Sarah Robins

The study of the neural basis of memory has advanced over the past decade. A key contributor to this memory “renaissance” has been new tools. On its face, this matches what might be described as a neuroscientific revolution stemming from the development of tools, where this revolution is largely independent of theory. In this paper, we challenge this tool revolution account by focusing on a problem that arises in applying it to this “renaissance”: it is centered around memory, but the tools were not developed for solving problems in memory science. To resolve this problem, we introduce an account that distinguishes tool development and tool uptake, and we argue that while theoretical considerations may not inform development, they do inform uptake. Acknowledging the distance between these stages of tool use draws our attention to the questions of why and how tool uptake occurs in the domains that it does.

According to the Causal Theory of Memory, remembering a particular past event requires a causal connection between that event and its subsequent representation in memory, specifically, a connection sustained by a memory trace. The CTM is the default view of memory in contemporary philosophy, but debates persist over what the involved memory traces must be like. Martin and Deutscher argued that the CTM required memory traces to be structural analogues of past events. Bernecker and Michaelian, contemporary CTM proponents, reject structural analogues in favor of memory traces as distributed patterns of event features. The proposals are understood as distinct accounts of how memory traces represent past events. But there are two distinct questions one could ask about a trace’s representational features. One might ask how memory traces, qua mental representations, have their semantic properties. Or, what makes memory traces, qua mental representations of memories, distinct from other mental representations. Proponents of the CTM, both past and present, have failed to keep these two questions distinct. The result is a serious but unnoticed problem for the CTM in its current form. Distributed memory traces are incompatible with the CTM. Such traces do not provide a way to track the causal history of individual memories, as the CTM requires. If memory traces are distributed patterns of event features, as Bernecker and Michaelian each claim, then the CTM cannot be right.

ABSTRACTGaneri [2018] explores three Buddhist approaches to episodic memory and concludes in favor of Buddhaghosa's attentional account. When comparing it to Vasubandhu's, Ganeri argues that Buddhaghosa's is preferable because it does not over-intellectualize episodic memory. In my commentary, I argue that the intellectualism of Vasubandhu's approach makes it both a more plausible account of episodic memory and a more successful strategy for addressing the precarious role of the self in this form of memory.