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What counts as a memory?| old_uid | 19570 |
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| title | What counts as a memory? |
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| start_date | 2022/01/13 |
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| schedule | 16h15-17h45 UTC+1 |
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| online | no |
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| summary | The study of memory recently has seen new proposals for defining its target. Several researchers propose broad definitions of memory, which extend to many phenomena, from human episodic memory to reflex sensitization, some which occur in “unconventional cognitive systems.” They extend beyond exemplars like me remembering what I ate for breakfast and do not express notions like representation or phenomenology that we often find in rich definitions that narrowly apply to kinds like declarative memory. These definitions may seem too broad, suggesting that they extend to phenomena that don’t count as memory or illustrate that memory is not a natural kind. I explain why researchers might adopt a broad definition of memory. Broad definitions can promote the investigation of phenomena counted as memory on these definitions, which facilitates testing what claims about phenomena project. Thus, rather than expressing what is known about memory, researchers propose these definitions to test inferences about phenomena. In this sense, broad definitions of memory serve as hypotheses. In addition to presenting my account, I address three potential objections. First is the dissimilarity objection: there are too many differences amongst phenomena for broad definitions of memory to be scientifically valuable. Second is the natural kinds objection: generic memory is not a natural kind, so no definition of it is valuable. Third is the knowledge objection: enough about memory is known, so there is no need for definitions of memory as hypotheses. Throughout, I argue that adopting a definition as a hypothesis exemplifies what I call kinding in progress: categorizing targets when their discovery is on-going, and their shared properties are largely unknown. |
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| responsibles | Peeters, Kourken, Andonovski |
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