Diachronicity Matters! How Semantics Supports Discontinuism About Remembering and Imagining

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Abstract

Much work in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience has argued for _continuism_ about remembering and imagining (see, e.g., Addis J R Soc N Z 48(2–3):64–88, 2018). This view claims that episodic remembering is just a form of imagining, such that memory does not have a privileged status over other forms of episodic simulation (esp. imagination). Large parts of contemporary philosophy of memory support continuism. This even holds for work in semantics and the philosophy of language, which has pointed out substantial similarities in the distribution of the verbs _remember_ and _imagine_. Our paper argues _against_ the continuist claim, by focusing on a previously neglected source of evidence for _dis_continuism: the semantics of episodic memory and imagination reports. We argue that, in contrast to imagination reports, episodic memory reports are essentially diachronic, in the sense that their truth requires a foregoing reference-fixing experience. In this respect, they differ from reports of experiential imagination, which is paradigmatically synchronic. To defend our claim about this difference in diachronicity, we study the truth-conditions of episodic memory and imagination reports. We develop a semantics for episodic uses of _remember_ and _imagine_ that captures this difference.

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Author Profiles

Kristina Liefke
Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Markus Werning
Ruhr-Universität Bochum

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References found in this work

Attitudes de dicto and de se.David Lewis - 1979 - Philosophical Review 88 (4):513-543.
Generative memory.Kourken Michaelian - 2011 - Philosophical Psychology 24 (3):323-342.
Remembering.C. B. Martin & Max Deutscher - 1966 - Philosophical Review 75 (April):161-96.

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