This book provides a translation of the text which is more faithful to the original than previous ones, together with extensive introduction, summaries and commentary.

Rowlands defends environmentalism, that is, the conjunction of the ontological claim that cognitive processes are not located exclusively inside the skin of cognizing organisms and the epistemological claim that it is not possible to understand the nature of cognitive processes by focusing exclusively on what is occurring inside the skin of cognizing organisms. Chapter 3 is devoted to explaining how environmentalism differs from other forms of externalism about the mental. The crucial points are that the arguments to be presented for (...) the ontological claim do not turn on considerations about the content of mental states, that environmentalism implies a strong form of externalism, and that standard arguments for externalism, based on considerations about content, do not establish the strong form. (shrink)

This paper defends the claim that, in order to have a concept of time, subjects must have memories of particular events they once witnessed. Some patients with severe amnesia arguably still have a concept of time. Two possible explanations of their grasp of this concept are discussed. They take as their respective starting points abilities preserved in the patients in question: (1) the ability to retain factual information over time despite being unable to recall the past event or situation that (...) information stems from, and (2) the ability to remember at least some past events or situations themselves (typically because retrograde amnesia is not complete). It is argued that a satisfactory explanation of what it is for subjects to have a concept of time must make reference to their having episodic memories such as those mentioned under (2). It is also shown how the question as to whether subjects have such memories, and thus whether they possess a concept of time, enters into our explanation of their actions. (shrink)

What is required to be an interdisciplinary theory in cognitive science is for it to span more than one traditional domain. Generally speaking, as I discuss ...

Here the distinguished philosopher Ian Hacking uses the MPD epidemic and its links with the contemporary concept of child abuse to scrutinize today's moral...

Much of ordinary memory is autobiographical; memory of what one saw and did, where and when. It may derive from your own past experiences, or from what other people told you about your past life. It may be phenomenologically rich, redolent of that autumn afternoon so long ago, or a few austere reports of what happened. But all autobiographical memory is first-person memory, stateable using ‘I’. It is a memory you would express by saying, ‘I remember I . . .’.

In this book John Campbell shows that the general structural features of human thought can be seen as having their source in the distinctive ways in which we...

Most studies of memory as a cultural faculty focus on written practices and how they are transmitted. This study concentrates on incorporated practices and provides an account of how these things are transmitted in and as traditions. The author argues that images and recollected knowledge of the past are conveyed and sustained by ritual performances, and that performative memory is bodily. This is an essential aspect of social memory that until now has been badly neglected.

"Krell creates a remarkable interplay of meanings, allusions, and connotations—an interplay of multiple resonance which is finely tuned to Derrida's thought and which makes his essay as artful as it is conceptually disciplined. He is surely one of the most astute translators and readers in contemporary Continental thought." —Charles E. Scott.

These artificial memories have not only supported, relieved and occasionally replaced natural memory, but they have also shaped our views of remembering and forgetting. Over the centuries memory aids provided the terms and concepts with ...

What are the defining characteristics of memory? What determines what is remembered and how much it is emphasized? In Context Is Everything, Susan Engel explores how the place, company, purpose, and situation--the context of the recollection--profoundly affects the essence and experience of a memory. Beginning with memory's most intimate setting--an exchange between a mother and a small child--Engel explores memory's function in such varied circumstances as a trial, a therapy session, the construction of our public persona, and the formulation of (...) an autobiography. Blending vivid anecdotes with the startling findings of memory research, Engel examines the implications of context and purpose for memory, including one's motivation to remember and the strength or quality of the memory itself. She traces the trajectory of a memory from the moment of conception in the mind, through its social realization, and back to the owner, settling in his or her repertoire of the past. And she looks at memory as fodder for history--what is the basis for what we know and pass on? Beautifully written and filled with fresh insights on such contested issues as recovered memory and remembered testimony, Context Is Everything is both an informative and engaging read. (shrink)

In Being There, Andy Clark weaves these several threads into a pleasing whole and goes on to address foundational questions concerning the new tools and..

Philosophy and Memory Traces defends two theories of autobiographical memory. One is a bewildering historical view of memories as dynamic patterns in fleeting animal spirits, nervous fluids which rummaged through the pores of brain and body. The other is new connectionism, in which memories are 'stored' only superpositionally, and reconstructed rather than reproduced. Both models, argues John Sutton, depart from static archival metaphors by employing distributed representation, which brings interference and confusion between memory traces. Both raise urgent issues about control (...) of the personal past, and about relations between self and body. Sutton demonstrates the role of bizarre body fluids in moral physiology, as philosophers from Descartes and Locke to Coleridge struggled to control their own innards and impose cognitive discipline on 'the phantasmal chaos of association'. Going on to defend connectionism against Fodor and critics of passive mental representations, he shows how problems of the self are implicated in cognitive science. (shrink)

In this book, Mark Rowlands challenges the Cartesian view of the mind as a self-contained monadic entity, and offers in its place a radical externalist or environmentalist model of cognitive processes. Cognition is not something done exclusively in the head, but fundamentally something done in the world. Drawing on both evolutionary theory and a detailed examination of the processes involved in perception, memory, thought and language use, Rowlands argues that cognition is, in part, a process whereby creatures manipulate and exploit (...) relevant objects in their environment. It is not simply an internal process of information processing; equally significantly, it is an external process of information processing. This innovative book provides a foundation for an unorthodox but increasingly popular view of the nature of cognition. (shrink)

In treating cognition as problem solving, Andy Clark suggests, we may often abstract too far from the very body and world in which our brains evolved to guide...

Edward S. Casey provides a thorough description of the varieties of human memory, including recognizing and reminding, reminiscing and commemorating, body memory and place memory. The preface to the new edition extends the scope of the original text to include issues of collective memory, forgetting, and traumatic memory, and aligns this book with Casey's newest work on place and space. This ambitious study demonstrates that nothing in our lives is unaffected by remembering.

1. Introduction: memory and interdisciplinarity (footnote 1) Memory is studied at a bewildering number of levels, in a daunting range of disciplines, and with a vast array of methods. Is there any sense at all in which memory theorists - from neurobiologists to narrative theorists, from the developmental to the postcolonial, from the computational to the cross-cultural - are studying the same phenomena? This exploratory review paper sketches the bare outline of a positive framework for understanding current work on memory, (...) both within the various cognitive sciences and across the gulfs between the cognitive and the social sciences. (shrink)

In this paper we criticize the commonly accepted theory of memory, and offer an alternative. According to the traditional view, memory is a stored mental representation of things past. We show, through an analysis of a single act of recognition, the logical oddities to which this view leads. Since, however, these are generally ignored, we also consider those characteristics of the traditional view which apparently make it attractive to those who hold it, namely its consonance with the commonly held conception (...) of time, its explanation for the fallibility of memory, and its way of making behavior predictable. We then present the alternative view, the direct realist theory. According to it, there is no such thing as a stored mental representation. The theory redefines memory as the perception of sequential structure, and in so doing successfully treats of the fallibility of memory and the necessity for making behavior predictable. Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, it does not lead to the logical difficulties of the traditional theory. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophical discussion of personal identity has centered on refinements and defenses of the “psychological continuity theory”—the view that identity is created by the links between present and past provided by autobiographical experience memories. This view is structured in such a way that these memories must be seen as providing simple connections between two discrete, well-defined moments of consciousness. There is, however, a great deal of evidence—both introspective and empirical—that autobiographical memory often does not provide such links, but instead summarizes, (...) and condenses life experiences into, a coherent narrative. A brief exploration of some of the mechanisms of this summarizing and condensing work furthers the philosophical discussion of personal identity by showing why a view with the structure of the psychological continuity theory will not work, and by illuminating the role of autobiographical memory in the constitution of personal identity. (shrink)