Markus Werning

Over the past several years, there has been a shift in the researchers’ thinking about the functional role of episodic memory. Rather than focusing on how memory represents the past, recent literature often presents memory as ultimately dealing with the future—helping the organism to anticipate events and increase its adaptive success. However, the distinct contribution of episodic (as opposed to semantic) memory to future-oriented simulations remains unclear. We claim that episodic memory yields adaptive success because of its crucial role in singular counterfactual causal reasoning, which thus far has been mostly ignored in causal reasoning literature. Our paper presents a causal inference model based on the predictive processing framework and the minimal trace account of episodic memory. According to our model, evaluating the cause of an event involves (i) generating an episodic memory related to the said potential cause, (ii) constructing a counterfactual scenario through inhibition of the relevant part of the past episode, and (iii) temporal evolution followed by alternative model evaluation. We further discuss our approach in the developmental context.

Synesthesia is a phenomenon in which an additional nonstandard perceptual experience occurs consistently in response to ordinary stimulation applied to the same or another modality. Recent studies suggest an important role of semantic representations in the induction of synesthesia. In the present proposal we try to link the empirically grounded theory of sensory-motor contingency and mirror system based embodied simulation to newly discovered cases of swimming-style color synesthesia. In the latter color experiences are evoked only by showing the synesthetes a picture of a swimming person or asking them to think about a given swimming style. Neural mechanisms of mirror systems seem to be involved here. It has been shown that for mirror-sensory synesthesia, such as mirror-touch or mirror-pain synesthesia, concurrent experiences are caused by the overactivity in the mirror neuron system responding to the specific observation. The comparison of different forms of synesthesia has the potential of challenging conventional thinking on this phenomenon and providing a more general, sensory-motor account of synesthesia encompassing cases driven by semantic or emulational rather than pure sensory or motor representations

Representational systems such as language, mind and perhaps even the brain exhibit a structure that is often assumed to be compositional. That is, the semantic value of a complex representation is determined by the semantic value of their parts and the way they are put together. Dating back to the late 19th century, the principle of compositionality has regained wide attention recently. Since the principle has been dealt with very differently across disciplines, the aim of the two volumes is to bring together the diverging approaches. They assemble a collection of original papers that cover the topic of compositionality from virtually all perspectives of interest in the contemporary debate. The well-chosen international list of authors includes psychologists, neuroscientists, computer scientists, linguists, and philosophers.

This paper provides a proof of principle for the philosophical theory of Trace Minimalism, a novel account of episodic memory. It claims that remembering goes without the storage of representational content in memory. Remembering rather consists in the construction of a representation of a scenario, previously experienced, through the interaction of minimal traces with acquired statistical regularities. A minimal trace merely constitutes a causal link to the experience but possesses no trans-temporally transmitted representational (viz. categorical and compositional) content. Our proof of principle uses a neuro-computational model that is based on an autoencoder modeling the visual pathway and a transformer modeling the semantic information network. It assumes the hippocampus as the host of minimal traces. Our model demonstrates that minimal traces, which lack sufficient information for reliable categorization and composition of content on their own, can be enhanced through interaction with semantic information. This process allows for the accurate construction of past scenarios, respecting regularities in the world and supporting the reliability of episodic memory. Our findings suggest that episodic memory relies on sparse, fragmentary information rather than stored content, providing a robust proof of principle that remembering is possible without representational memory traces.

Episodic memories are widely regarded as factive: Linguistic reports of a memory make the presupposition that the memory refers to an actually existent object and that the properties remembered of the object actually apply to it. Focusing on memories from perceptions—where factivity can indeed be assumed—the two main historical strands in the philosophy of memory, intentionalism and relationalism, disagree, amongst others, over (i) whether memory reports should be analyzed as de re or de dicto, (ii) to what type of entity agents are related when they episodically remember, and (iii) how the time gap between experience and remembering is bridged. However, what about memories from dreams or hallucinations, where factivity is violated? Here, we can still distinguish remembering from misremembering and confabulation. We show that the intentionalist as well as the relationalist faces insurmountable problems in those cases. We develop a new account according to which reference in episodic memory is parasitic on the reference relation in the primary experience—the host attitude. Accordingly, we replace de re and de dicto analyses of memory reports with a de hospite analysis. Referential parasitism overcomes the problems of intentionalism and relationalism. We argue that referential parasitism obviates the need to transmit representational content from experience to remembering, as postulated by the Causal Theory of Memory. Minimal traces without representational content suffice. Trace minimalism (Werning 2020) paired with referential parasitism provides a uniform, non-disjunctivist explanation of remembering and misremembering from veridical and non-veridical experiences.

The paper argues for a non-disjunctivist account of reference in episodic memory. Our account provides a uniform theory of reference for episodic memories that root in veridical and non-veridical experiences. It is independent from the particular mechanisms that subserve the respective source experiences. We reject both relationalist and intentionalist analyses of memory and build our approach on Werning and Liefke’s theory of referential parasitism and Werning’s theory of trace minimalism. The motivation for our non-disjunctivist account is the assumption that perceptual and non-perceptual memories with an episodic character share a uniform underlying causal mechanism and thus make up one and the same natural kind.

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 discontinuism: 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.

This study explores the relation between pain sensitivity and the cognitive processing of words. 130 participants evaluated the pain-relatedness of a total of 600 two-syllabic nouns, and subsequently reported on their own pain sensitivity. The results demonstrate that pain-sensitive people (based on their self-report) associate words more strongly with pain than less sensitive people. In particular, concrete nouns like syringe, wound, knife, and cactus, are considered to be more pain-related for those who are more pain-sensitive. We discuss our results in the light of three theoretical frameworks – cognitive bias, prototype theory, embodied account. We argue that the latter is best suited to explain the results of this study in the sense in which it implies the principle of body specificity, according to which different bodily characteristics lead to corresponding differences in the way in which people construct concepts and word meanings.

This study explores the relation between pain sensitivity and the cognitive processing of words. 130 participants evaluated the pain-relatedness of a total of 600 two-syllabic nouns, and subsequently reported on their own pain sensitivity. The results demonstrate that pain-sensitive people associate words more strongly with pain than less sensitive people. In particular, concrete nouns like ‘syringe’, ‘wound’, ‘knife’, and ‘cactus’ are considered to be more pain-related for those who are more pain-sensitive. These findings dovetail with recent studies suggesting that certain bodily characteristics influence the way people form mental representations (Casasanto, 2009). We discuss three mechanisms which could potentially account for our findings: attention and memory bias, prototype analysis, and embodied cognition. We argue that, whereas none of these three accounts can be ruled out, the embodied cognition hypothesis provides a particularly promising view to accommodate our data.

Memory perspectives on past events allegedly take one of two shapes. In field memories, we recall episodes from a first-person point of view, while in observer memories, we look at a past scene from a third-person perspective. But this mere visuospatial dichotomy faces several practical and conceptual challenges. First, this binary distinction is not exhaustive. Second, this characterization insufficiently accounts for the phenomenology of observer memories. Third, the focus on the visual aspect of memory perspective neglects emotional, agential, and self-related social aspects. Fourth, the focus on the time of recall neglects the fact that visual, emotional, agential, and social aspects of perspective can also be dissociated in the original experience. In this chapter, we move away from the standard visual dichotomy. Instead, we propose that memory perspective is better understood along four lines: visual, agential, emotional, and social. Drawing on empirical research, we argue that these dimensions predict a disposition to recall a past event based on the present situation of the memorizer. This account supports seeing episodic memory as a natural kind, supported by scenario construction mechanisms and minimal memory traces. By remapping the classic distinction between field and observer perspectives along four dimensions, our proposal provides explanatory advantages and secures practical gains by enabling testable hypotheses.

The Complex-First Paradox regards the semantics of nouns and consists of a set of together incompatible, but individually well confirmed propositions about the evolution and development of language, the semantics of word classes and the cortical realization of word meaning. Theoretical and empirical considerations support the view that the concepts expressed by concrete nouns are more complex and their neural realizations more widely distributed in cortex than those expressed by other word classes. For a cortically implemented syntax–semantics interface, the more widely distributed a concept’s neural realization is, the more effort it takes to establish a link between the concept and its expression. If one assumes the principle that in ontogeny and phylogeny capabilities demanding more effort develop, respectively, evolve later than those demanding less effort, the empirical observation seems paradoxical that the meanings of concrete nouns, in ontogeny and phylogeny, are acquired earlier than those of other word classes.

Mental state reasoning or theory-of-mind has been the subject of a rich body of imaging research. Although such investigations routinely tap a common set of regions, the precise function of each area remains a contentious matter. With the help of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we sought to determine which areas are involved when processing mental state or intentional metarepresentations by focusing on the relational aspect of such representations. Using non-intentional relational representations such as spatial relations between persons and between objects as a contrast, the results ascertained the involvement of the precuneus, the temporal poles, and the medial prefrontal cortex in the processing of intentional representations. In contrast, the anterior superior temporal sulcus and the left temporo-parietal junction were implicated when processing representations that refer to the presence of persons in relational contexts in general. The right temporo-parietal junction, however, was specifically activated for persons entering spatial relations. The level of representational complexity, a previously unexplored factor, was also found to modulate the neural response in some brain regions, such as the medial prefrontal cortex and the right temporo-parietal junction. These findings highlight the need to take into account the critical roles played by an extensive network of neural regions during mental state reasoning.

The paper develops an account of minimal traces devoid of representational content and exploits an analogy to a predictive processing framework of perception. As perception can be regarded as a prediction of the present on the basis of sparse sensory inputs without any representational content, episodic memory can be conceived of as a “prediction of the past” on the basis of a minimal trace, i.e., an informationally sparse, merely causal link to a previous experience. The resulting notion of episodic memory will be validated as a natural kind distinct from imagination. This trace minimalist view contrasts with two theory camps dominating the philosophical debate on memory. On one side, we face versions of the Causal Theory that hold on to the idea that episodic remembering requires a memory trace that causally links the event of remembering to the event of experience and carries over representational content from the content of experience to the content of remembering. The Causal Theory, however, fails to account for the epistemic generativity of episodic memory and is psychologically and information-theoretically implausible. On the other side, a new camp of simulationists is currently forming up. Motivated by empirical and conceptual deficits of the Causal Theory, they reject not only the necessity of preserving representational content, but also the necessity of a causal link between experience and memory. They argue that remembering is nothing but a peculiar form of imagination, peculiar only in that it has been reliably produced and is directed towards an episode of one’s personal past. Albeit sharing their criticism of the Causal Theory and, in particular, rejecting its demand for an intermediary carrier of representational content, the paper argues that a causal connection to experience is still necessary to fulfill even the minimal requirements of past-directedness and reliability.

The notion of compositionality was first introduced as a constraint on the relation between the syntax and the semantics of languages. It was later postulated as an adequacy condition also for other representational systems such as structures of mental concepts, computer programs, and even neural architectures. Syntax is compositional in that it builds more complex well-formed expressions recursively, on the basis of smaller ones, while semantics is compositional in that it constructs the meanings of larger expressions on the basis of the meanings of smaller ones. Unless empirical linguistic or psychological evidence were to require it nothing else should be needed to understand language. Traditionally, the term compositionality is used in opposition to various forms of holism, with which compositionality is often said to be inconsistent.