The paper addresses memories with an episodic character that originate from experiences other than firsthand perceptions. While traditionally philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists have concentrated on memories stemming from perceptual experiences, recent attention has been directed towards memories from dreams, hallucinations, vicarious experiences, and fiction (Anonymous, 2023a). Despite differences in their source experiences, psychological and neuro-scientific evidence suggests that all memories with an episodic character share similar underlying causal mechanisms and thus belong to the same natural kind as firsthand perceptual memories.

The paper aims to develop a unified, non-disjunctivist theory of mnemonic reference for both perceptual and non-perceptual episodic memories, utilizing the trace minimalist theory of episodic memory (Anonymous, 2020) and the theory of referential parasitism (Anonymous, 2022). Phenomenological, behavioral and linguistic evidence suggests commonalities between firsthand perceptual memories and memories from non-perceptual experiences, supporting the potential for one natural kind.

Memories from dreams, hallucinations, vicarious experiences, and fiction closely resemble firsthand perceptual memories in their phenomenology. While they may involve different participants and perspectives, such as first or third-person viewpoints, the differences are not absolute. For instance, some firsthand memories may have third-person perspectives, while dream memories may have first-person perspectives. Behavioral studies comparing vicarious memories to firsthand ones reveal similarities in emotional intensity, physical reaction, vividness, and the sense of “seeing the event” (Pillemer et al., 2015).

Linguistic memory reports also share a number of features – so-called episodicity markers – that can be regarded as indicative of the episodic character of memories (Anonymous, 2023b,a; Umbach et al., 2021). Amongst those linguistic features are adverbial modifiers like vividly, in detail etc. as well as non-manner how-complements Umbach et al. (2021); Anonymous (2023b) and the use of progressive tense. The following examples are reports of perceptual (1), oneric (2), vicarious (3), and fictional memories (4), which highlight the episodic character of the remembered scenarios:

(1) John took a stroll in the park and came across a tall birch tree. A week later, he remembers vividly how the tree was swaying in the wind.

(2) Last night, in a dream, Leyla was riding on a horse through a cornfield. When her husband asked her about the dream the next day, she remembered vividly how the ears of corn were folding under her.

(3) Anne remembers empathically how her uncle was suffering in a Siberian POW camp. While still alive, he had told her impressively what he went through in the camp. She had listened to his story with great compassion.

(4) While the professor was preparing his seminar on Dostojevski’s “Crime and Punishment”, a detailed memory came up in him of how Raskolnikov was nervously hiding in the house of the pawnbroker after he had murdered her and her sister.

We propose a conditional argument: if perceptual and non-perceptual memories with an episodic character indeed share a uniform underlying causal mechanism, then they constitute one natural kind – the natural kind of episodic memories. Consequently, any theory of reference for episodic memories should be non-disjunctivist. However, prevailing theories of reference in the philosophy of mind, such as causalism and descriptivism, are, as we show, inadequate to explain reference in both perceptual and non-perceptual memory cases. Thus, an alternative theory of reference is required to avoid disjunctivism in mnemonic reference.

The issue of reference in episodic memories intertwines with the debate between relationalist and representationalist theories of memory Sant’Anna and Barkasi (2022). Escaping this dichotomy becomes crucial in formulating a comprehensive theory of reference that accommodates both perceptual and non-perceptual episodic memories. Relationalists argue that in remembering, the subject is directly related to the past event or concrete object involved in that event, while representationalists contend that the subject only bears and intentional relation to the past event. This fundamental disagreement leads to differing analyses of the objects of memory and the diachronic nature of episodic memory.

Traditionally, both relationalists and representationalists agree on the diachronic nature of episodic memory, as exemplified by Reid’s 2002 Previous Awareness Condition. This condition suggests that an agent can only have an episodic memory of an event if they were aware of it at the time it occurred. Relationalists incorporate diachronicity into their notion of memory inherently, as remembering involves a direct relation to the remembered event. In contrast, representationalists require additional assumptions to account for diachronicity, often invoking preservationist mechanisms to bridge the gap between past experiences and remembering.

Representationalism suggests a de dicto analysis of memory reports, where the content of memory is a set of possible worlds containing representations of the past event. In contrast, relationalism advocates for a de re analysis, where the content of memory directly involves the actual object or event remembered in the same world.

In conclusion, neither relationalist nor representationalist accounts of episodic memory align with prevalent theories of singular reference such as the causalism or descriptivism. Both de re and de dicto analyses fail to accurately capture the truth conditions of remembering and misremembering from both perceptual and non-perceptual experiences. A theory of reference is needed that builds upon the reference relation in primary experiences without relying on simple transduction of causal connections or descriptive contents. Referential parasitism, combined with trace minimalism, offers a way forward. This approach provides a uniform, non-disjunctivist, and naturalistic account of remembering and misremembering, regardless of the origin of memory. It also ensures the diachronicity of episodic memory without resorting to problematic preservationist assumptions. By linking remembering to past experiences through minimal, non-representational traces, this framework offers a comprehensive understanding of episodic memory that transcends the limitations of relationalism and representationalism.

References

Anonymous. 2020. – blinded for review – .

Anonymous. 2022. – blinded for review –.

Anonymous. 2023a. – blinded for review –.

Anonymous. 2023b. – blinded for review – .

Pillemer, D.B., K.L. Steiner, K.J. Kuwabara, D.K. Thomsen, and C. Svob. 2015. Vicarious memories. Consciousness and Cognition 36: 233–245 .

Reid, T. 2002. Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press.

Sant’Anna, A. and M. Barkasi. 2022, September. Reviving the naive realist approach to memory. Philosophy and the Mind Sciences 3. https://doi.org/ 10.33735/phimisci.2022.9192 .

Umbach, C., S. Hinterwimmer, and H. Gust. 2021. German wie-complements: Manners, methods and events in progress. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory online first. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-021-09508-z .

Contemporary theories of episodic memory skirt around an understanding of episodic memory as a mental scenario or simulation of a previous experience, advocating, to various degrees, for an internalist view. Traditionally, philosophers have assumed that remembering exclusively involves a “neural process, occurring inside an individual’s brain” (Michaelian and Sutton, 2013). This view implies that memory entirely happens internally, and external resources are best understood as mere triggers. However, ever since Clark and Chalmers (1998) have notoriously challenged these philosophical implications, philosophers (such as Heersmink, 2017; Sutton, 2007) have suggested that remembering processes can rely on subjects’ active involvement of embodied and embedded states or be scaffolded by bodily, environmental and social conditions.

It is not uncommon that subjects immerse themselves in previous bodily states to better recall, or, in other cases, to re-enact previous sequences of movements until they remember what they were doing or thinking. Empirical evidence has widely supported the idea that bodily procedures are involved in episodic memory, confirming two predictions: (i) behavioural re-enactment of processes involved in the encoding phase facilitates information retrieval; and (ii) accessibility to specific episodic memories may be blocked by a concurrent task involving the same sensorimotor resources (cfr. Ianí, 2019). However, investigations still need to clarify to what extent episodic memory can be embodied.

Through an analysis of the structures of subjective experiences of agency and recollections, this paper supports Ianí’s claim that remembering an episode is intrinsically remembering actions (Ianí, 2019: 1762). I set out an investigation of embodiment in episodic memory on the subjective level of experience, from a phenomenologically-informed perspective. This allows us to understand the body not simply as the instantiation of sensorimotor patterns, but rather as the lived and felt body, and as the subjective medium for all our interactions with the world through our operative intentionality (generally understood as our practically oriented engagement with the environment).

Building upon the shared role of motor representations across procedural memory and episodic memory (Najenson, 2021), and following Sutton and Williamson’s (2014) insights that there should not be any strict taxonomical separation between episodic and procedural memory, I provide an analysis of subjective experience of embodiment in episodic memory by comparing the role of operative intentionality and lived body in these two memory system. The analysis goes as follows.

Procedural memory concerns our habits and skills to engage with the world. The phenomenological analysis of the relationship between procedural memory and lived body highlights two features: a flexible re-enactment of operative intentionality acquired over time and an implicit awareness of such knowledge. An expert tennis player knows how to hit the ball backhand, through the re-enactment of operative movements learned over time, without explicitly recollecting every single movement. Research on skill-based behaviour showed that “successful application (situation-dependent manifestation) of habits requires […] at least minimal and sometimes intensified forms of awareness” (Tewes, 2018) and an implicit knowledge of bodily feelings. For example, when we perform difficult movements in sports, we feel an action was wrongly performed.

Episodic memory concerns personal past experiences. According to the traditional view of embodiment, any act of recollection includes a recollection of the whole past consciousness, including the implicit awareness of bodily past experiences (Thompson, 2010). Psychological literature emphasises the difficulty of sustaining that the evolutionary role of episodic memory is a faithful replay of our previous consciousness, it was rather developed to inform future behaviour (Suddendorf and Corballis, 2007). I argue that such a ‘replay’ of implicit consciousness is better explained as a flexible re-enactment of the previous operative intentionality. The practice of micro-phenomenological interviews (Petitmengin et al. 2019) supports the latter idea, by providing qualitative data on such a flexible re-enactment: during interviews, when subjects are induced to access their implicit and bodily awareness of past experiences, they involuntarily produce a series of embodied utterances, eyes movements to inspect absent scenarios, and hand gestures to represent actions.

However, such a re-enactment differs in aim from the one in procedural memory. Flexibly re-enacting the operative intentionality of previous experiences allows one to embody personal and others’ agential perspectives, reliving and representing the past as actors in constructed scenarios (Trakas, 2018). On the other hand, present lived body and procedural abilities might affect episodic memory content, by impairing accessibility to episodic recollections when subjects find themselves in different bodily conditions and by feeling detached from past experiences (Ding and McCarroll, 2021).

Importantly, the experiential distance between the re-enacted episode and the recollecting act allows for the embodied resonance between the past and present. The concept of ‘resonance’ refers to two features: on one level, the offline re-activation of motor representations (i.e., motor resonance, which induces involuntary bodily feelings and muscle tension, cfr. Anelli et al., 2012); on another, the inherent otherness involved in episodic memory: there was an agential I that is no more.

Anelli, F., Borghi, A. M., & Nicoletti, R. (2012). Grasping the pain: motor resonance with dangerous affordances. Consciousness and Cognition, 21(4), 1627–1639.

Clark, A., & Chalmers, D. (1998). The Extended Mind. Analysis, 58(1), 7–19.

Dings, R., & McCarroll, C. J. (2022). The Complex Phenomenology of Episodic Memory: Felt Connections, Multimodal Perspectivity, and Multifaceted Selves. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 29(11–12), 29–55.

Heersmink, R. (2017). Distributed Selves: Personal Identity and Extended Memory Systems. Synthese, 194(8), 3135–3151.

Ianì, F. (2019). Embodied memories: Reviewing the role of the body in memory processes. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 26(6).

Michaelian, K., & Sutton, J. (2013). Distributed Cognition and Memory Research: History and Current Directions. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 4(1), 1–24.

Najenson, J. (2021). Memory Systems and the Mnemic Character of Procedural Memory. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 715448.

Petitmengin, C., Remillieux, A., & Valenzuela-Moguillansky, C. (2019). Discovering the structures of lived experience. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 18(4), 691–730.

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Trakas, M. (2021). Kinetic Memories: An Embodied Form of Remembering the Personal Past. The Journal of Mind and Behavior, 42(2), 139–174.

While it is commonly accepted that mind wandering possesses certain passive and non-agential dimensions, empirical research indicates that some facets of mind wandering may indeed be expressions of human mental agency (Klinger, 2009; Stawarczyk, 2018; See also Irving, 2021). Despite this intriguing possibility, philosophical inquiry into the agential status of mind wandering remains surprisingly sparse. Critical questions remain largely unaddressed: does mind wandering manifest our agency, and if so, in what manner and to what extent? This paper seeks to explore these questions, drawing on the latest scientific research on mind wandering and theoretical resources from philosophy of mental action (Brent & Titus, 2022; O’Brien & Soteriou, 2009) to examine the complex relationship between mind wandering and human agency. Specifically, it will critically evaluate various theoretical positions on mind wandering's agential status using empirical findings and philosophical analysis to identify and argue for a nuanced perspective that addresses existing gaps in the literature.

In the philosophical literature, four potential positions regarding the agential status of mind wandering, ranging from viewing mind wandering as fully agential to considering it entirely non-agential, can be identified:

1. Very strong Agentialism (O’Shaughnessy, 2000): Mind wandering is fully agential.

According to O’Shaughnessy, wakeful consciousness (in contrast to dreaming and other global states of consciousness) is essentially agential. Therefore, mind wandering must be agential. “The mind remains intentionally active under headings at each point in that process [mind wandering]” (O’Shaughnessy, 2000, p. 217).

2. Strong Agentialism: Mind wandering is agential when certain types of mental activities are involved.

One standard approach to the problem of the scope of mental action is to determine the agential status of one specific type of mental activity by analyzing its intrinsic structure. Philosophers who adopt this approach to the scope of mental action (e.g., Arango-Muñoz & Bermúdez, 2018; Peacocke, 2007; Soteriou, 2013) potentially support strong agentialism regarding mind wandering.

The general structure of the argument:

P1 A specific type of mental activity (such as imagining, reasoning, remembering) is constitutively agential.

P2 That type of mental activity can occur during mind wandering.

C Therefore, mind wandering is agential when it involves that type of mental activity.

3. Weak Agentialism (Irving, 2021): Mind wandering exhibits agential characteristics that are commonly associated with agency, suggesting that it embodies, at the very least, minimal forms of agency.

“Causally motivated (personal goal-relevant) mind-wandering shows us that minimal forms of agency can exist without guidance” (Irving, 2021, p. 626).

4. Anti-Agentialism (Metzinger, 2013, 2015, 2018): Mind wandering is a non-agential phenomenon.

The basic argument:

P1 Mind wandering, like breath and heartbeat, is a sub-personal phenomenon.

P2 Sub-personal phenomena cannot be the manifestation of human agency.

C Mind wandering is a non-agential phenomenon.

After mapping out the landscape of existing perspectives on mind wandering, I will first critically review and argue against all of the positions mentioned above and then introduce new arguments in support of a nuanced position labeled 'Very Weak Agentialism', which finds its place between Anti-Agentialism and Weak Agentialism, and claims that not all cases of causally motivated mind wandering reflect human agency, but certain cases indeed embody it. Central to the Very Weak Agentialism is the idea that the agential status of mind wandering is inherently context-dependent, a thesis aligns with the context regulation hypothesis in empirical studies on mind wandering (Andrews-Hanna et al., 2014; Smallwood & Schooler, 2015, p. 498). This hypothesis posits that the outcomes of mind wandering, be they positive or negative, are significantly shaped by the situational context. I will demonstrate how this context dependency not only supports the classification of Very Weak Agentialism but also enriches our understanding of the concept of mental agency.

In the concluding part, I aim to merge the insights obtained from the philosophical analysis of the agential status of mind wandering with the ongoing discussions about the psychological mechanisms underpinning mind wandering, particularly focusing on the debate surrounding cognitive control’s role in mind wandering (McVay & Kane, 2010; Smallwood & Schooler, 2006). It will be highlighted how a refined philosophical perspective on the agency involved in mind wandering enriches our psychological grasp of the mechanisms underlying mind wandering. My conclusion will be that the agential part of mind wandering requires the involvement of cognitive control.

References

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Arango-Muñoz, S., & Bermúdez, J. P. (2018). Remembering as a Mental Action *. In New Directions in the Philosophy of Memory. Routledge.

Brent, M., & Titus, L. M. (Eds.). (2022). Mental Action and the Conscious Mind. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429022579

Irving, Z. C. (2021). Drifting and Directed Minds: The Significance of Mind-Wandering for Mental Agency. The Journal of Philosophy, 118(11), 614–644. https://doi.org/10.5840/jphil20211181141

Klinger, E. (2009). Daydreaming and fantasizing: Thought flow and motivation. In Handbook of imagination and mental simulation (pp. 225–239). Psychology Press.

McVay, J. C., & Kane, M. J. (2010). Does mind wandering reflect executive function or executive failure? Comment on Smallwood and Schooler (2006) and Watkins (2008). Psychological Bulletin, 136(2), 188–197. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018298

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Metzinger, T. (2015). M-Autonomy. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 22, 270–302.

Metzinger, T. (2018). Why Is Mind-Wandering Interesting for Philosophers? In K. C. R. Fox & K. Christoff (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Spontaneous Thought. Oxford University Press.

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Stawarczyk, D. (2018). Phenomenological properties of mind-wandering and daydreaming: A historical overview and functional. The Oxford Handbook of Spontaneous Thought: Mind-Wandering, Creativity, and Dreaming, 193.