory. Despite the emphasis on this link, the precise relation between the two has been underexplored. In fact, even though it is increasingly acknowledged that there are various facets of the self, this notion of the multifaceted self has played very little role in theorizing about the phenomenology of episodic memory. Getting clear about the complex phenomenology of episodic memory involves getting clear about various (...) components that contribute to the sense of self. Inspired by work on 4E cognition, and focusing on the phenomenological feature of felt connections, we show that the phenomenology of episodic memory can be modulated by focusing on different facets — embodied, extended, embedded, and ecological — of the self. (shrink)

Observer memories involve a representation of the self in the memory image, which is presented from a detached or external point of view. That such an image is an obvious departure from how one initially experienced the event seems relatively straightforward. However, in my book on this type of imagery, I suggested that such memories can in fact, at least in some cases, accurately represent one’s past experience of an event. During these past events there is a sense in which (...) we adopt an external perspective on ourselves. In the present paper, I respond to a critical notice of my book by Marina Trakas. Trakas argues that my account of observer memory unfolded against the background of a problematic preservationist account of episodic memory, and that I failed to adequately account for the presence of self in observer memory. I respond these worries here, and I try to clarify key points that were underdeveloped in the book. (shrink)

Grief is a complex emotional experience or process, which is typically felt in response to the death of a loved one, most typically a family member, child, or partner. Yet the way in which grief manifests is much more complex than this. The things we grieve over are multiple and diverse. We may grieve for a former partner after the breakup of a relationship; parents sometimes report experiencing grief when their grown-up children leave the family home. We can also experience (...) grief for people we have never met. Indeed, it is not just persons that we may grieve for. People report feeling grief over the death of their pets, or about the destruction the natural environment. In all these cases one factor that seems to stand out is loss. Despite being about very different things, these various forms of grief all involve a loss of some sort. Yet there is a further aspect of grief, which, on the face of it, does not quite follow this pattern. Grief can also be experienced before a loss has occurred. Grief can be experienced while the person that one is grieving for is still living and before one has (fully) suffered the loss. This phenomenon is known as anticipatory grief. The experience of anticipatory grief is a complex phenomenon, which resists easy classification. Nonetheless, we suggest that mental time travel, our ability to mentally project ourselves into the personal past (episodic memory) and personal future (episodic prospection), is a key mechanism that underpins experiences of anticipatory grief. Anticipatory grief can still be understood in terms of loss, but it is a loss that is brought to mind through memory and imagination. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Understood as a psychological phenomenon, there has been very little discussion of cryptomnesia in the philosophical literature. Cryptomnesia presents us with a strange phenomenon in which we take ourselves to be imagining, but the thought or idea that we entertain actually involves remembered content. In this paper, we argue for a three-factor account of cryptomnesia, according to which it is a mnemonic phenomenon that involves imagination. We provide an account of both the ‘mnemonic’ and ‘imaginative’ aspects of cryptomnesia in terms (...) of the attitude, the content, and the metacognitive processes involved in those states. In addition, we show how our three-factor account is better suited to account for cryptomnesia than competing philosophical theories of episodic memory. We conclude by discussing how the three-factor account sheds light on a range of other mnemonic and imaginative phenomena. (shrink)

We tend to seek immediate gratification at the expense of long-term reward. In fact, the more distant a reward is from the present moment?the more we tend to discount it. This phenomenon is known as temporal discounting. Engaging in mental time travel plausibly enables subjects to overcome temporal discounting, but it is unclear how, exactly, it does so. In this paper, we develop a framework designed to explain the effects of mental time travel on temporal discounting by showing how the (...) subject?s temporally extended self enables mental time travel to generate appropriate emotions that, in turn, via metacognitive monitoring and control, generate appropriate behaviours. Building on existing approaches we outline an initial framework, involving the concepts of emotion and the temporally extended self, to explain the effects of mental time travel on resisting temptation. We then show that this initial framework has difficulty explaining the effects of mental time travel on a closely related phenomenon, namely, overcoming procrastination. We next argue that, in order to explain these effects, the concept of emotion needs to be refined, and the concept of metacognition needs to be added to the framework: emotions involve an action-readiness component, which, through metacognitive monitoring and control, can enable the subject to resist temptation and overcome procrastination. Finally, we respond to an objection to our account?based on the somatic marker hypothesis?such that metacognition is not necessary to account for the role of emotions in decision-making. (shrink)

Judgments based on episodic memory are often thought to be immune to errors of misidentification (IEM). Yet there is a certain category of episodic memories, viz. observer memories, that seems to threaten IEM. In the resulting debate, some say that observer memories are a threat to the IEM enjoyed by episodic memory (Michaelian, 2021); others say that they pose no such threat (Fernández, 2021; Lin, 2020). In this paper, we argue for a middle way. First, we frame the debate, claiming (...) that the existing literature lacks a satisfying definition both of observer memories and of the precise issue of errors of identification in such memories. Then, we contribute to the debate by challenging an anti-separatist view about the relation between phenomenal and intentional features of observer memories that looms behind this debate. On this view, if the rememberer's self is a phenomenal feature of the memory, by implication it is also built into the intentional content. We reject this view and offer a moderate separatist account. Distinguishing between empirically-grounded species of observer memories, we say that the phenomenal self sometimes is, and sometimes is not built into the intentional content of the memory, and this results in different implications for IEM. (shrink)

In the BBC show, The Repair Shop, members of the public bring their cherished but crumbling possessions into a workshop populated by expert craftspeople, who carry out restorations. These objects arrive as treasured possessions, which, despite their dilapidated state, still hold memories and meaning for their owners, albeit memories that may have faded as the object itself has aged. Something magical seems to take place after the objects are restored, however. The restored objects seem to reanimate and revive the memories (...) that their owners have invested in them. How is it possible that this restoration can bring memories held by the objects back to life? What is special about The Repair Shop restoring objects to their former glory? We outline two ways in which objects can be evocative and embody emotion, memory, and meaning. We then outline the ways in which the restoration of these objects to something like their original form can improve scaffolded recall and bring memories back to life. For one class of evocative objects, the restoration enhances recall by reinstating details from the context in which the memories were encoded. For the second class of evocative objects, their restoration affords an imaginative connection to the past, which enables them to become powerful focal points of memory and shared narratives. In effect, The Repair Shop seems to work not only as a repair shop of objects but as a repair shop of memory too. (shrink)