Abstract
According to the Causal Theory of Memory (CTM), remembering a particular past event requires a causal connection between that event and its subsequent representation in memory, specifically, a connection sustained by a memory trace. The CTM is the default view of memory in contemporary philosophy, but debates persist over what the involved memory traces must be like. Martin and Deutscher (Philos Rev 75:161–196, 1966) argued that the CTM required memory traces to be structural analogues of past events. Bernecker (Memory: A philosophical study. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010) and Michaelian (Philos Psychol 24:323–342, 2011), contemporary CTM proponents, reject structural analogues in favor of memory traces as distributed patterns of event features. The proposals are understood as distinct accounts of how memory traces represent past events. But there are two distinct questions one could ask about a trace’s representational features. One might ask how memory traces, qua mental representations, have their semantic properties. Or, what makes memory traces, qua mental representations of memories, distinct from other mental representations. Proponents of the CTM, both past and present, have failed to keep these two questions distinct. The result is a serious but unnoticed problem for the CTM in its current form. Distributed memory traces are incompatible with the CTM. Such traces do not provide a way to track the causal history of individual memories, as the CTM requires. If memory traces are distributed patterns of event features, as Bernecker and Michaelian each claim, then the CTM cannot be right.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
For example, Martin and Deutscher’s article is the only entry on memory included in a collection of major epistemology papers of the twentieth century (Bernecker and Dretske 2000). It is also routinely cited as the default view of memory, against which others offer refinements of explore implications (e.g., Shoemaker 1970; Palmer 1978; Deutscher 1989; Bernecker 2010; Debus 2010; Michaelian 2011).
In framing the question this way, I am following Von Eckardt (1996).
Memory theorists who reject the role of memory traces in an account of memory (e.g., Bennett and Hacker 2003) or who argue for a purely logical account of traces (e.g., Rosen 1975) must answer this question, too, in a modified form that does not presume memory’s distinctiveness is derived from the representations in which it traffics. Such views are, however, beyond the scope of the present paper.
Martin and Deutscher take the constraints identified in the opening clause of this condition to be widely accepted, if under specified. The causal requirement is their unique contribution. By “operative” they mean that it must play a causal role in bringing about the representation that serves as an instance of remembering.
While relearning, a person may recognize that the information is coming from an outside source, but even so, may forget the source on subsequent occasions when the event is called to mind. Martin and Deutscher insist this is commonplace, as ‘recollections’ from one’s early childhood illustrate (Martin and Deutscher 1966: 182).
Martin and Deutscher wrestle with this boundary, recognizing that proximity to the body serves as a poor marker for a representation staying inside the rememberer. As they note, relearning can occur even when the information never leaves the body and, further, remembering need not involve physical contact between the memory and the body.
The depression example comes from Bernecker (2010), although he does not interpret it as an instance of nonmemorial retention.
The assumption is common. Many philosophers and cognitive scientists have endorsed such a view, especially at the time Martin and Deutscher were writing. Structural isomorphism is a view of representation via resemblance. To say that a memory trace, or any representation, is a structural analogue of what it represents is to say that the structure of the representation mirrors the structure of what is represented (see Palmer 1978).
I do not include Debus’ revised CTM because she does not challenge or replace the structural analogue requirement.
For an extended argument on this point, see Heil (1981).
The suggestion of the holographic alternative begins in Zemach, but he is more agnostic than Michaelian about its empirical status. Neither Zemach nor Michaelian elaborates much on the details of this proposal. Zemach says only that the account appeals to“holographic principles challenging the notion of localized codes of the sort used, e.g., in a phonograph record” (Zemach 1983: 33).
I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer, and presumed defender of the CTM, for pressing this interpretation of the commitment.
References
Bennett, M., & Hacker, P. M. S. (2003). Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Bernecker, S. (2010). Memory: A philosophical study. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bernecker, S., & Dretske, F. (2000). Knowledge: Readings in contemporary epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Broad, C. D. (1925). The mind and its place in nature. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
De Brigard, F. (2014). Is memory for remembering? Recollection as a form of episodic hypothetical thinking. Synthese, 191, 1–31.
Debus, D. (2010). Accounting for epistemic relevance: A new problem for the causal theory of memory. American Philosophical Quarterly, 47, 17–29.
Deutscher, M. (1989). Remembering “Remembering.”. In J. Heil (Ed.), Cause, mind, and reality (pp. 53–72). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Grice, H.P. (1961). The causal theory of perception. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 35 Supp., 121–152.
Heil, J. (1981). Does cognitive psychology rest on a mistake? Mind, 90, 321–342.
James, W. (1890). The Principles of Psychology. London: Macmillan.
Laurence, J. R., & Perry, C. (1983). Hypnotically created memory among highly hypnotizable subjects. Science, 222, 523–524.
Lewis, D. (1980). Veridical hallucination and prosthetic vision. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 58, 239–249.
Locke, D. (1971). Memory. London: Macmillan.
Martin, C. B., & Deutscher, M. (1966). Remembering. Philosophical Review, 75, 161–196.
Mendelsohn, A., Chalamish, Y., Solomonovich, A., & Dudai, Y. (2008). Mesmerizing memories: Brain substrates of episodic memory suppression in posthypnotic amnesia. Neuron, 57, 159–170.
Michaelian, K. (2011). Generative memory. Philosophical Psychology, 24, 323–342.
Palmer, S. E. (1978). Fundamental aspects of cognitive representation. In E. Rosch & B. B. Lloyd (Eds.), Cognition and Categorization (pp. 259–303). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Rosen, D. A. (1975). An argument for the logical notion of a memory trace. Philosophy of Science, 42, 1–10.
Russell, B. (1912). The Problems of Philosophy. London: Williams and Norgate.
Shoemaker, S. (1970). Persons and their pasts. American Philosophical Quarterly, 7, 269–285.
Smolensky, P. (1991). Connectionism and the language of thought. In B. Loewer & G. Rey (Eds.), Meaning in Mind: Fodor and his Critics (pp. 201–227). Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Sutton, J. (1998). Philosophy and Memory Traces: Descartes to Connectionism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Von Eckardt, B. (1996). What is Cognitive Science?. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Wixted, A., Squire, L. R., Yoonhee, J., Papesh, M. H., Goldiner, S. D., Kuhn, J. R., et al. (2014). Sparse and distributed coding of episodic memory in neurons of the human hippocampus. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111, 9621–9626.
Zemach, E. M. (1983). Memory: what it is, and what it cannot possibly be. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 44, 31–44.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Sven Bernecker, Carl F. Craver, John Heil, Muhammad Ali Khalidi, and the audience at a University of Kansas colloquium for helpful comments on previous drafts of this paper. Special thanks to Corey J. Maley for creation of the figures.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Robins, S. Representing the past: memory traces and the causal theory of memory. Philos Stud 173, 2993–3013 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0647-x
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0647-x