2025/07/29 by Julian Bacharach · 1 voice
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Child and Animal Learning Development #Memory Processes and Influences #Memory and Neural Mechanisms
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/09515089.2025.2536604
openalex publication_date 2025/07/29 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
Our commonsense conception of memory involves the idea that when you recall an event from your past, you can do so only because you previously witnessed that event, or were involved in it as an agent or participant. It is all but irresistible to account for this dependence in causal terms: your recollection is explained causally by your earlier experience of the event of which it is a recollection. This should not be confused with the more specific claim that remembering necessarily involves a “memory trace” – a specific neurocognitive structure that faithfully preserves the content of the original experience and is reactivated in recall. This contribution aims to show that the initial commonsense idea can be liberated from any empirically dubius commitment to memory traces. A minimalist approach to memory causality recognizes the basically causal character of our commonsense conception of memory while rejecting the demand for a generally valid, reductive account of what the causal mechanism consists in. I address the potential objections that the minimalist approach involves some kind of spooky temporal action-at-a-distance, and that it fails to give an adequate explanation of the singularity of episodic recall.