There has been a great deal of research on episodic memory in animals. But debates over the uniqueness of human episodic memory continue. These debates can be understood as concerning two questions: When in evolution did episodic memory emerge? And why did it emerge?
If memory is a form of imagination, how can it give us knowledge of the past? Does it give us knowledge of the past at all? The simulation theory of memory discussed in my previous post threatens to push us towards a form of scepticism about memory knowledge.
What is memory? How does it give us knowledge? When and why did it emerge? These are the questions that I grapple with in Mental Time Travel: Episodic Memory and Our Knowledge of the Personal Past (MIT Press, 2016). In this and the next two posts, I’ll give an overview …
