Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Propping up the causal theory

  • Original Research
  • Published:
Synthese Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Martin and Deutscher’s (1966) causal theory of remembering holds that a memory trace serves as a necessary causal link between any genuine episode of remembering and the event it enables one to recall. In recent years, the causal theory has come under fire from researchers across philosophy and cognitive science, who argue that results from the scientific study of memory are incompatible with the kinds of memory traces that Martin and Deutscher hold essential to remembering. Of special note, these critics observe, is that a single memory trace can be shaped by multiple past experiences. This appears to prevent traces from underwriting Martin and Deutscher’s distinction between remembering an event and merely forming an accurate representation of it. This paper accepts such criticisms of the standard causal theory and, through considering the phenomenon forgetting through repetition, raises several others. A substantially revised causal theory is then developed, compatible with the thesis that individual memory traces are shaped by multiple past experiences. The key strategy is to conceive of episodic remembering not as the simple retrieval and projection of a static memory trace, but as a complex quasi-inferential process that makes use of multiple forms of information and cues—“prop-like” memory traces included—in generating the experience known as episodic remembering. When remembering is understood as a multi-componential process, there are a variety of ways in which a representation of the past may be appropriately causally dependent upon a prior experience of the event remembered.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. If one hears the verb ‘remember’ as factive, then speaking of “successful” remembering is arguably redundant. However, some (e.g. Fernández (2019) and Michaelian (2016c)) favor a non-factive understanding of ‘remember.’ For that group, there is an important distinction between remembering and successful remembering. In specifying that our topic is successful episodic remembering, I aim to bring both groups into conversation around a single question: what are the necessary and sufficient conditions for successful remembering?

  2. The differences between the paraphrase and original are the following: Martin and Deutscher give criteria for remembering “something” or “a thing” (p. 166) as opposed to an event, though their broader discussion clarifies that memory of events is their primary explanandum (see, e.g., their focus on “remembering that2” over “remembering that1” (pp. 162–3)), and this is indeed how their theory is typically interpreted. Also, Martin & Deutsher speak simply of the need to “represent e” and of S’s “representation of e” without assigning a variable (r) to refer to that representation. Finally, they provide a slightly different account of how internal (mental) events are remembered than external events, while the present version focuses only on external events so as not to engage debates about the nature of introspection.

  3. Clause 3, above, becomes clause 3a when Martin and Deutscher add sub-clauses 3b and 3c.

  4. We can add that all the states in this succession must be states of the same kind, as seems to be Martin & Deutcher’s intent. If the states in the succession can be of different kinds, this would allow the succession to travel from Kent’s brain to Gray’s and back, via testimony, which is what condition 3b seeks to forbid. In any case, the revised causal theory I develop later does not appeal to the notion of ‘successive states,’ so I will not linger on it here.

  5. Recently, however, some have proposed views on which traces are “contentless”—and thus not representations—yet still causally mediate between an experience of event e and its subsequent remembering in r (Hutto & Peeters, 2018; Perrin, 2018; Werning, 2020).

  6. I will consider, in Section Two, the alternative possibility that a single trace is “produced by” perceptions of multiple distinct (if similar) events, all of which it may allow one to remember. We will see that allowing for this possibility creates gaps in the causal theory of memory as it is standardly developed.

  7. To be sure, scientific work on memory is not univocal on this point, with some theorists still pursuing—and finding some empirical support for—a more traditional, monogamous view of traces (Najenson, 2021; Robins, 2020).

  8. This entailment holds so long as we assume that a particular trace can only be produced by the perception of one event (see fn. 6), but not if we allow that a particular trace can be produced by multiple past perceptions (because it is a kind of summation of those perceptions). However, going the latter route (while defending a causal theory) creates significant problems that I will discuss in Sect. 2.

  9. These metaphors are also sketched and put to somewhat different use in Langland-Hassan (forthcoming).

  10. The door remains open to modified causal theories that do not take causation by a memory trace to be sufficient for remembering and which allow for imaginings to be caused by traces. However, in order to provide sufficiency conditions for successful remembering, any such causal theory will then need to add a condition of a sort not found in Martin and Deutscher’s classical account—such as an appeal to the agent’s intentions. I develop two such approaches below (Sections Eight and Nine).

  11. It is possible, however, for there to be traces that are subject to process of reconsolidation processes yet that are still only used to remember one event. In that sort of situation, reconsolidation need not result in the kind of promiscuity that is problematic for standard causal theories. Whether, and how often, reconsolidation in fact results in trace promiscuity remains unsettled by current empirical work.

  12. “Just as the hippocampus is necessary for de novo construction of imagined scenarios,” Barry and Maguire propose, “it could perform the same function for remote memories long after the original hippocampal trace has decayed…its fleeting role in consolidation may be subservient to its primary function as a constructor of scenes, whether past, future, or fictive” (p. 134, 139). See Moscovitch and Nadel (2019) for a competing account of the role of the hippocampus more amenable to its storage of persisting memory traces.

  13. If the replay theorist holds that traces can remain accessible despite being indistinguishable—like a marble in a bag of 100 exactly similar ones remains (in some sense) accessible if indistinguishable—then the problematic result is that we store new traces even though the net effect will be that we think we can remember fewer events than we could before (because we now cannot distinguish certain traces). From an epistemic standpoint, this is as bad as not being able to remember the events (while retaining the ability to accurately represent them).

  14. It may seem that this criticism clashes with a popular neuroscientific theory of memory known as the Multiple Trace Theory (MTT) (Moscovitch et al., 2005). However, the MTT holds that multiple content-similar traces are stored with respect to a single event and not with respect to many distinct events (Moscovitch et al., 2005, p. 42). In such a situation, the multiplicity of traces can increase the likelihood that the event represented is remembered, without the subject’s inability to distinguish among them impairing her ability to remember the event (as would occur if the many content-similar traces represented distinct events). Note also that having many traces all of which represent the same event is not to have promiscuous traces, so long as each trace only represents one event.

  15. Thanks to Ellie Magill for helping me to fine-tune this challenge.

  16. This parenthetical condition may be rejected by the simulationist who denies that successful remembering requires appropriate causation. The point of including it here is to capture a commitment that seems to guide attempts at remembering in ordinary individuals not steeped in the philosophy or science of memory.

  17. It an open question how finely-grained events are to be typed here, but the working assumption is that they will be very finely grained. For instance, an “e kind of event” will not simply be cooking dinner, but, rather, cooking thus and such type of meal in thus and such setting, where such contents are represented by mental imagery. In general, the spatial outlay of properties and objects in a represented environment will be the features most highly relevant to individuating the type of event in question.

  18. Why not allow that such traces/props can be first acquired after e? The only reason I see for not doing so is that this would create the possibility of there being times after e during which one could not remember e, despite being able to remember e after those times. This would be counterintuitive. Nevertheless, on the view I am suggesting, such remembering would not be different in any deep sense than what I am prepared to count as successful remembering.

  19. It is true, as a referee notes, that AR1 does not explain how one knows that one’s one-off belief was caused by the remembered event, and so does not explain how one knows that one is remembering (and not simply seeming to remember). There are things to be said here, appealing to context and other background beliefs. For now, I simply note that the traditional causal theory—invoking monogamous memory traces—likewise does not explain how one knows whether one is in fact remembering, or only seeming to remember. Nor does Michaelian’s simulation theory explain this metacognitive feat in its basic account of what it is to remember (2016c, Ch. 6).

  20. It is not question-begging to assume the existence of some set of episodes that, pre-theoretically, all sides agree are cases of successful remembering (while perhaps disagreeing about other episodes). For episodic remembering to be a possible subject of scientific study, there must be some such set that constitutes paradigmatic cases of the phenomenon that all sides wish to explain.

  21. As a referee observes, it is possible that a particular one-off belief would be promiscuous in being caused by experiences of multiple distinct events—if, for instance, one unwittingly formed the belief “I have experienced this sort of event only once” in response to two distinct experiences. Such a belief could not feature in AR1. Yet we have reason to think that promiscuity among one-off beliefs will be uncommon, as their contents are always single-event-specific. Thus, when such a belief is promiscuous, something has gone wrong, and we should expect related errors in remembering. By contrast, it is in the nature of traces (on the prop theory) to represent general, repeatable outlays of properties, and to be strengthened by repeated perceptions of such outlays.

  22. As I am conceiving of things, the set of props that are used, combined with the way they are arranged, determines the “type” of event that is being remembered. This makes it possible for me to only remember one episode of the type I am making saag paneer, even if the many of the same of props, arranged differently, could be used in the remembering of a different type of event (e.g. my wife is making saag paneer).

  23. For another recent philosophical account of remembering that makes appeal to fluency and familiarity, see Perrin (2018). While Perrin labels his a “procedural causal” account of remembering, his approach differs from that developed here in not preserving a discrete causal pathway from each act of remembering to the event remembered, and in not articulating an essential role for memory traces.

  24. I’m indebted to two anonymous reviewers for this journal for raising this issue.

References

  • Addis, D. R. (2020). Mental time travel? A neurocognitive model of event simulation. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 11(2), 233–259. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-020-00470-0

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Addis, D. R., Wong, A. T., & Schacter, D. L. (2007). Remembering the past and imagining the future: Common and distinct neural substrates during event construction and elaboration. Neuropsychologia, 45(7), 1363–1377.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Aggleton, J. P., & Brown, M. W. (1999). Episodic memory, amnesia, and the hippocampal-anterior thalamic axis. Behav Brain Sci, 22(3), 425–444; discussion 444–489.

  • Aggleton, J. P., McMackin, D., Carpenter, K., Hornak, J., Kapur, N., Halpin, S., & Gaffan, D. (2000). Differential cognitive effects of colloid cysts in the third ventricle that spare or compromise the fornix. Brain, 123(4), 800–815. https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/123.4.800

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, M. L. (2010). Neural reuse: A fundamental organizational principle of the brain. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33(4), 245–266. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X10000853

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barry, D. N., & Maguire, E. A. (2019). Remote memory and the hippocampus: A constructive critique. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 23(2), 128–142. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2018.11.005

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bastin, C., Besson, G., Simon, J., Delhaye, E., Geurten, M., Willems, S., & Salmon, E. (2019). An integrative memory model of recollection and familiarity to understand memory deficits. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 42, e281. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x19000621

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bernecker, S. (2010). Memory: A philosophical Studey. Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Besson, G., Ceccaldi, M., Tramoni, E., Felician, O., Didic, M., & Barbeau, E. J. (2015). Fast, but not slow, familiarity is preserved in patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment. Cortex, 65, 36–49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2014.10.020

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cheng, S., & Werning, M. (2016). What is episodic memory if it is a natural kind? Synthese, 193(5), 1345–1385. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-014-0628-6

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • De Brigard, F. (2014a). Is memory for remembering? Recollection as a form of episodic hypothetical thinking. Synthese, 191(2), 155–185. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-013-0247-7

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • De Brigard, F. (2014b). The nature of memory traces. Philosophy Compass, 9(6), 402–414. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12133

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Debus, D. (2017). Memory causation. In S. Bernecker & K. Michaelian (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of philosophy of memory (pp. 63–75). Routledge.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Dudai, Y. (2012). The restless engram: Consolidations never end. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 35(1), 227–247. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-neuro-062111-150500

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fernández, J. (2019). Memory: A self-referential account. Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hutto, D. D., & Peeters, A. (2018). The roots of remembering: Radically enactive recollecting. In K. Michaelian, D. Debus, & D. Perrin (Eds.), New Directions in the Philosophy of Memory (pp. 97–118). Routledge.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Jacoby, L. L., Kelley, C. M., & Dywan, J. (1989). Memory attributions. In H. L. Roediger & F. I. M. Craik (Eds.), Varieties of memory and consciousness: Essays in honour of Endel Tulving (pp. 391–422). Erlbaum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Langland-Hassan, P. (forthcoming). Remembering, Imagining, and Memory Traces: Toward a Continuist Causal Theory. In C.J. McCarroll, K. Michaelian, & André Sant’Anna (Eds.), Current Controversies in the Philosophy of Memory. London: Routledge.

  • Maguire, E. A., & Mullally, S. L. (2013). The hippocampus: A manifesto for change. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 142(4), 1180.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Martin, C. B., & Deutscher, M. (1966). Remembering. The Philosophical Review, 75(2), 161–196. https://doi.org/10.2307/2183082

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Michaelian, K. (2011). Generative memory. Philosophical Psychology, 24(3), 323–342. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2011.559623

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Michaelian, K. (2016a). Against Discontinuism. In K. Michaelian, S.B. Klein, & K.K. Szpunar (Eds.), Seeing the Future: Theoretical Perspectives on Future-Oriented Mental Time Travel. Oxford University Press.

  • Michaelian, K. (2016b). Confabulating, misremembering, relearning: The simulation theory of memory and unsuccessful remembering. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1857.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Michaelian, K. (2016c). Mental time travel: episodic memory and our knowledge of the personal past. MIT Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Michaelian, K. (2021). Imagining the past reliably and unreliably: Towards a virtue theory of memory. Synthese. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03125-4

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Michaelian, K. & Robins, S. (2018). Beyond the causal theory? Fifty years after Martin and Deutscher. In K. Michaelian, Dorothea Debus, & D. Perrin (Eds.), New Directions in the Philosophy of Memory (pp. 13–32). London: Routledge.

  • Michaelian, K., & Sant’Anna, A. (2019). Memory without content? Radical enactivism and (post)causal theories of memory. Synthese. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02119-7

  • Moscovitch, M., & Nadel, L. (2019). Sculpting remote memory: Enduring hippocampal traces and vmPFC reconstructive processes. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 23(8), 634–635. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2019.05.001

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moscovitch, M., Rosenbaum, R. S., Gilboa, A., Addis, D. R., Westmacott, R., Grady, C., & Nadel, L. (2005). Functional neuroanatomy of remote episodic, semantic and spatial memory: A unified account based on multiple trace theory. Journal of Anatomy, 207(1), 35–66.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nadel, L. (2007). Consolidation: The demise of the fixed trace. In H. L. Roediger, Y. Dudai, & S. M. Fitzpatrick (Eds.), Science of memory concepts (pp. 177–182). Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Najenson, J. (2021). What have we learned about the engram? Synthese. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03216-2

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nanay, B. (2018). Multimodal mental imagery. Cortex, 105, 125–134.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pearson, J., & Kosslyn, S. M. (2015). The heterogeneity of mental representation: Ending the imagery debate. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(33), 10089–10092. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1504933112

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Perrin, D. (2018). A case for procedural causality in episodic recollection. In K. Michaelian, Dorothea Debus, & D. Perrin (Eds.), New Directions in the Philosophy of Memory (pp. 33–51). Routledge.

  • Robins, S. (2016). Representing the past: Memory traces and the causal theory of memory. Philosophical Studies, 173(11), 2993–3013. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0647-x

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Robins, S. (2017). Memory traces. In K. Michaelian & S. Bernecker (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of philosophy of memory (pp. 76–87). Routledge.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Robins, S. (2020). Fixed engrams and neural dynamics. Philosophy of science.

  • Sara, S. J. (2000). Retrieval and reconsolidation: Toward a neurobiology of remembering. Learning and Memory, 7(2), 73–84.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schacter, D. L., Addis, D. R., & Buckner, R. L. (2007). Remembering the past to imagine the future: The prospective brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 8(9), 657–661.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stanley, M. L., Gessell, B., & De Brigard, F. (2019). Network modularity as a foundation for neural reuse. Philosophy of Science, 86(1), 23–46. https://doi.org/10.1086/701037

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sutton, J. (1998). Philosophy and memory traces: Descartes to connectionism. Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tulving, E. (1983). Elements of episodic memory. Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Werning, M. (2020). Predicting the past from minimal traces: episodic memory and its distinction from imagination and preservation. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 1–33.

  • Westerman, D. L., Lloyd, M. E., & Miller, J. K. (2002). The attribution of perceptual fluency in recognition memory: The role of expectation. Journal of Memory and Language, 47(4), 607–617. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0749-596X(02)00022-0

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Whittlesea, B. W. A. (1993). Illusions of familiarity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 19(6), 1235–1253. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.19.6.1235

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Whittlesea, B. W. A., Jacoby, L. L., & Girard, K. (1990). Illusions of immediate memory: Evidence of an attributional basis for feelings of familiarity and perceptual quality. Journal of Memory and Language, 29(6), 716–732. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-596X(90)90045-2

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Whittlesea, B. W. A., & Williams, L. D. (2000). The source of feelings of familiarity: The discrepancy-attribution hypothesis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26(3), 547–565. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.26.3.547

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Whittlesea, Bruce W. A., & Williams, Lisa D. (2001a). The discrepancy-attribution hypothesis: I. The heuristic basis of feelings and familiarity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 27(1), 3–13. doi:https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.27.1.3

  • Whittlesea, Bruce W. A., & Williams, Lisa D. (2001b). The discrepancy-attribution hypothesis: II. Expectation, uncertainty, surprise, and feelings of familiarity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 27(1), 14–33. doi:https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.27.1.14

  • Yonelinas, A. P. (2002). The nature of recollection and familiarity: A review of 30 years of research. Journal of Memory and Language, 46(3), 441–517. https://doi.org/10.1006/jmla.2002.2864

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yonelinas, A. P., Aly, M., Wang, W.-C., & Koen, J. D. (2010). Recollection and familiarity: Examining controversial assumptions and new directions. Hippocampus, 20(11), 1178–1194. https://doi.org/10.1002/hipo.20864

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This paper benefitted enormously form critical feedback and suggestions from two reviewers for this journal, from discussions with Kourken Michaelian’s seminar members at the Center for Philosophy of Memory at the Université Grenoble Alpes, from members of the audience at the Generative Episodic Memory 2021 conference, Bochum, and from students in my fall 2021 graduate seminar on memory the University of Cincinnati. I am also indebted to a reviewer for this journal for suggesting the paper’s title. I accept all blame for the pun and, to the reviewer, assign all glory.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, USA

    Peter Langland-Hassan

Authors
  1. Peter Langland-Hassan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Peter Langland-Hassan.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Langland-Hassan, P. Propping up the causal theory. Synthese 200, 95 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03635-9

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03635-9

Keywords

Search

Navigation