Special Topics In Philosophy

Memory is a fundamental cognitive capacity. Without it, a creature would not only be unable to learn from its past, but unable to reliably anticipate its future. The pertinence of memory for questions about personal identity, knowledge, or moral responsibility indicate its philosophical importance. Yet it is only in the last decade or so that memory has become a sustained focus for analytic philosophy in the way that perception or language have long been. This course will introduce core topics in contemporary philosophy of memory and, touching on some relevant work in psychology and neuroscience, prepare students to engage with this growing area of research.

We will explore the questions, taxonomies, and theories that have come to shape ongoing disputes in the philosophy of memory. We will also examine the emergence of constructivist approaches to memory in psychology. In combination with suggestive findings in neuroscience, we will consider what implications these should have on both traditional and new philosophical questions. For example: What is remembering? Are remembering and imagining in some important sense the same process? What does it take for remembering to be (in)accurate? Is remembering a form of knowledge? To what extent are our memory capacities shaped and scaffolded by our social and technological landscapes? Is episodic memory for the past, or for the future? While pursuing answers to these questions, we will also reflect on how one ought to answer them, and more broadly on how naturalistic approaches to studying the mind ought to proceed.

Students are not expected to be familiar with the issues covered, although prior coursework in philosophy of mind and/or epistemology would be beneficial.