The Explanatory Indispensability of Memory Traces

During the first half of the twentieth century, many philosophers of memory opposed the postulation of memory traces based on the claim that a satisfactory account of remembering need not include references to causal processes involved in recollection. However, in 1966, an influential paper by Martin and Deutscher showed that causal claims are indeed necessary for a proper account of remembering. This, however, did not settle the issue, as in 1977 Malcolm argued that even if one were to buy Martin and Deutscher’s argument for causal claims, we still don’t need to postulate the existence of memory traces. This paper reconstructs the dialectic between realists and anti-realists about memory traces, suggesting that ultimately realists’ arguments amount to inferences to the best explanation. I then argue that Malcolm’s anti-realist strategy consists in the suggestion that causal explanations that do not invoke memory traces are at least as good as those that do. But then, Malcolm, I argue that there are a large number of memory phenomena for which explanations that do not postulate the existence of memory traces are definitively worse than explanations that do postulate them. Next, I offer a causal model based on an interventionist framework to illustrate when memory traces can help to explain memory phenomena and proceed to substantiate the model with details coming from extant findings in the neuroscience of memory

Know-how, intellectualism, and memory systems

ABSTRACTA longstanding tradition in philosophy distinguishes between knowthatand know-how. This traditional “anti-intellectualist” view is soentrenched in folk psychology that it is often invoked in supportof an allegedly equivalent distinction between explicit and implicitmemory, derived from the so-called “standard model of memory.”In the last two decades, the received philosophical view has beenchallenged by an “intellectualist” view of know-how. Surprisingly, defenders of the anti-intellectualist view have turned to the cognitivescience of memory, and to the standard model in particular, todefend their view. Here, I argue that this strategy is a mistake. As it turns out, upon closer scrutiny, the evidence from cognitivepsychology and neuroscience of memory does not support theanti-intellectualist approach, mainly because the standard modelof memory is likely wrong. However, this need not be interpretedas good news for the intellectualist, for it is not clear that theempirical evidence necessarily supp..

The Role of Attention in Conscious Recollection

Most research on the relationship between attention and consciousness has been limited to perception. However, perceptions are not the only kinds of mental contents of which we can be conscious. An important set of conscious states that has not received proper treatment within this discussion is that of memories. This paper reviews compelling evidence indicating that attention may be necessary, but probably not sufficient, for conscious recollection. However, it is argued that unlike the case of conscious perception, the kind of attention required during recollection is internal, as opposed to external, attention. As such, the surveyed empirical evidence is interpreted as suggesting that internal attention is necessary, but probably not sufficient, for conscious recollection. The paper begins by justifying the need for clear distinctions among different kinds of attention, and then emphasizes the difference between internal and external attention. Next, evidence from behavioral, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging studies suggesting that internal attention is required for the successful retrieval of memorial contents is reviewed. In turn, it is argued that internal attention during recollection is what makes us conscious of the contents of retrieved memories; further evidence in support of this claim is also provided. Finally, it is suggested that internal attention is probably not sufficient for conscious recollection. Open questions and possible avenues for future research are also mentioned

Predictive Memory and the Surprising Gap

Psycholog

Norms and the meaning of omissive enabling conditions

People often reason about omissions. One line of research shows that people can distinguish between the semantics of omissive causes and omissive enabling conditions: for instance, not flunking out of college enabled you (but didn’t cause you) to graduate. Another line of work shows that people rely on the normative status of omissive events in inferring their causal role: if the outcome came about because the omission violated some norm, reasoners are more likely to select that omission as a cause. We designed a novel paradigm that tests how norms interact with the semantics of omissive enabling conditions. The paradigm concerns the circuitry of a mechanical device that plays music. Two experiments used the paradigm to stipulate norms and present a distinct set of possibilities to participants. Participants chose which causal verb best described the operations of the machine. The studies revealed that participants’ responses are best predicted by their tendency to consider the semantics of omissive relations. In contrast, norms had little to no effect in participants’ responses. We conclude by marshaling the evidence and considering what role norms may play in people’s understanding of omissions

Remembering moral and immoral actions in constructing the self

Having positive moral traits is central to one’s sense of self, and people generally are motivated to maintain a positive view of the self in the present. But it remains unclear how people foster a positive, morally good view of the self in the present. We suggest that recollecting and reflecting on moral and immoral actions from the personal past jointly help to construct a morally good view of the current self in complementary ways. More specifically, across four studies we investigated the extent to which people believe they have changed over time after recollecting their own moral or immoral behaviors from the personal past. Our results indicate that recollecting past immoral actions is associated with stronger impressions of dissimilarity and change in the sense of self over time than recollecting past moral actions. These effects held for diverse domains of morality (i.e., honesty/dishonesty, helping/harming, fairness/unfairness, and loyalty/disloyalty), and they remained even after accounting for objective, calendar time. Further supporting a motivational explanation, these effects held when people recollected their own past actions but not when they recollected the actions of other people

Prediction and Topological Models in Neuroscience

In the last two decades, philosophy of neuroscience has predominantly focused on explanation. Indeed, it has been argued that mechanistic models are the standards of explanatory success in neuroscience over, among other things, topological models. However, explanatory power is only one virtue of a scientific model. Another is its predictive power. Unfortunately, the notion of prediction has received comparatively little attention in the philosophy of neuroscience, in part because predictions seem disconnected from interventions. In contrast, we argue that topological predictions can and do guide interventions in science, both inside and outside of neuroscience. Topological models allow researchers to predict many phenomena, including diseases, treatment outcomes, aging, and cognition, among others. Moreover, we argue that these predictions also offer strategies for useful interventions. Topology-based predictions play this role regardless of whether they do or can receive a mechanistic interpretation. We conclude by making a case for philosophers to focus on prediction in neuroscience in addition to explanation alone

Resistance to Position Change, Motivated Reasoning, and Polarization

People seem more divided than ever before over social and political issues, entrenched in their existing beliefs and unwilling to change them. Empirical research on mechanisms driving this resistance to belief change has focused on a limited set of well-known, charged, contentious issues and has not accounted for deliberation over reasons and arguments in belief formation prior to experimental sessions. With a large, heterogeneous sample (N = 3,001), we attempt to overcome these existing problems, and we investigate the causes and consequences of resistance to belief change for five diverse and less contentious socio-political issues. After participants chose initially to support or oppose a given socio-political position, they were provided with reasons favoring their chosen position (affirming reasons), reasons favoring the other, unchosen position (conflicting reasons), or all reasons for both positions (reasons for both sides). Our results indicate that participants are more likely to stick with their initial decisions than to change them no matter which reasons are considered, and that this resistance to belief change is likely due to a motivated, biased evaluation of the reasons to support their initial beliefs (prior-belief bias). More specifically, they rated affirming reasons more favorably than conflicting reasons—even after accounting for reported prior knowledge about the issue, the novelty of the reasons presented, and the reported strategy used to make the initial decision. In many cases, participants who did not change their positions tended to become more confident in the superiority of their positions after considering many reasons for both sides

I’m not the person I used to be: The self and autobiographical memories of immoral actions

People maintain a positive identity in at least two ways: They evaluate themselves more favorably than other people, and they judge themselves to be better now than they were in the past. Both strategies rely on autobiographical memories. The authors investigate the role of autobiographical memories of lying and emotional harm in maintaining a positive identity. For memories of lying to or emotionally harming others, participants judge their own actions as less morally wrong and less negative than those in which other people lied to or emotionally harmed them. Furthermore, people judge those actions that happened further in the past to be more morally wrong than those that happened more recently. Finally, for periods of the past when they believed that they were very different people than they are now, participants judge their actions to be more morally wrong and more negative than those actions from periods of their pasts when they believed that they were very similar to who they are now. The authors discuss these findings in relation to theories about the function of autobiographical memory and moral cognition in constructing and perceiving the self over time

Padres y hermanos

Libro reseñado:Cementerios de neón. Andrés Felipe Solano. Tusquets, Bogotá, 2016, 199 págs. En el núcleo de la última novela de Andrés Felipe Solano están las relaciones de amor y de odio entre cuatro hombres de dos generaciones, relaciones que pasan, en un constante juego de permutaciones, por la admiración, la solidaridad, la rivalidad y la rebelión. Los lazos de sangre entre ellos no son el vínculo fundamental —aunque un personaje es tío del narrador—, pero sus vidas ejemplifican muchos de los complejos y contradictorios matices de la paternidad y de las relaciones entre hermanos.Cualquiera de los vértices de este cuadrángulo puede servir para iniciar su descripción. Se puede empezar, por ejemplo, por Agustín Salgado, a quien todo el mundo, incluida su familia, conoce como Capitán. Veterano de la guerra de Corea, a donde viajó en 1951 como parte del batallón de infantería colombiano que hizo parte de la respuesta de los aliados de Corea del Sur a la invasión del ejército comunista del Norte, bajo el comando de las Naciones Unidas. El Capitán regresa a Colombia y, después de una carrera con altibajos en el ejército, se convierte en un empresario relativamente exitoso que construye piscinas para fincas de recreo