Under submission as part of the volume Memory and Imagination ed.s Fiona Macpherson & Fabian Dorsch Imagining the Past: On the Nature of Episodic Memory §1 The Question Philosophers and psychologists commonly distinguish at least two kinds of memory: 'factual' or 'semantic' memory versus memory in its 'experiential' or 'episodic' form.1 Factual memory is, roughly, the retention of belief. It is at heart a matter of my currently believing that p, where my doing so depends, in the right way, on my earlier believing that p.2 An example would be my current belief that salt is sodium chloride. Episodic memory is more problematic. It takes longer to spell out even the uncontroversial aspects of that idea (see §2). But an intuitive grip on the notion is given by the thought that episodic memory is distinctive in both its scope and its vehicle. Its scope is limited to past episodes: past events I have witnessed or experiences I have undergone. As to its vehicle, the idea is that paradigm cases of episodic remembering essentially involve memory imagery. If I can picture in memory my first university exam, summon an auditory image of the instruction to begin, or recall the accompanying nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach, chances are that I am episodically remembering that event. (Note that imagery need not be visual, or even restricted to the traditional senses.) Of course, imagery can be bound up with factual memory too. Perhaps I remember the chemical composition of salt by forming an image of two substances being combined, one labelled 'sodium', the other 'chlorine'. But here the image plays the role of mere accompaniment or aidemémoire. The imagistic state of mind is not itself the memory, not even in part- unlike in the examination case. What kind of state is episodic memory? I will argue that episodic remembering is, in key part, imagining the past. Like memory, imagining divides into two broad kinds, propositional and experiential imagining. The former is a matter of adopting a certain attitude to a proposition, as when I imagine that I am descended from a Barbary 1 Others oppose factual memory to 'recollective' memory (Ayer 1956), 'reminiscence' (Ryle 1949), or 'autobiographical' or 'personal' memory (e.g. Coburn 2001). While it would be rash to assume that these various terms are intended to pick out just one phenomenon, there is at least a good deal of overlap in their extensions. 2 There are complications to do with the tense of certain remembered propositions (Matthen 2010), but we can afford to ignore those. 2 Corsair. Experiential imagining, in contrast, is a general category encompassing various non-propositional states.3 Again, we can gain an intuitive purchase on the category by thinking of it as composed of those imaginative states to which imagery is essential. Visualizing is one example, as when I picture how my friend would look in a top hat. But there are analogues for the other senses (running through a tune in one's head, or imagining the feel of velvet, for instance); and beyond (imagining what toothache feels like, or what it is like to be in the grip of intense hatred). It is experiential imagining that, I claim, lies at the heart of episodic memory. When we remember some past episode, experience or state of affairs, we do so by imagining them. Of course, to remember is not simply to imagine. Episodic memory is experiential imagining put to a particular purpose, or occurring in a particular context. In short, episodic remembering is imagining controlled by the past. Call this the Inclusion View. What are the alternatives? There are two other ways imagining might relate to memory. First, the two might have a mental state in common among their components. While memory does not involve imagining (or vice versa), among the components of the former lies a conscious state that is also a component of the latter.4 (The Common Component View.) The obvious candidate for that state is imagery. Imagining and episodic memory both involve the presentation, in imagistic form, of certain contents, of ways the world might be. Nevertheless, the two differ markedly in the attitude borne to those contents. For, while imagination presents these contents as possible, memory presents them as how things really were. (There might be different ways to spell out the details here – it is the overall shape of the account that interests me. For one such view, see White 1990.) The other possibility is that imagining and memory lack any common components at all-neither in whole nor in part does either feature in the other. (The No Overlap View.) Someone taking this position might 3 Since states of experiential imagining often involve thoughts about what is imaged, we should more strictly describe them as not purely propositional. 4 Note that the common component has to be conscious, or mental (as I use the term). Mere overlap in the processing each state involves would certainly not be incompatible with the Inclusion View. It seems perfectly possible that episodic memory and experiential imagining involve similar sub-personal processing – for instance, because each involves similar processing to that involved in (the relevant form of) perception. (See e.g. Addis et.al. 2007; Hassabis et.al. 2007.) 3 acknowledge that there are nonetheless important similarities between the two states, but equally she might not.5 Since I have have mentioned imagery more than once, let me say something about it. If the Common Component View (in the form that has imagery as the common element) is to be distinct from the Inclusion View, the occurrence of imagery must not already entail that imagining is taking place. The position needs to deploy a notion of imagery that secures this. More generally, any view wishing to use the notion to do philosophical work needs first to clarify the idea. For, as will emerge below (§3), the intuitive notion of imagery is unclear in key respects. It might be thought this is equally a problem for the view's rivals. Have I not talked of imagery in framing the question and the Inclusion View's answer to it? However, I used the idea of imagery only to introduce the sorts of remembering and imagining that are our topic. Once we have an intuitive grip on those, the Inclusion View can (and will) be formulated without appeal to the notion. (This point is plainly true for the No Overlap account.) Thus the task of clarifying the notion of imagery falls to the Common Component view alone. I begin by saying more about the very notion of episodic memory (§2). That enables me to formulate the Inclusion View precisely. I then (§3) say something about why the View is appealing, before sketching four objections to it. Sections 4 to 7 respond to each objection in turn. My discussion will therefore be limited in scope. Although I do offer some considerations that favour the View, for the most part I develop the position and deflect objections. There are two further ways in which my discussion is limited. First, throughout I focus on philosophy of mind rather than epistemology. That is, I concentrate on the nature of the mental state episodic memory paradigmatically involves, rather than on how episodic remembering amounts to, or yields, knowledge of the past. This omission is justified provided accounts of memory's nature do not limit the accounts one can give of its relation to knowledge. I hope that what I do have to say about 5 Hume's account of memory (1976) is perhaps best read as offering a No Overlap view of the former kind, while Locke's account (1975), or at least certain contemporary versions of it (Owens 1996), might be taken the latter way. 4 epistemology (§7) goes some way to make good that assumption. Second, I pursue the issue in philosophy of mind with relatively little reference to empirical work. This will no doubt surprise some: isn't my question one on which empirical results might shed light? No doubt it is.6 However, I suspect that the Inclusion View is largely ignored not because empirical evidence counts against it, but because the a priori objections to it seem compelling. Showing that this is not so will be task enough for the moment. If the view can then be given serious appraisal, in part in light of empirical evidence, I will consider my job well done. §2 More on the Basic Idea of Episodic memory So far we know that episodic and factual memory differ in the states that form their core. Since factual memory is the retention of belief, at its heart lies belief. Episodic memory, in contrast, involves having a memory image.7 Our question, in effect, is what that state amounts to: experiential imagining, a state a component of which ('imagery') is also a component in experiential imagining, or neither of the above? Without settling this issue, we can elaborate further features of episodic memory, by contrasting and comparing it with the factual form. Episodic memory, unlike factual, necessarily concerns the past. While the propositions remembered in factual memory may be backward-looking (that I was born in 1964), they may also concern the future (that I'm going to Portugal next year) or be timeless (that salt is sodium chloride). Episodic memory, in contrast, is always memory for some past episode. This feature is rooted in another. Suppose there could be perception of the past. Would this be a kind of episodic memory? It would not. Perception of the past would involve my now having an experience that reflects how 6 To give just some examples, episodic memory and experiential imagining might or might not be dissociated in various pathologies, either neurophysiological (Cooper et.al. 2011; Hassabis et.al. 2007; Weiler et.al. 2011; Zeman et.al. 2012) or psychological (Lind & Bowler 2010); they might be dissociated in development (Naito and Suzuku 2011) or ageing (Gaesser et.al. 2011); they might be dissociated in certain species, in particular if episodic memory (Crystal 2010) is found where experiential imagination is not; and they might involve different neurophysiological structures (Greenberg & Rubin 2003). The bearing of each of these forms of evidence on the issue would need to be carefully weighed. 7 Each kind of memory has both a dispositional and an occurrent form. I may be said to remember that salt is sodium chloride even while asleep, or while thinking of something else. The same is true of remembering taking my first exam. We can treat the dispositional form of factual and episodic memory as the disposition to form the relevant occurrent state. It is the nature of that state, for episodic memory, that is our concern. 5 things were earlier. Episodic memory involves something this lacks. It, like factual memory, only counts as memory because it involves the retention of information gained earlier. But while in the case of factual memory the original state of having that information is belief (however acquired); in episodic memory the original state is experience, an experience of the episode later remembered. In episodic memory, my present state reflects how things were earlier via some earlier experience of those events. (We can experientially remember episodes of widely varying kinds: worldly events; our own bodily sensations; or our own mental states, such as dreams and (other) experiential imaginings. Since each of these is originally 'experienced' in rather different senses, we need, in characterising the original state definitive of episodic memory, to invoke a suitably broad sense of 'experience'.) Let's call the original experience of the remembered episode the originating experience. The Origin Constraint states that, for a current state to be an episodic memory, there must be such an earlier experience from which it stems. More precisely, no current state representing some episode E counts as an episodic memory of E unless it stems from an earlier experience of E. This is why the subject matter of episodic memory is confined to the past. If I can only episodically remember what I earlier experienced, then, since I can only experience what then occurs, I can only remember what occurred earlier. Factual memory is under no similar pressure. It too requires an originating state. But since for factual memory that state is belief, and since I can form belief about any subject matter-past, present, future or timeless- what I can factually remember is similarly wide ranging.8 Not only does episodic memory require that my present state stem from some past experience: it must stem from it in the right way. Suppose I have an experience, describe it accurately to someone else, and that later, when I've forgotten the episode, she accurately describes it back to me. At some later point still, having forgotten these dealings, I find myself in a state just like that of remembering the original episode. I 8 So paradigm cases of experiential imagining involve both a distinctive current state (having a memory image, however that is to be characterised) and a distinctive originating state (experience of the remembered episode). These two requirements play out in the development of Tulving's seminal psychological work on 'episodic memory'. In his early writings, Tulving characterised the phenomenon only by reference to its distinctive originating state, and its consequent restricted subject matter (past 'episodes'). Only later did he add the requirement that its present expression take a particular form. See Tulving 1972; Tulving 1983; & Hoerl 2001. 6 can form an image of the event, and that image has all the intrinsic features (whatever they are) that characterise episodic memories. Does my later state count as memory? It seems not. It gets the past right, and it stems from an originating experience of the episode remembered. But it depends on that experience only via its dependence on my friend's description. And that renders it ineligible to be memory. (Ayer 1956: 1456; Martin & Deutscher 1966: 168-9.) This restriction on acceptable causal derivations of the current state from the originating experience I dub the Derivation Constraint. Although many endorse it, few have attempted to specify which derivations are acceptable. (For examples, see Martin & Deutscher 1966; Dokic 2001: 228.) I too will leave that delicate issue aside. Some go further than the Origin and Derivation Constraints. They claim that episodic memory itself acknowledges that it meets those constraints. On such views, my current state is given to me as stemming in some particular way from a past experience of the remembered event. (Locke 1975; Owens 1996; Dokic 2001) Call the idea that it is a requirement on episodic memory that it acknowledge its origins in this way the Acknowledgement-of-Origin Constraint. This is not something I accept. For I think it possible for someone to have an episodic memory without realising it. One might be unsure whether what is before one is a memory or a mere imagining- and yet it might turn out to have been a memory all along.9 Or one might be convinced that what is in fact a memory is merely one's imagination playing tricks. These cases are hard to reconcile with the idea that memory always acknowledges its roots in past experience. For such an acknowledgement would secure that every memory is, in effect, presented as such. Our discussion thus far suggests that episodic memory has the following structure: S episodically remembers some episode E iff (I) S can now form a memory image of E. (II) S earlier experienced E. (The Origin Constraint) 9 See Hume 1976: 85-6; Martin & Deutscher 1966: 167-8; and, for dissent, Wollheim 1984: 118. 7 (III) S's current image depends (in the right way) on his earlier experience. (The Derivation Constraint) These conditions may be necessary, but are they also jointly sufficient? If not, the failure lies in their inability to capture something like the factivity of memory: roughly, that what one remembers must have been. For a state to be factive is for it to entail the truth of the propositions that form its contents. For instance, knowledge is factive in that, if S knows that p, then p. Since episodic memory presents its contents imagistically, its contents are not primarily propositions. Thus it cannot be factive, in the strict sense. Nonetheless, it does exhibit a related feature: if one really remembers things being a certain way, then that is how they were. Of course, it is possible to remember a given episode or item while misremembering some features. The point is that one only remembers the features that the episode or item really had. If that is not how things were, then one only seems to remember things being that way. To count as remembered, the contents of episodic memory must accurately reflect the past. Thus memory is subject to a semantic constraint, in addition to the psychological (I) and causal/historical (II & III) ones captured by the conditions above. However, to capture this we need not add a new condition, for what we already have can be made to do the work. The schema above tells us what is required for memory of a particular episode. How should we elaborate it to cover particular ways we remember that episode as being? The most straightforward elaboration is this: S episodically remembers some episode E, or some thing O involved in that episode, being F iff (I)P S can now form a memory image of E/O being F. (II)P S earlier experienced E/O being F. (III)P S's current image depends (in the right way) on his earlier experience. There is a reading of 'S experiences E/O being F' on which it too exhibits the analogue of factivity, i.e. on which one only experiences things being a certain way if that is how they are. Reading (II)P that way, the conditions ensure that how one remembers things to be is indeed how they once were. Thus, properly understood, the 8 Origin Constraint is both causal and semantic, and the conditions as a whole are indeed sufficient. The schema thus elaborated is neutral between different accounts of what the state in (I) amounts to. The Inclusion View then in effect seeks to define episodic memory as follows: S episodically remembers some episode E iff (I)* S can now experientially imagine E. (II) S earlier experienced E. (III)* S's current imagining depends (in the right way) on his earlier experience. (And similarly for S's remembering E or O being F.) This gives us a formulation of the view sufficiently precise for discussion to proceed. §3 For and Against the Inclusion View Why believe that episodic memory involves imagining? Here are two considerations in support. Explaining Incompatibilities Consider possible combinations of states. One can simultaneously imagine in different sensory modes: visualizing a castle, for instance, while auditorily imagining some song. The parallel claim is true for episodic memory. One can summon a visual memory of the dog sleeping, while remembering the snarl it once aimed at the cat. On the other hand, one cannot simultaneously undertake distinct imaginings, or rememberings, within a given sensory mode. If I visualize a dog, I can simultaneously visualize a cat only by picturing the two in the same space-I cannot visualize the former and separately visualize the latter. Again, the parallel claim holds for episodic remembering. Moreover, these compatibilities and incompatibilities are reproduced across the boundary between episodic memory and imagining. I can remember a sound while visualizing what the animal that made it might look like. But I cannot visualize the animal while visually remembering the startled looks the noise provoked. And this is not because it is impossible to be in two different states, in a 9 given sensory mode, at once. For there is no problem remembering the startled looks while seeing the faces that wore them-perhaps it is seeing those faces again that prompts the memory; or with imagining some sound while hearing something else- someone who missed the noise might do just that when I describe it to them. Thus there are incompatibilities both within and between states of memory and imagining that do not hold between them and perceptual states. If episodic memory involves imagining, as the Inclusion View maintains, some of these facts are easily explained in terms of others. The incompatibilities between episodic memories within a given mode, or between mono-modal memories and imaginings, just reflect incompatibilities between the imaginings we can undertake at a given time. In offering this explanation, the Inclusion View outperforms its rivals. The No Overlap View struggles to explain these facts at all. In emphasizing differences between memory and imagining, it lacks the resources to explain incompatibilities common to the two. (Of course, we might supplement the view with further claims that do this work. The point is that nothing in the view itself does it.) Prima facie, the Common Component View is better placed. If both memory and imagining involve imagery, perhaps the incompatibilities above stem from our limited ability to entertain simultaneous images. If I can only summon one (e.g.) visual image at a time, then of course I will not be able visually to remember one thing while visually imagining something else. However, whether the promise of explanation here is met depends on what the View says about its central notion, imagery. For one way to bring out the fuzziness in that notion is to ask whether imagery is involved in perception. Disagreement over the answer suggests that unclarity in the notion extends far indeed. More pressingly, it also blocks the proposed explanation. If perception does involve imagery, it too should exhibit incompatibilities with other imagistic states within a given sensory mode. The explanation will account for the range of incompatibilities that actually obtain only if perception does not involve imagery. And that explanation will be ad hoc unless there are independent grounds for taking perception and imagery to be related in this way. Absent those grounds, the explanation is radically incomplete. 10 Phenomenology The Inclusion View claims that at the heart of episodic memory lies experiential imagining. What are the consequences for the phenomenology of the two? The View might be developed so as to treat imagining as an ingredient in memory – an element that is transformed by mingling with the others involved. Whether the resulting state would bear any resemblance to imagining, in terms of phenomenology, would depend entirely on the nature of that transformation. However, I advocate a more straightforward form of the View. Imagining enters memory, not as an ingredient, but as a component, or proper part. Since episodic memory has experiential imagining among its components, its phenomenology must match that of imagining, at least in part. How does this prediction sit with the phenomenal facts? Prima facie episodic memory and experiential imagining are alike in overall phenomenology. Both involve rather more than the mere thought of their objects. They put those objects before the mind in a way that reflects what it is like to experience them. A memory or an imagining may, for instance, present a scene in a visual way: capturing what such a scene would look like. On the other hand, both memory and imagining stand at a similar remove, phenomenologically, from seeing. While perceiving seems to involve the presence of the scene itself, remembering and imagining do not. All they do-and it is obvious to one that this is so-is provide a way to represent the scene to oneself, to remind oneself of what perceptual experience is like without seeming to induce it.10 Memory and imagination might stand at a similar distance from perception without being alike in other ways. However, there is reason to believe them to be closer still. As noted (§2), it is possible to be uncertain whether one is remembering a past episode, or merely imagining it. (In contrast, it is very hard to conceive how one could be uncertain between remembering and perceiving.) An obvious explanation for how such uncertainty is possible is that the phenomenology of imagining and of memory overlap to a considerable degree.11 That is precisely what the Inclusion View 10 For defence, see Hopkins mss. 11 Some might think this moves too fast. It is perfectly possible for a mental state to have a phenomenology to which the subject is (in part) blind. Anyone who thinks both that imagining is 11 predicts. Again, the rival views are worse placed to accommodate this. If, as the No Overlap View claims, memory and imagining have no mental states as common components, why would their phenomenologies even be similar, let alone close enough to leave us, on occasion, undecided between them? And if, as the Common Component account has it, imagery is the common factor, this does not suggest that memory and imagining are phenomenologically alike, though different from perception, until we have settled whether the latter too involves imagery. However, matters are more complicated, in two respects. First, we might think there must be some difference in phenomenology between memory and imagining. For how otherwise are we able to recognize the two? Sometimes we are uncertain which state we are in, but often we are not. How do we tell the states apart, if not by exploiting some consciously accessible difference between them? Second, some think it obvious that episodic memory, at least when recognized, differs in phenomenology from imagining (Campbell 2001: 173-5). Consider an example of Ayer's (Ayer 1956: 146; cf. Hume 1976: 627-8). Someone describes to me a remote scene that I have forgotten, enabling me to visualize it accurately. After a while, imagining prompts my memory, and accurate visualizing is replaced by genuine remembering. The 'image' need not change, as I move from imagining the scene to remembering it. Yet, according to Lindsay Judson (Judson 1987: 78), there will nonetheless be a shift in phenomenology in the move from one state to the other. If Judson is right, memories, at least when recognized, differ in phenomenology from imaginings. defined in part by its phenomenology and that there can be unrecognized imaginings is under pressure to concede this. (Examples of unrecognized imaginings might be vivid dreams and some forms of hallucination.) Why not, then, treat unrecognized memories the same way? Their phenomenology differs from that of imaginings, but the subject is not sensitive to that difference. However, if blindness to the phenomenology of one's mental states is possible, it is so only under special circumstances. One must, to some degree or other, fail to be compos mentis. It is only because one's mental functions are generally impaired that we can make sense of one's being blind to the manifest features of what are, after all, one's own mental states (Sartre 2004; O'Shaughnessy 2001: 134-5). Such impairement is present when one dreams-after all one is asleep! And it seems equally true of cases of perfect hallucination. Whether they involve drugs, or derangement through madness or lack of food and water, one succumbs only because more generally one has, mentally speaking, lost one's way. Cases of unrecognized memory, in contrast, require no loss of general mental equilibrium, and befall even the clear headed. Lacking an account of how phenomenal blindness might occur in such cases, we do better to handle them by denying that every memory comes marked as such. 12 Neither consideration is compelling. As for how we tell memories from imagining (when we do), phenomenology is not the only possible answer. Perhaps, for instance, it is simply brute that some memories and imaginings bring with them accurate beliefs about their status. Turning to Judson, we might counter his intuition with one pointing the other way. Suppose we reverse the direction of Ayer's case. Call to mind an episodic memory of some scene. Now manipulate in some way whatever it is you are remembering. If you've pictured a face, imagine it smiling; or wearing a hat-any change will do. The result of such manipulation is to replace the memory with an imagining. But is there a shift in phenomenology here (beyond any that goes with changes in the scene)? Not for me, at least. Anyone in sympathy both with this and with Judson's intuition now needs to choose between the two. If moving from imagining to remembering involves a change in phenomenology, how could moving in the reverse direction not also do so? Yet my intuition has one major advantage over Judson's. Judson's case was itself merely imaginary: we explore his claims by imagining an imaginative episode transforming into a memory. My case, in contrast, was real. If you followed my instructions, you really called a memory to mind and transformed it into an imagining. Still, despite these quibbles, I think it unwise to deny categorically that episodic memory and imagining in any way differ in phenomenology. The existence of memories that cannot be distinguished from imaginings suggests that sometimes the phenomenology matches. Nonetheless, it might be that sometimes it differs, and that the difference allows us to tell the states apart. So it is worth noting that, if that is how things turn out, the Inclusion View can accommodate it. If episodic memory has experiential imagining as a component or proper part, then its phenomenology might be shaped by the fact that it occurs in the context of other components – those specified in the Origin and Derivation Constraints. Perhaps in the case of recognized memories it is precisely this context that makes a difference. The fact that memory involves imagining explains the overlap in phenomenology, while the fact that only memory is imagining controlled by the past explains the difference. The discussion to follow will, in effect, consider various candidates for that phenomenological difference. 13 Four Objections However, can episodic memory really have experiential imagining at its core? It is of the essence of imagining to contrast with perceiving in various respects. If we compare episodic memory, we find that in every respect it aligns with perception. How can remembering involve imagining, if it bears features the absence of which is essential to imagining? Perception presents us with things as really being a certain way: it lays claim to show how things are. It does this because it is at root passive: to perceive the world is to be receptive to its nature, to have one's own states determined by the nature of the things in one's environment. In being receptive to the nature of particular things in this way, perceptual states acquire a distinctive kind of singular content: they are about those particulars in virtue of the fact that they reflect their nature. In virtue of seeming to show us how those things really are, perception controls belief: absent special reason not to trust one's senses, one will believe the things perceived to be as perception presents them as being. And, given these other features, we are able to use perception to observe the world, to explore our environment in search of knowledge of its nature. Imagining exhibits none of these features. It is not passive: imagining is an action, something we do in a strong sense of that term. By and large, the way we imagine things to be is determined not by how things are, but how we choose to represent them as being. One consequence is that imagining lacks singular content of the distinctive kind found in perception. Another is that imagining does not claim to show us how things really are: at most, the scenes we imagine are presented as possible, as ways the world might be. Given this last, it should be no surprise that imagining does not control belief: imagining things to be a certain way has in general no bearing on whether one believes them to be so. (There may be exceptions, but in general the rule stands.) Finally, given all these features, it is not at all plausible that imagining offers a way to observe the world. Now consider episodic memory. Prima facie remembering, like perceiving, lays claim to reveal reality. Of course, if so, it presents things not as being thus and so, but as having been so in the past. Nonetheless, one might think, it claims to show us how things were, not merely how they might have been. Certainly memory controls belief: 14 if one takes oneself to be remembering things a certain way, that is how one will believe them to have been. It is natural to think that memory can reveal how the past was only because it is a passive state, shaped not by our actions, but by receptiveness to the episode remembered. If so, it may well be about particular things those the nature of which shapes our memories in a way parallel to that found in perception. Finally, memory offers us a way to observe the past events it is about. If we wonder how the past was in certain respects, can we not interrogate our memory for answers? The putative differences here between memory and perception on the one hand, and imagining on the other, can be organised into four groups: action and receptivity; singular content; the possibility of observation; and claiming to reveal reality, with consequent bearing on belief. In the following sections, I discuss each in turn. While not all yield crisp objections to the Inclusion View, only by discussing each can we hope to address the underlying unease that together they express. §4 Action and Receptivity Episodic memory is perhaps our main guide to our past lives. How can it play this role unless it is, at root, a form of openness to the past? Just as perception is receptive to how the world currently is, episodic memory is receptive to how it was. But what is receptivity, if not passivity? How can a state reflect how things were, in a suitably direct way, unless it is, at its heart, a matter of our being affected by those earlier states of affairs? Memory's role in our cognitive lives thus seems fundamentally incompatible with the thought that it is an action. Since imagining is certainly an action, how can memory have imagining at its core? To get at the root of the worry here, let us begin by considering an argument against Inclusion, one turning on the fact that imagining is an action. While that argument is easily enough met, doing so enables the deeper anxiety about remembering and action to emerge. Here is the argument: [1] Imagining is an action. 15 [2] Action involves control. In particular, if the formation of a mental state with content is an exercise of agency, the contents of that state are under one's control. [3] States the contents of which are under our control cannot yield knowledge (that the world is as represented). [4] Episodic memory is a source of knowledge (that things were as it represents them). So [5] The contents of episodic memory cannot be under our control. So [6] Episodic memory is not (even in key part) imagining. So framed, the initial challenge is easily met. Episodic memory can yield knowledge of the past provided its contents reflect how the past was. It can do that and we can control the contents of the imaginings that form its core, provided the facts determine what we imagine. We control the contents we summon, but in doing so are ourselves controlled by how the past was (experienced to be). The other elements that distinguish episodic remembering from mere imagining, and in particular the Origin and Derivation constraints, secure that the former is sensitive to the facts as the latter is not. Episodic memory is thus a counter-example to premise [3]. Now, this reply will not persuade unless we are clear about the way in which the past controls our current activity. The idea cannot be that we are guided by the past, if that means that we deliberately construct our imagining in such a way that it fits how the past was. For to do that we would have to have an independent conscious conception of the past's nature, one to which we make our imagining conform. But then we would already have to know how the past was, in order to remember. Memory could not be a source of knowledge of the past – contrary to premise [4]. True, some reject that premise, preferring to think of episodic memory as an expression of knowledge already possessed (Ayer 1956: 138-42). But even so, memory is often the primary expression of such knowledge: one can episodically remember an event even if the 16 memory is its only trace in one's conscious states. Thus, whether memory is a source of knowledge of the past or merely its primary expression, the control the past exerts over our imagining cannot require us to have a conscious conception of the remembered events beyond that memory itself provides. Rather than being guided by the past, when we remember we must therefore be simply determined by it. That is, what we imagine is causally controlled by how things were (experienced to be). The past causes our conscious states to be as they are, but the means by which that control is exercised does not itself figure in consciousness. But how, we might wonder, is this consistent with the idea that remembering is an action, as it must be if Inclusion is true? After all, whatever the active nature of imagining amounts to, it is supposed to contrast with the passive nature of perceiving. Yet the current proposal is that in memory the way our conscious states represent things as being is causally determined by factors outside ourselves, by how the past was. Something closely parallel holds in perception. This is precisely the 'receptivity' of which the original objection spoke. If in both cases the way our states represent things to be is determined by external factors, what room is there for one state's being active, as the other is not? Here we reach the heart of the objection. To see how it can be met, consider a rather different form of memory, what is sometimes called 'habit memory', and I will call 'remembering-how'. By way of example, take my remembering how to tie a figureof-eight knot. Remembering-how combines various features. First, it involves the causal determination of the present by the past. Someone might, of course, be able to tie a figure of eight without any previous learning. Perhaps her spatial reasoning skills are so good that on first seeing the completed knot she can reproduce it. But, while we might describe this person as knowing how to tie a figure of eight, we certainly wouldn't say this first performance counts as remembering how to tie one. For that, she must earlier have learned to tie the knot, and her current performance must derive in the appropriate way from that learning process. Second, however, this derivation should not be construed as the subject's being guided by the past, if that means that she has a conscious conception of how things then were, and shapes the present to reflect it. For sure, things might go that way. She might remember how to tie the knot by picturing the way her teacher moved his hands, or by remembering explicit rules 17 ('take the first end over the second, and loop it back under', etc.). But things need not be so. It might be that she can call nothing to mind about how to tie the knot – all she can do is to pick up the rope and start, allowing 'her hands to remember for her'. She would then have no conscious conception of how to do it, and yet, if she pulls it off, she certainly counts as remembering how. Thus the minimum control of the past over the present that remembering-how requires is simple causal determination. But, third, and crucially, even in a case such as this, in which her hands 'remember for her', her tying the knot is certainly an exercise of agency: if this isn't an action of hers, what is? Thus remembering-how combines precisely the features that, according to the Inclusion View, episodic memory involves. Of course, there are important differences. Most obviously, remembering-how does not represent the past, and so cannot serve as a source (or primary expression) of knowledge of it, in the way that episodic memory does. But what matters is not the differences, but the similarities. In particular, remembering-how shows that an action can lie at the heart of a form of memory even though the details of what is done is determined by past events, not the agent's choices; and even though the agent has no further grasp of the nature of those events. Given that these features are compatible, there is no reason to reject the idea that episodic memory also exhibits them. We can retain the idea that episodic memory involves imagining, and thus that at its core lies an exercise of agency, without surrendering the thought that it is determined by the past. Nothing here prevents the Inclusion View making sense of the idea that episodic memory is a source, or primary expression, of knowledge. §5 Singular Content There is another difference between episodic memory and experiential imagining that might be thought to count against Inclusion. One way to approach it is to compare episodic memory with imagistic states of anticipation. If I picture to myself the challenge I face tomorrow, I have imagistic states directed towards a future event. Such states in some way mirror those involved in episodic memory: they are like them in being imagistic and directed at particular episodes in my life; but unlike them 18 in that the episodes in question lie in the future, not the past.12 However, there is at least one further difference between the two. In the case of episodic memories, it is possible to wonder which event I am remembering. Picturing some past scene to myself, I can coherently take myself to remember, while having no idea which past episode has come to mind. In the case of anticipation, in contrast, such ignorance is not possible. If there is some particular episode my imagistic states represent, I must know which it is. If, for instance, I anticipate with dread some driving lesson, I cannot coherently wonder whether the driving lesson I picture is next week's, or the one after. If there's an answer to that question, I must know it. Experiential imagining is like imagistic anticipation in this respect. There need be no singular content to my experiential imaginings. I may picture to myself castles in the air, or holidays by the sea, without there being any answer to the question which castle, or which holiday, I imagine. But where experiential imagining does concern particular things, it seems I cannot fail to know which (Peacocke 1985). This parallel between imagining and anticipating should not surprise us. Whatever the merits of the Inclusion View as an account of episodic memory, the analogous position is surely very plausible for anticipation. When we anticipate the future in imagistic states, those states just are experiential imaginings. Thus, in imagining, as in anticipation, where singular content is present, it is selfintimating: if one's state has that content, one knows that it does. In episodic memory, in contrast, this is not so. Episodic memories always have singular content. For how can you be having an episodic memory unless there is an answer to the question which episode you are remembering? That content is never self-intimating. For, while you might believe you know which episode you remember, in every case it seems your belief is subject to revision. You might always decide that, since the memory presents the episode as thus and so; since the episode you took yourself to be remembering was not that way, but some other episode was; and since you were also present at that other episode, it must be the latter you remember, not the former. Presumably the explanation for this difference in content's epistemology lies in its source: what gives memory its singular content must be very different from what 12 For a sensitive discussion of further parallels, see Goldie 2012 ch. 4. 19 provides the singular content, if any, of imagining (cf. Martin 2001: §IV). Does this difference matter? Does it give us a reason to reject Inclusion? I cannot see how. Experiential imagining need not have any singular content. It can have singular content, with that content constituted in such a way that it is selfintimating. But why should it not also form part of a larger mental state, such that the state as whole has singular content, but content so constituted that the subject might be ignorant of it? The Inclusion View will take the source of that content to be the relations in which one's current state stands to the past episode. Those relations are captured at least in part by the Origin and Derivation Constraints. They are the same relations that secure that one's current imaginings are controlled by the past, and so are receptive to its nature. The view has not a great deal to say about what those relations are, or about how they bring it about that one's current state represents the past episode. But it has surely said enough to explain how any singular content to which they give rise will fail to be self-intimating. The state represents whichever episode or objects the nature of which causally determines how we imagine things to be. Why should the subject who finds his imaginings controlled in this way have any privileged access to the identity of those things?13 Perhaps some will worry that it will be hard for the View to accommodate the close integration between memory's singular content and its other, predicative, content. If I wonder which past episode I am remembering, I may ask myself 'who was that?', 'where was that?' or 'when was that?'. The demonstratives here refer to the scene that, according to Inclusion, I imagine. In asking 'who was that?', for instance, I ask, of the man at the centre of the scene I picture, with the characteristics my image ascribes (e.g bearded and scowling), who it was. Yet the questions raised clearly concern the singular content of the memory.14 Thus the singular content and that imagined are sufficiently closely related to make possible demonstrative reference to 13 Compare perception: it too always has singular content. That content is not self-intimating: one can always coherently wonder which thing one is perceiving. And there too, the source of that content lies in relations (perhaps causal, perhaps constitituve) between the perceptual state and its objects. 14 Not every such question directly concerns the identity of the episode remembered, but all are connected to it, since its identity is bound up with that of the place where it occurred and the people and things involved. Moreover, the points about which episode is remembered generalise to the rest of the memory's singular content: none of it is self-intimating, so the Inclusion View must treat it all as constituted by the relations in which my current imagining stands to the episode from which it derives. 20 the one by exploiting the other.15 The Inclusion View sees these various aspects of content as having different sources. The predicative content stems from experiential imagining, the singular content from the wider context in which that imagining sits. Is this difference in the source of these contents compatible with their close integration in memory experience? Again, I see no grounds for concern. The challenge here does not confront the Inclusion View alone. Any view of memory's nature should accept that its content has two distinct sources. We argued that the singular content of memory must have a different source from the singular content of imagining on the grounds that only the latter is self-intimating. But a parallel contrast can be drawn for the singular content of memory and the rest, its predicative content. While I may always wonder which episode or thing I'm remembering, I cannot raise similar questions about how I'm remembering it to be. If I remember it as having some property F, then I know as much. Any uncertainty here is limited to how the thing was, not to how my memory presents it as having been. (Of course, memory may often present things as neither determinately one way nor another, thus precisely leaving open a question about how, in fact, they were.) If a difference in self-intimation is enough to show a difference in the source of content, every view must treat memory's singular and predicative contents as having different sources. But then, if their having different sources raises the question how they can be integrated, that question faces every view. That question is made no harder if we claim that the source of the predicative content is experiential imagining.16 And that is the only claim the Inclusion View makes here that its rivals do not. §6 The Possibility of Observing Of the four themes floated in §3 as possible challenges to Inclusion, that of observation is least likely to yield a focussed objection. Nonetheless, it is worth exploring some of the ways in which observation might be thought to figure in 15 Perhaps it is not clear that what we have here is genuine demonstrative reference (cf. Campbell 2001). No matter: it is something rather like demonstrative reference, and that is enough to show that the two kinds of content must be integrated. 16 This claim also brings an explanatory benefit: given that the predicative content of imagining is selfintimating, we can use it to explain why the predicative content of memory is so. 21 memory. Doing so helps highlight some contrasts and comparisons between memory, imagining and perception. There is at least one respect in which memory leaves room for observation. As I have stressed, episodic memory involves receptivity: if one remembers some event being a certain way, then one's current state represents it thus because that's how it was. The causal relations that shape one's current memory do so in such a way that it reflects the nature of the event remembered. More than this, however, that receptivity is openended. If one can remember some aspect of the past episode, there is every chance one will also be able to remember other of its aspects. Of course, there may be many aspects one cannot now remember. In some cases, it may even turn out that the only aspect one can remember is the one initially recalled. Nonetheless, if we can remember something about an event, it is always reasonable to try to remember other things about it. In this respect, episodic memory does offer something like the opportunity to observe the past. If one wants to know more, one can reasonably turn to memory in the hope of finding out. Perception also involves open-ended receptivity. One's perceptual states present things as a certain way because that is how those things are. And if one can perceive some aspect of a particular object, event or scene, there is every reason to think one will be able to perceive other aspects. One need only redirect one's gaze, focus one's auditory attention, move into a position to touch parts of the object currently out of reach, and so on. In this respect, observation is possible in both memory and perception. However, rather than making trouble for the Inclusion View, this is what we should expect, given the way I have developed the view in sections 4 and 5. I have argued that it is perfectly coherent to suppose that some of our imaginings are controlled by states of affairs external to us, and in particular by the nature of past episodes we experienced. So controlled, imagining is receptive to the nature of those episodes. But if that's possible, then it is certainly possible that it is receptive to their nature in an open-ended way. Having imagined the past in a way that reflects some of its nature, and curious to know more, one merely needs to undertake further imaginings 22 under its influence. Inclusion is thus consistent with memory's allowing for observation, in this first form. Perception allows for observation in two further ways. First, it allows us to exercise control over certain relations in which we stand to our environment. If, for instance, I am to see something, I must be close enough for it not to be a mere speck on the horizon; I must be looking in the right direction, with my eyes open; I must be focussing at the appropriate distance; and nothing must stand between me and it, to obscure the view. These relations are systematic: as my relation to the target shifts, the intervening object obscures it ever less; if I can focus near or far, I can also focus on points in between, and so on. The relations are also manifest in perception. If my view of A is partly obscured by B, or if I am failing to focus on the target, these are things of which vision makes me aware. Further, in general these relations are, directly or otherwise, within my control. If something obscures the view, I can move it, or myself, so that it obscures it no longer. If the object is too far away to be seen, I can move closer, until it comes into view. If the light is too faint for the item to appear to foveal vision, I can look at it out of the corner of my eye. And so on. Parallel points hold for the other senses: a sound can be too distant to be heard, a smell too faint not to masked by another odour, a taste too elusive if I hold my nose while eating. Again, these relations are obvious in perception itself, and again, I can alter how I stand to the object in these respects. Thus perception involves a series of systematic relations between me and its possible objects. That it does so is apparent in perception itself. And I can generally, indirectly or otherwise, alter those relations, bringing new items into my perceptual range, as others fall out of it. The exercise of this control is what we most often mean when we talk of 'observation'. Neither imagining nor memory allow for observation in this form. Of course, both can in some way capture the relations that mediate perception. I can, for instance, imagine walking round a large object while looking at it or exploring it with my hands, and the resulting imaginings may well develop in ways that parallel the changing perceptions such a perambulation would involve. The same is true of episodic memory, if I earlier undertook such a walk and now recall it. But in these cases imagining and 23 remembering represent the relations involved in a possible, or past, set of perceptions; they do not thereby themselves involve the subject standing in such relations to the objects imagined or remembered. To imagine or remember something I need not now be related to it in any of the ways that would mediate my perceiving the thing. Perhaps this just shows that the relations that mediate imagining and remembering differ from those mediating perception. However, that isn't right either. Of course, there are conditions on episodic memory – we stated them in §2. Perhaps there are also conditions that must be met if one is to experientially imagine a given object. But these conditions are not analogues of the relations that mediate perception. They are not systematic, manifest in the states themselves, or under our control. If I can remember a complex episode, such as a party, I can remember the events that compose it in any order I choose. (The claim here concerns the order of my remembering, not, of course, the order I remember the events as having.) There is no need to track through some to get to others. So where is the system here? Suppose I remember some of the party, but not all of it. If there were systematic relations under my control manifest in remembering, then I'd be aware that, in order to remember the missing episodes, all I need do is adjust my relation to them in some way. But what is that way, short of simply remembering them? No suitable relations, subject to my control, are manifest. Parallel points apply to imagining. If observing is exercising of control over mediating relations, then neither imagining nor memory leave room for observation. There is one further way in which perception allows for observation. Observation is sometimes a matter of attending to what we perceive. Even if we hold constant our relation to an object, we might move from not observing it to doing so simply by beginning to attend to it, or to some of its features. For instance, hearing a piece of music, I might switch from taking it in absent-mindedly to concentrating on the complex rhythms. Nothing changes bar my beginning to attend to the rhythm, and yet not until I do so am I really listening to the piece. (I take it that listening is just observing in its specifically aural form.) Perhaps what is at stake here is a matter of degree. Perhaps hearing the piece at all requires attending to it to some extent. Even so, since to attend better is to listen more, the point stands: some observing is a matter of attending. 24 Can attention be deployed in episodic memory in a parallel way? Can I deploy my attention selectively within a scene as remembered? One might think so. Suppose I wonder whether you were at the party I went to last week. Can I not picture the scene in the apartment, and then attend to my memory image, attempting to work out the answers? If I can, surely this has good claim to count as using memory to observe the past. I call the past to mind in memory and then deploy attention to scrutinise the scene recalled. Is this not as close an analogue as one could wish for hearing the music and observing it by attending? I think we should be cautious. There is an alternative account of how we use memory to answer questions about the past. Rather than forming a memory of the scene in the front room, within which I direct attention, perhaps what I do is simply try to form a memory of the scene that includes you. If I can, I know you were there. If I can't, even though I have many and varied memories of the evening, then I have at least grounds for doubt. On this account, each memory is given in its entirety. The scene as I remember it is not gradually revealed, as I direct attention within it; but is given all at once. Of course, I might suddenly remember features of the scene I had up to then forgotten. I can certainly allow my memories to develop, recalling one by one the various events, in the order in which they occurred. But at every moment I grasp fully the content of the memory I've formed at that time. Attention gets no purchase here – no more than it does on pure thought. (What would it be to entertain a thought, while attending first to some of its aspects, then to others?) If so, episodic memory is no more amenable to observation as selective attention than it is to observation through control of mediating relations. How are we to choose between these two accounts of how memory tells us about the past? Fortunately, we don't have to. For the choice between them finds a close parallel in imagination. We do not generally use imagining as a way to expand our knowledge, but we sometimes do. Suppose a chef asks herself whether a stew needs more seasoning. She finds the answer by imagining it saltier. Such a procedure seems as likely to yield knowledge as does remembering the party. After all, good chefs do generally make good judgements in these matters, and how else do they do so, if not by using their gustatory imaginations? Now, when the chef uses her imagination to 25 work out that the stew needs more seasoning, does she form an image of the revised taste, and selectively attend to its saltiness, to judge whether it is too much? Or does she simply attempt to imagine the stew being at once both saltier and better for it (Hopkins 2010)? Prima facie, the considerations that would settle this question are much the same as those in the case of episodic memory. If so, we can simply set the issue aside. If memory allows for observation in the form of the selective deployment of attention, then so does imagining; if the latter does not, then in all probability, nor will the former. Either way, the truth about memory and this form of observation is easy for Inclusion to accommodate. Anyone who thinks it is not owes us an argument for thinking the two mental states differ in this respect. (V) Belief and Presenting as Real There is one final pair of obstacles to the Inclusion View. Perception claims to show us how things are. To have, for instance, a visual or auditory experience is to be presented with a way the world is, in terms of its visible or audible aspects. Relatedly, perception by default controls belief. Unless special circumstances obtain (such as my taking myself to be hallucinating), I will believe things to be as my perceptual states present them. Imagining, in contrast, merely shows how things might be. If I visualize a scene, or imagine some soundscape, my imagining does not present things as really that way, but (at best) as possibly so. Relatedly, the default is that imagining does not control belief. True, on occasion it may do. I may, for instance, try to use imagining to judg whether the stew needs more salt, to explore what's possible or to test some theorem of geometry. If I'm sufficiently sanguine about my method, I may form beliefs on those matters as a result. But these are exceptions, holding only under special circumstances; in general imagining does not guide belief. Episodic memory, however, apparently aligns with perception in these respects. It too guides belief, and does so by default. Unless I've particular reason to doubt my memory, I will take it that things were as it presents them. And it too, we might think, presents its objects as real (even if past). How so, if episodic memory has imagining at its core? Of course, the Inclusion View does not claim that memory is mere imagining, but that it is imagining controlled by the past. The extra here might be the source of memory's distinctive relations to belief, and of any distinctive 'positional act' (Sartre 2004: 11- 26 14) it involves. Thus the challenge here is explanatory. It is to spell out how memory guides belief, and how it can present its objects as real, though plain imagining does neither. Let us begin with memory's relations to belief. In fact, there are two explanatory tasks here. Memory's control over belief has a causal and a normative aspect. The former, power over belief, amounts to the fact that memory states by default bring about belief states to match. But memory is not merely a cause of belief; in general, it is right that it be so. Memory offers us knowledge of how the past was, and so some epistemic norms must be met when belief follows memory's lead. Thus memory also has authority over belief.17 The challenge to the Inclusion View is both to explain memory's power and to explain its authority. I take the latter first. Explaining episodic memory's authority over belief is one of the central issues in the epistemology of memory. Offering a satisfactory account is certainly difficult. However, it is difficult for everyone – whether or not one thinks that remembering involves imagining. Given this, meeting the current objection does not require a full account of memory's authority. It is enough to show that there are accounts available to the Inclusion View that have some plausibility. That is not hard to do. Earlier (§4) I argued that memory can involve imagining while being receptive to the nature of the past. Provided that claim is true, a route opens up through the thicket here, regardless of the broader epistemological framework we adopt. If we are externalists about justification or knowledge, then the mere fact of receptivity is enough to render it explicable how memory states have authority over belief. Qua receptive, those states reflect how things were. If we allow them to guide the content of our beliefs, those contents will also correlate with the facts, in whatever way externalism requires. If instead we prefer an internalist framework, then the receptivity of memory secures its authority, provided there is some acknowledgment on the subject's part of that receptivity. To take just one way this might work, suppose that my memory states not only stem from some earlier experience of the remembered episode (as the Origin Constraint requires), but are given to me as doing so. If so, I 17 I borrow the terminology of power and authority from Martin 2002. 27 might reason as follows: (1) I now imagine things as being thus and so because I earlier experienced them as being that way.18 (2) I can't earlier have experienced a certain episode as being thus and so unless that's how things were. So, (3) things were as my current state presents them as being. This simple inference provides at least the start of a justification, available to the reflective subject, for believing things to be as her episodic memory suggests. Of course, this sketch account faces many questions. But why, prior to further exploration, would we think answers are unavailable? And why would we think these questions are any harder than those facing the rivals to the Inclusion View? When we turn to memory's power over belief, in one respect the situation is more difficult. Certainly we cannot appeal to the inference just sketched. Inferences can provide justification for belief regardless of whether the subject actually undertakes them: it's enough that they be available to her. The question of power, in contrast, concerns the mechanisms by which belief is in fact generated. Inference can only do that if the subject actually follows the chain of reasoning. Yet surely most of the time when we let belief follow where memory leads we do so without consciously reflecting and without reasoning. Not only do we not follow the inference above; we usually don't follow any line of inference at all. How, then, are we to explain power? Opponents of Inclusion may attempt to do so by appeal to the other idea introduced above, that memory presents its objects as real. Our memory states do not merely claim to show us the way things might be, they claim to show us how they in fact are (or at least were). We form beliefs in response to them simply by taking these appearances at face value. If an apparent memory presents me with the claim that you were at the party, and nothing intervenes to cast doubt on this appearance, then I will believe that you were there. Isn't this explanation both simple and persuasive? And doesn't the idea that memory's core is imagining the past precisely deny us the ability to give it? There are three things to say here. First, the explanation is not obviously satisfying. How exactly is the transition from memory to belief brought about? As noted, the 18 Here I appeal to the semantic aspect of the Origin Constraint (§III). 28 answer cannot lie in inference. So the idea better not be that we notice that our memory state presents its objects as real, and on that basis infer that things were thus and so. So what exactly in 'presenting as real' explains how that feature generates belief? The explanation invites us to read off the causal connections from features of their content, broadly construed. But, while content might help make sense of rational links between states, it is much less clearly a guide to their causal relations. Prima facie God, evolution, or accident might arrange for one state to cause another, whatever the content of the former. It is hard not to feel that the explanation indulges in armchair speculation about connections that can only be explored empirically.19 Second, if there is an acceptable explanation here, there are others that work just as well. Perhaps it is indeed in some way puzzling how a state can control belief if (as the objector supposes is true of imagining) it does nothing more than present its objects as merely possible. But suppose the state does that while simultaneously acknowledging its origin in an earlier experience of things being that way. Why should that feature of memory states not leave them generating beliefs without any process of inference? This would explain both how memory has power over belief and why mere imagining (which does not present itself as originating in an earlier experience) lacks it. And it would do so in a way wholly consistent with the Inclusion View.20 I cannot see that this explanation is significantly worse than that offered by 'presenting as real'. Third, even if appeal to presenting as real yields a more satisfying explanation than that just given, it has yet to be shown that the explanation is denied to the Inclusion View. The second explanatory challenge with which this section began was to show that the View can accommodate the idea that memory presents its objects as real. If it can do that, and if that idea offers the best explanation of memory's power over 19 Compare Reid: 'Why sensation should compel our belief of the present existence of a thing, memory a belief of its past existence, and imagination no belief at all, I believe no philosopher can give a shadow of reason, but that such is the nature of these operations; they are all simple and original, and therefore inexplicable acts of the mind.' (1997: 28) 20 Does this explanation at least force a modification to the View? It might seem to involve a commitment to the Acknowledgement-of-Origin Constraint, which I earlier rejected (§3) on the basis that there can be unrecognized memories. However, there is no such commitment. The Constraint claims that every episodic memory acknowledges its roots in an originating experience. Here we hypothesize that memory acknowledges its origin only in order to explain how memory guides belief. Since unrecognized memories do not guide belief, there is no need to suppose they acknowledge their origin. 29 belief, Inclusion can meet part of the first explanatory challenge by meeting the second. It is to that second challenge that I now turn. Does memory presents its objects as real, as pure imagining does not? In fact, I am sceptical. As my earlier discussion of phenomenology suggests (§3), I am unsure that there are any significant phenomenological differences between the two. Of course, they differ in their relations to belief. However, at least as introduced above, talk of 'presenting as real' is not supposed to be a mere gloss on that fact. It is supposed to be an independent feature of memory that might explain those differing relations. That is what I am sceptical about. Nonetheless, I will argue that if memory does present its objects as real, this is consistent with Inclusion. I do so because disputes over phenomenology are difficult to settle. It will be hard to persuade those who think memory does present as real. Some may think it does so, and that we can use this to explain its relations to belief. And others may think it does so, even though it cannot explain those relations. According to them, presenting as real is simply the manifestation of those relations in phenomenology. We cannot explain memory's relations to belief by its presenting things as real, since the two are not independent in the way explanation requires. Nevertheless, memory does so present that is simply the phenomenological upshot of its being related to belief as it is. Why think that, if memory does present its objects as real, this is something the Inclusion View can accommodate? I offer two considerations. First, compare imagistic states of anticipation. As I noted above (§5), it is very plausible that these states involve experiential imagining of the events anticipated. Yet at least sometimes they present those events as real. There cannot, therefore, be any incompatibility between imagining (in the right context) and presenting as real. Of course, there are many differences between memory and anticipation. The question is whether any of these efface the comparison just drawn. What we anticipate lies in the future, rather than the past. Perhaps that denies the event anticipated a reality that the event remembered enjoys. It is another question, however, whether any such metaphysical difference shows up in the way the two states present things: are our imagistic states really sensitive to the subtleties of the open future, and the like? Again, much of what we anticipate we take to be merely probable (and perhaps not 30 even that), whereas to remember an event is to place it securely in the realm of the actual. But is that true of all anticipation? One can dwell on a future event's inevitability, as one imagines its various features. And, while the way we anticipate such an event as being may often have a provisional quality to it (it might be like this when the time comes, but it might not), sometimes the point of anticipating is to be better prepared, and sometimes gaining that benefit requires us to believe that we have modelled the future correctly, in all significant respects. In sum, some anticipation should present its objects as real, in any sense in which memory does. Does this force us to conclude that sometimes anticipation involves, not imagining, but some other state? What would that state be? Naturally, if no state could combine imagining with presenting as real, if we insisted on holding onto the latter for anticipation and memory, we would have to abandon the former. However, my second consideration is that it has yet to be spelled out quite why the pair should be thought incompatible. There might indeed be a problem here, were the 'positional act' involved in imagining to take a certain form. Sartre described it as 'positing as nothingness'. It is easy to take him to mean that imagining presents its objects as not real. If so, then the Inclusion View is forced to treat memory as involving a contradiction. The imagining that supposedly forms its core presents the pictured event as not being real, whereas the state as a whole (we are supposing) presents it as real. There is, we can concede, at the very least some work to do here, to explain how a state the elements of which are in tension in this way can form a stable and coherent whole. The same result would follow if we took imagining to present its objects as merely possible: that is, as possible, but not actual. Perhaps, though, the moral is, not that Inclusion is false, but that the objection has misdescribed the way imagining presents its objects. Perhaps, rather than presenting things as not real, it merely does not present them as real. (Sartre himself suggests that this one of the four more specific forms that 'positing as nothingness' can take (2004: 12).) Or perhaps imagining presents its objects as possible, but is entirely neutral as to whether they are also actual (White 1990: ch.20). Either way, if memory does present things as real, it is not in tension with its imaginative core. All it does is to take up an option that imagining has left open: that 31 what is possible is in fact also actual, or that what was presented entirely neutrally with respect to its reality is now confirmed to be real.21 Conclusion I see no good reason to think the Inclusion View false. None of the four objections to it has come to anything. Moreover, there is some reason for thinking it true. As well as fitting very neatly with the phenomenology, it offers elegant explanations of episodic memory's compatibility with other sorts of state. Various questions concerning episodic memory have not been addressed. I have not, for instance, discussed whether, and if so how, its content is tensed, i.e. whether it represents its objects as past. And there are many questions to which I have been able to give no more than preliminary answers. It is possible that filling the gaps thus left will throw up new grounds for doubt about the Inclusion View. As things stand, however, I hope to have made a start in developing and defending it. Until more powerful objections come along, I think we ought at the very least to take more seriously than recent literature has the idea that episodic memory is imagining controlled by the past.22 Robert Hopkins University of Sheffield 21 There is no suggestion, of course, that the descriptions here represent different temporal phases of remembering. 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