Current Controversies in Philosophy of Memory

André Sant'Anna is a McDonnell Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Philosophy and the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Program at Washington University in St. Louis.

The 12 chapters cover 6 questions: I. What is the relationship between memory and imagination? II. Do memory traces have content? III. What is the nature of mnemonic confabulation? IV. What is the function of episodic memory? V. Do non-human animals have episodic memory? VI. Does episodic memory give us knowledge of the past?

Editors' introduction Part I: What is the relationship between memory and imagination? 1. Remembering, imagining, and memory traces: Toward a continuist causal theory 2. The relation between memory and imagination: A debate about the right concepts Part II: Do memory traces have content? 3. Remembering without a trace? Moving beyond trace minimalism 4. Distributed traces and the causal theory of constructive memory Part III: What is the nature of mnemonic confabulation? 5. An explanationist model of (false) memory 6. Towards a virtue-theoretic account of confabulation Part IV: What is the function of episodic memory? 7. Episodic memory: And what is it for? 8. Episodic memory is not for the future Part V: Do non-human animals have episodic memory? 9. Episodic memory in animals: Optimism, kind scepticism and pluralism 10. What does it take to remember episodically? Part VI: Does episodic memory give us knowledge of the past? 11. The epistemology of episodic memory 12. You don't know what happened