Mental Time Travel: When and Why Did Memory Emerge?

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?

Mental Time Travel: How Does Memory Give Us Knowledge?

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.

CFP: Memory and Subjectivity

Call for posters: “Memory and Subjectivity” Grenoble (France), the 9th-10th-11th of June, 2016 We invite participants to submit a poster to the Memory and Subjectivity 2016 conference. Posters can restrict themselves to the philosophical perspective or the psychological one. Submissions Researchers interested in presenting a poster should prepare an overview …

Working memory and fluid g

Yesterday I sketched an argument for believing that all access-conscious thinking is sensory based. But suppose this conclusion is wrong. Suppose there is some sort of workspace in which amodal (nonsensory) thoughts – judgments, goals, decisions, intentions, and the rest – can become active and be conscious. What would one …

Attention, conscious experience, and working memory

One argument for the view that all access-consciousness depends upon sensory representations is an inference to the best explanation (or rather, a series of them) that brings together recent work on consciousness with recent work on working memory. The argument builds on the findings of Bernard Baars, Stanislas Dehaene, and …

Introduction

Thanks to John Schwenkler and The Brains Blog for giving me this opportunity to tell you about my work. In this first post I’d like to describe the themes and ideas of my most recent book, Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy. In later posts …

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