Observer perspective and acentred memory: some puzzles about point of view in personal memory

Abstract

Sometimes I remember my past experiences from an 'observer' perspective, seeing myself in the remembered scene. This paper analyses the distinction in personal memory between such external observer visuospatial perspectives and 'field' perspectives, in which I experience the remembered actions and events as from my original point of view. It argues that Richard Wollheim's related distinction between centred and acentred memory fails to capture the key phenomena, and criticizes Wollheim's reasons for doubting that observer 'memories' are genuine personal memories. Since field perspectives in personal memory are also likely to be the product of constructive processes, we should reject the common assumption that such constructive processes inevitably bring distortion and error. Yet field perspectives tend to be treated as privileged also in the domains of memory for skilled movement, and memory for trauma. In each case, it is argued that visuospatial perspective in personal memory should be distinguished from other kinds of perspective such as kinesthetic perspective and emotional perspective.

Epistemic innocence and the production of false memory beliefs

“…Schacter et al 2007Schacter et al , 2011 and philosophy (see e.g. De Brigard 2014; Sutton 1998Sutton , 2010Michaelian 2011;Robins 2016), and it is increasingly being acknowledge in neuroscience (see, e.g. Stickgold and Walker 2013;Eichenbaum and Cohen 2014;Richards and Frankland 2017) that this is not how memory systems work.…”

The information effect: constructive memory, testimony, and epistemic luck

“…12 There is, however, independent reason to reject the view. Episodic memories involve visual perspective, and, crucially, the point of view from which the agent remembers a scene is not always that from which she experienced it: while, in a field memory, the agent remembers the scene from the point of view from which she originally experienced it, in an observer memory, she remembers the scene from the point of view of an external observer, so that she sees herself in the scene (Nigro and Neisser 1983;Sutton 2010). While views on which the content of an episodic memory has the form of I saw a stop sign at the scene rather than there was a stop sign at the scene are natural given that we have only field memories in mind, they are much less plausible with respect to observer memories.…”

“…Many or most personal memories are accessible from either field or observer perspective, and …the perspective can often be switched: this suggests that the difference in perspective is one of form rather than content, and that the same underlying (complex and distributed) representations can animate occurrent memories involving either perspective. (Sutton 2010) The possibility of field/observer perspective switching demonstrates that stored information does not determine perspective. The perspective of the memory is rather a product of reconstructive retrieval: just as, in the case of an observer memory, the system makes its best guess as to what the scene must have looked like from the relevant observer perspective, in the case of a field memory, the system makes its best guess as to what the scene must have looked like from the agent's perspective as she experienced it.…”

Causal Co-personality: In defence of the psychological continuity theory

“…Primary amongst these is a memory of what the pain felt like on its first occurrence and what it feels like now, which point in your body it affects, and many related experiences and memory experiences. These will include both 'field' and 'observer' perspectives -remembering how strong it was and remembering yourself as if from the outside reacting to the pain (see Sutton 2010 for how these are part of everyday familiar memory experiences). There will also have to be the desire to alleviate the pain that Agar mentions along the line as well as everything else that is part of how we experience and understand the causal role of pain.…”