Memory as acquaintance with the past: some Lessons from Russell, 1912-1914

Faria, Paulo Francisco Estrella

doi:10.1590/s0100-512x2010000100008

Cited by 3 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…In Russell's terms (like those of Locke, Hume, and Reid), phenomenology plays the essential role in making a mental event an act of memory; a feeling of reacquaintance with the past takes priority over conceptual knowledge of the past. 70 Husserl 71 also sees memory as an act of experiencing one's past as past. That is, a past object or event is remembered as having been perceived; but not just anywhere, at any time, or by anyone.…”

Section: Memory As a Feeling Of Pastness: An Historical Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to Russell, memory entails both (1) a direct acquaintance with the object in awareness and (2) a feeling (conferred by the act of acquaintance) that one now is conscious of something one was conscious of in the past (i.e., the object present to awareness). In Russell's terms (like those of Locke, Hume, and Reid), phenomenology plays the essential role in making a mental event an act of memory; a feeling of reacquaintance with the past takes priority over conceptual knowledge of the past …”

Section: Memory: a Present Mental State Felt As Pastmentioning

confidence: 99%

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What memory is

Klein

2014

WIRES Cognitive Science

103

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I argue that our current practice of ascribing the term 'memory' to mental states and processes lacks epistemic warrant. Memory, according to the 'received view', is any state or process that results from the sequential stages of encoding, storage, and retrieval. By these criteria, memory, or its footprint, can be seen in virtually every mental state we are capable of having. This, I argue, stretches the term to the breaking point. I draw on phenomenological, historical, and conceptual considerations to make the case that an act of memory entails a direct, non-inferential feeling of reacquaintance with one's past. It does so by linking content retrieved from storage with autonoetic awareness during retrieval. On this view, memory is not the content of experience, but the manner in which that content is experienced. I discuss some theoretical and practical implications and advantages of adopting this more circumscribed view of memory.

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Section: Memory As a Feeling Of Pastness: An Historical Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Memory: a Present Mental State Felt As Pastmentioning

confidence: 99%

What memory is

Klein

2014

WIRES Cognitive Science

103

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“…Let me provide you with big picture of the battlefield. We should discern at least three fundamental positions: (i) internist incompatibilism (Boghossian, , , , , ; McKinsey, , , , et alia), (ii) externalist compatibilism (Burge, ; Garmendia, ; Ludlow, , ; Recanati, ; Tye, ; Sainsbury and Tye, , ), and (iii) externalist incompatibilism (Faria, , , ; Sorensen, , et alia.). (i) Internalist incompatibilists argue that because of the lack of content‐transparency reasoning becomes irrational in trivial cases.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dangerous liaisons

Pereira

2019

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The attack on content-externalism on the grounds that it is incompatible with content-transparency has been much debated over the decades. The first line of argumentation claims that content-externalism undermines the a priori authoritative self-knowledge or the authority of the first-person. According to content-externalism, the content of mental states is determined, in part, by the non-intentional relations that the subject has with her/his environment. Given this, the content of the subject's mental state could change without her/his knowledge under the assumption that the subject undergoes undetectable environmental changes, say, from Earth to Twin-Earth and vice-versa. Thus, if content-externalism is right, one can never authoritatively know a priori whether one is now thinking about water or twater.According to Burge, however, content-externalism is not a threat to cogito-like thoughts, that is, second-order contemporaneous thoughts about one's first-order thoughts. Without the need for any empirical enquiry or any epistemic self-justification, the introspective second-order thought "Inherits," so to speak, the content of the first-order thought by embedding it. If some Earthian's first-order thought "water quenches thirst" refers to H 2 O rather than to XYZ, his introspective second-order thought "I know that I am thinking that water quenches thirst" also refers to H 2 O (instead of XYZ) because the first-order thought is embedded in the introspective second-order thought. AbstractIn this paper I take side on externalist incompatibilism. However, I intend to radicalize the position. First, based on my criticism of Burge's anaphoric proposal, I argue that there is no reasoning-transparency: the reasoner is blind to the reasoning he is performing. Second, assuming a global form of content-externalism, I argue that "in the head" are only logical and formal abilities. That is what I call "bite the bullet and swallow it too." K E Y W O R D S content-externalism, content-transparency, dangerous reasonings, rationality failure, safe reasoning | 193 de SÁ PeReIRA Yet, even if Burge's self-verification account of cogito-like thoughts is convincing, two additional key questions still remain open. The first question is whether under content-externalism the content can be preserved in slowswitching cases (introduced by Burge in the 1988 literature). Suppose that content-transparency fails and I am an accidental tourist that travels from Earth to Twin-Earth when I remember that Pavarotti once floated on Lake Taupo. What is the content of my memory? The second is a direct development of the first. Suppose now that the original content is preserved and I remember that the Earthian Pavarotti floated on the Earthian Lake Taupo. Yet, assuming assimilation to the dialect of twin Earthians, whenever I think from now on of Pavarotti I refer to Twin-Pavarotti rather than to the Earthian Pavarotti. The problem is that if the content is preserved I might from this infer that Twin-Pavarotti got wet, thereby making my inference in...

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“…9) discuss the view, held by some phenomenologists, that we are acquainted with others' minds (also see Kremer, 2015). Martin (2001, 2015, 2019) and Faria (2010) discuss acquaintance with memories. Some intentionalists argue that acquaintance in self‐knowledge and/or perception is acquaintance with universals (more on this below).…”

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confidence: 99%

Acquaintance

Duncan

2021

Philosophy Compass

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To be acquainted with something (in the philosophical sense of "acquainted" discussed here) is to be directly aware of it. The idea that we are acquainted with certain things we experience has been discussed throughout the history of Western Philosophy, but in the early 20th century it gained especially focused attention among analytic philosophers who drew their inspiration from Bertrand Russell's work on acquaintance. Since then, many philosophers-particularly those working on self-knowledge or perception-have used the notion of acquaintance to explain various facts about human experience and knowledge. In this paper, I offer an overview of this work, with particular focus on the resurgent literature on acquaintance in contemporary analytic philosophy. After more fully explaining what acquaintance is (or is supposed to be), I describe some reasons for thinking that we are indeed acquainted with certain things we experience, and then I survey some of the facts about experience and knowledge that acquaintance may help explain. 1 | INTRODUCTION This paper is about acquaintance-an especially direct mental relation that we (allegedly) bear to certain things we experience, such as colors, smells, tastes, pains, and itches. This philosophical notion has received renewed interest and use of late, but it has also invited misunderstanding and skepticism. My aim in this paper is to dispel some of that misunderstanding and, hopefully, some of the skepticism too. Most contemporary philosophers who appeal to acquaintance draw their inspiration from Bertrand Russell (1911, 1912), who characterizes acquaintance as direct awareness. This differs from the ordinary sense of "acquaintance," as in "Hector and Paula are acquaintances" (or related knowledge attributions, such as "Hector knows Paula"). For one may be acquainted with something in that sense without being directly aware of it.

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Memory as acquaintance with the past: some Lessons from Russell, 1912-1914

Cited by 3 publications

References 9 publications

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