Psychological research has discovered that episodic memories are constructive in nature. This paper examines how, despite being constructive, episodic memories can provide us with justification for beliefs about the past. In current literature, two major approaches to memorial justification are internalist foundationalism and reliabilism. I first demonstrate that an influential version of internalist foundationalism, dogmatism, encounters problems when we compare certain types of memory construction with cognitive penetration in perception. On the other hand, various versions of reliabilism all face skeptical (...) challenges. I propose an alternative, two-factor theory that recognizes an epistemic distinction typically overlooked by dogmatism and reliabilism. Although our account leaves certain aspects unspecified, it is an important step forward. (shrink)

Generativism about memory justification is the view that memory can generate epistemic justification. Generativism is gaining popularity, but process reliabilists tend to resist it. Process reliabilism explains the justification of beliefs by way of the reliability of the processes they result from. Some advocates of reliabilism deny various forms of generativism. Other reliabilists reject or remain neutral about only the more extreme forms. I argue that an extreme form of generativism follows from reliabilism. This result weakens a long-standing argument for (...) reliabilism. (shrink)

We offer a framework for assessing what the structure of episodic memory might be, if one accepts the Buddhist denial of persisting selves. This paper is a response to Jonardon Ganeri's paper "Mental time travel and attention", which explores Buddhaghosa's ideas about memory. (It will eventually be published with a reply by Ganeri).

In this paper I argue for a capacity account of memory, according to which memory is a neurocognitive capacity to encode, store, and retrieve information. Phenomenal accounts classify memory as having a certain phenomenal character. However, the mental processes generating that phenomenal character are separate from the processes that generate content. Causal accounts require a causal connection between the subject's current representation and their original representation. However, when memory is constructed, this connection does not exist. Unlike its major competitors, the (...) capacity account picks out an epistemically interesting class of memory beliefs while accommodating the constructive nature of memory. (shrink)

There is a substantial disagreement in the literature over whether ‘remembering’ is a normative concept. Some philosophers have attempted to defend the normativity of ‘remembering’ by highlighting its normative importance or its conceptual affinities with ‘knowing’ or ‘duties’. This paper will first reveal defects of these existing normativist arguments. After that, I will propose and defend a new normativist argument, according to which the concept ‘remembering’ is partly constituted by a paradigmatically normative concept, namely ‘rational’. To be more specific, I (...) argue that full possession of the concept of ‘remembering’ requires having an inclination to believe that ‘if S remembers that p, then S would be (at least defeasibly) rational in holding a memory-based belief that p’. This, according to a persuasive constitutive account of normative concepts, suffices to demonstrate the normative nature of remembering. (shrink)