This is a collection of chapters by some of the most influential memory researchers.

This study investigated whether temporal clustering of autobiographical memories around periods of self-development would also occur when imagining future events associated with the self. Participants completed an AM task and future thinking task. In both tasks, memories and future events were cued using participant-generated identity statements . Participants then dated their memories and future events, and finally gave an age at which each identity statement was judged to emerge. Dates of memories and future events were recoded as temporal distance from (...) the identity statement used to cue them. AMs and future events both clustered robustly around periods of self-development, indicating the powerful organisational effect of the self. We suggest that life narrative structures are used to organise future events as well as memories. (shrink)

One of the main aims of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on autobiographical memory was to provide researchers with an opportunity to ‘stick their necks out’ and throw open for public scrutiny theoretical claims they might otherwise have kept to themselves. In the papers collected in the present volume the reader will find that this is just what occurs. Even where an author has chosen to present new empirical findings these are accompanied by the type of theoretical speculation often edited (...) out in, for example, journal submissions. Thus, the intention of the book, like the workshop, is to provide an impetus to the development of theory in autobiographical memory research. (shrink)

Neither the storehouse nor the correspondence metaphor is an appropriate conceptual framework for memory research. Instead a meaning-based account of human memory is required. The correspondence metaphor is an advance over previous suggestions but entails an oversimple view of “accuracy.” Freud's account of memory may provide a more fruitful approach to memory and meaning.

The Remember–Know paradigm is commonly used to examine experiential states during recognition. In this paradigm, whether a Know response is defined as a high-confidence state of certainty or a low-confidence state based on familiarity varies across researchers, and differences in definitions and instructions have been shown to influence participants’ responding. Using a novel approach, in three internet-based questionnaires participants were placed in the role of ‘memory expert’ and classified others’ justifications of recognition decisions. Results demonstrated that participants reliably differentiated between (...) others’ memory experiences – both in terms of confidence and other inherent differences in the justifications. Furthermore, under certain conditions, manipulations of confidence were found to shift how items were assigned to subjective experience categories . Findings are discussed in relation to the relationship between subjective experience and confidence, and the separation of Know and Familiar response categories within the Remember–Know paradigm. (shrink)

Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness affecting sense of identity. Autobiographical memory deficits observed in schizophrenia could contribute to this altered sense of identity. The ability to give a meaning to personally significant events is also critical for identity construction and self-coherence. Twenty-four patients with schizophrenia and 24 control participants were asked to recall five self-defining memories. We assessed meaning making in participants’ narratives and afterwards asked them explicitly to give a meaning to their memories . We found that both (...) spontaneous and cued meaning making were impaired in patients with schizophrenia. This impairment was correlated with executive dysfunctions and level of negative symptoms. Our results suggest that patients’ difficulties in drawing lessons about past experiences could contribute to explain the lack of coherence observed in their life trajectories and their impaired social adjustment abilities. Implications for psychotherapy are also discussed. (shrink)

Can the psychodynamics of the mind be correlated with neurodynamic processes in the brain? The book revisits a question that scientists and psychoanalysts have been asking for more than a century. It brings together experts from Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Psychiatry and Neurology to consider this question.

Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness, which affects sense of identity. While the ability to have a coherent vision of the self relies partly on its reciprocal relationships with autobiographical memories, little is known about how memories ground “self-images” in schizophrenia. Twenty-five patients with schizophrenia and 25 controls were asked to give six autobiographical memories related to four self-statements they considered essential for defining their identity. Results showed that patients’ self-images were more passive than those of controls. Autobiographical memories underlying (...) self-images were less thematically linked to these self-images in patients. We also found evidence of a weakened sense of self and a deficient organization of autobiographical memories grounding the self in schizophrenia. These abnormalities may account for the poor cohesiveness of the self in schizophrenia. (shrink)

The content of dreams and changes to the self were investigated in students moving to University. In study 1, 20 participants completed dream diaries and memory tasks before and after they had left home and moved to university, and generated self images, “I am…” statements , reflective of their current self. Changes in “I ams” were observed, indicating a newly-formed ‘university’ self. These self, images and related autobiographical knowledge were found to be incorporated into recent dreams but not into dreams (...) from other periods. Study 2 replicated these findings in a different sample . We suggest that these data reflect a period of self-consolidation in which new experiences and self images are incorporated into autobiographical memory knowledge structures representing personal goals during sleep. (shrink)

The term 'episodic memory' refers to our memory for unique, personal experiences, that we can date at some point in our past - our first day at school, the day we got married. It has again become a topic of great importance and interest to psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers. How are such memories stored in the brain, why do certain memories disappear (especially those from early in childhood), what causes false memories (memories of events we erroneously believe have really taken (...) place)? Since Endel Tulving's classic book 'Episodic memory' (OUP, 1983) very few books have been published on this topic. In recent years however, many of the assumptions made about episodic memory have had to be reconsidered as a result of new techniques, which have allowed us a far deeper understanding of episodic memory. In 'Episodic memory: new directions in research' three of the worlds leading researchers in the topic of memory have brought together a stellar team of contributors from the fields of cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and neuroscience, to present an account of what we now know about about this fundamentally important topic. The list of contributors includes, amongst others, Daniel Schacter, Richard Morris, Fareneh Vargha-Khadem, and Endel Tulving. The work presented within this book will have a profound effect on the direction that future research in this topic will take. (shrink)

Individuals regaining reliable day-to-day walking function after incomplete spinal cord injury report persisting unsteadiness when confronted with walking challenges. However, quantifiable measures of walking capacity lack the sensitivity to reveal underlying impairments of supra-spinal locomotor control. This study investigates the relationship between intramuscular coherence and corticospinal dynamic balance control during a visually guided Target walking treadmill task. In thirteen individuals with iSCI and 24 controls, intramuscular coherence and cumulant densities were estimated from pairs of Tibialis anterior surface EMG recordings during (...) normal treadmill walking and a Target walking task. The approximate center of mass was calculated from pelvis markers. Spearman rank correlations were performed to evaluate the relationship between intramuscular coherence, clinical parameters, and center of mass parameters. In controls, we found that the Target walking task results in increased high-frequency intramuscular coherence, which negatively related to changes in the center of mass movement, whereas this modulation was largely reduced in individuals with iSCI. The impaired modulation of high-frequency intramuscular coherence during the Target walking task correlated with neurophysiological and functional readouts, such as motor-evoked potential amplitude and outdoor mobility score, as well as center of mass trajectory length. The Target walking effect, the difference between Target and Normal walking intramuscular coherence, was significantly higher in controls than in individuals with iSCI [F = 13.042, p < 0.001]. Intramuscular coherence obtained during challenging walking in individuals with iSCI may provide information on corticospinal gait control. The relationships between biomechanics, clinical scores, and neurophysiology suggest that intramuscular coherence assessed during challenging tasks may be meaningful for understanding impaired supra-spinal control in individuals with iSCI. (shrink)

This article provides a phenomenological understanding of contemporary sport and its digital game incarnation. The latter is highlighted as, currently, an example par excellence of what Martin Heidegger referred to as Enframing : the essence of modern technology that discloses being only in its availability for consumption. This concept is clarified and compared with a phenomenological comprehension of art and play. Building upon these notions, the physical sport and its digital emulation are compared and contrasted, illustrating how key criteria (...) for play and artwork are met or nullified. Finally, we come to a diagnosis of the sport digital game in its current form, suggesting how it may meet these criteria through acknowledgement and appreciation of its technological basis. (shrink)

### High Court rejects assisted dying challenge The High Court has rejected the latest challenge to the law on assisted dying in the UK, brought by Noel Conway. Mr Conway, a retired college lecturer, was diagnosed with motor neuron disease in 2012. Since his diagnosis, his health has deteriorated and he is dependent on ever-increasing levels of assistance with daily life, including the use of non-invasive ventilation to help him breathe. He sought a declaration from the court that (...) section 2 of the Suicide Act 1961 was incompatible with his right to a private and family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. As part of his case, Mr Conway submitted the outline of an alternative statutory scheme, which he argued, if implemented, would provide sufficient safeguards. He submitted that the prohibition on assisted suicide should not apply where an individual is aged 18 and over; has been diagnosed with a terminal illness and has a clinically assessed prognosis of 6 months or less to live; has the mental capacity to make the decision; makes that decision in a voluntary, clear and settled manner; and retains the ability to undertake the final act. Additionally, two doctors must confirm that the individual meets the criteria, and permission for the provision of assistance must be authorised by a High Court judge. Previous challenges to the UK law on assisted dying, including Pretty and Nicklinson, had established that section 2 of the Suicide Act does engage individual’s Article 18 rights, but that such an interference could be justified under Article 8 of the ECHR, which permits interference ‘such as is in accordance with the law and necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country’. The question …. (shrink)

Working memory--the ability to keep important information in mind while comprehending, thinking, and acting--varies considerably from person to person and changes dramatically during each person's life. Understanding such individual and developmental differences is crucial because working memory is a major contributor to general intellectual functioning. This volume offers a state-of-the-art, integrative, and comprehensive approach to understanding variation in working memory by presenting explicit, detailed comparisons of the leading theories. It incorporates views from the different research groups that operate on each (...) side of the Atlantic, and covers working-memory research on a wide variety of populations, including healthy adults, children with and without learning difficulties, older adults, and adults and children with neurological disorders. A particular strength of this volume is that each research group explicitly addresses the same set of theoretical questions, from the perspective of both their own theoretical and experimental work and from the perspective of relevant alternative approaches. Through these questions, each research group considers their overarching theory of working memory, specifies the critical sources of working memory variation according to their theory, reflects on the compatibility of their approach with other approaches, and assesses their contribution to general working memory theory. This shared focus across chapters unifies the volume and highlights the similarities and differences among the various theories. Each chapter includes both a summary of research positions and a detailed discussion of each position. Variation in Working Memory achieves coherence across its chapters, while presenting the entire range of current theoretical and experimental approaches to variation in working memory. (shrink)

There is a type of metaphysical picture that surfaces in a range of philosophical discussions, is of intrinsic interest, and yet remains ill-understood. According to this picture, the world contains a range of standpoints relative to which different facts obtain. Any true representation of the world cannot but adopt a particular standpoint. The aim of this paper is to propose a regimentation of a metaphysics that underwrites this picture. Key components are a factive notion of metaphysical relativity, a deflationary notion (...) of adopting standpoints, and two kinds of valid inference, one that allows one to abandon standpoints and one that does not. To better understand how theories formulated in terms of this framework are situated in dialectical space, I sketch a theory in the philosophy of time that admits both temporal and atemporal standpoints. (shrink)

In Genesis 27 Jacob is depicted as lying to Isaac. Jacob, however, was held in Christian tradition to be both a moral exemplar and to be speaking prophetically in this episode with his father. This raises the question of how Doctors of the Church such as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas were able reconcile these interpretive commitments with their stance on the intrinsically disordered nature of lying. In examining their resolution of this tension, we discover an important exegetical distinction (...) for interpreting troubling words as nevertheless being divinely inspired. Yet, it is only in light of another interpretive distinction, recently highlighted by Nicholas Lombardo OP, that we can both hold to the inspired nature of Jacob's words and also a natural reading of the account in Genesis 27. The detailed examination of Genesis 27 by both Augustine and Aquinas is an important case study for understanding how we can interpret troubling language as still being the word of God. This undertaking, spanning centuries between Augustine and Aquinas, is now taken one step further thanks to the exegetical proposal of Fr. Lombardo. (shrink)

Disjointism is the view that co-located objects do not share any parts. A human-shaped statue is composed from a torso, head and limbs; the co-located lumpof clay is only composed from chunks of clay. This essay discusses the tenability of this relatively neglected view, focusing on two objections. The first objection is that disjointism implies co-located copies of microphysical particles. I argue that it doesn’t imply this and that there are more plausible disjointist views of tiny parts available. The second (...) objection is that disjointism is at a loss to explain how material objects can be co-located and why the weights of co-located objects don’t add up. The standard pluralist account appeals to the fact that co-located objects stand in mereological relations and this account is not available to the disjointist. I sketch an alternative account that appeals to a notion of ‘material identity’: the statue is taken to be the same matter as the lump of clay. The resort to a new theoretical primitive may seem to invite a quick rejection on grounds of unnecessary theoretical complexity but I argue that an abductive comparison with rival forms of pluralism shows that such a rejection is misguided. (shrink)

This paper proposes a view of time that takes passage to be the most basic temporal notion, instead of the usual A-theoretic and B-theoretic notions, and explores how we should think of a world that exhibits such a genuine temporal passage. It will be argued that an objective passage of time can only be made sense of from an atemporal point of view and only when it is able to constitute a genuine change of objects across time. This requires that (...) passage can flip one fact into a contrary fact, even though neither side of the temporal passage is privileged over the other. We can make sense of this if the world is inherently perspectival. Such an inherently perspectival world is characterized by fragmentalism, a view that has been introduced by Fine in his ‘Tense and Reality’ (2005). Unlike Fine's tense-theoretic fragmentalism though, the proposed view will be a fragmentalist view based in a primitive notion of passage. (shrink)

This essay is dedicated to the memory of Katherine Hawley.1Bitcoin was invented to serve as a digital currency that demands no trust in financial institutions, such as commercial and central banks. This paper discusses metaphysical aspects of bitcoin, in particular the view that bitcoin is socially constructed, non-concrete, and genuinely exists. If bitcoin is socially constructed, then one may worry that this reintroduces trust in the communities responsible for the social construction. Although we may have to rely on certain communities, (...) I argue that social construction doesn’t imply a demand for trust because the relevant communities don’t take on any relevant commitments. Bitcoin is indeed trust-free. (shrink)

Fragmentalism is the view that reality is not a metaphysically unified place, but fragmented in a certain sense, and constituted by incompatible facts across such fragments. It was introduced by Kit Fine in a discussion of tense realist theories of time. Here I discuss the conceptual foundations of fragmentalism, identify several open questions in Fine’s characterization of the view, and propose an understanding of fragmentalism that addresses these open questions.

The views of John Dewey and Kurt Vonnegut are often criticized for opposite reasons: Dewey’s philosophy is said to be naively optimistic while Vonnegut’s work is read as cynical. The standard debates over the views of the two thinkers cause readers to overlook the similarities in the way each approaches tragic experience. This paper examines Dewey’s philosophic account of time and meaning and Vonnegut’s use of time travel in his autobiographical novel Slaughterhouse-Five to illustrate these similarities. This essay demonstrates how (...) both Dewey and Vonnegut embrace the ameliorative possibilities of art for preserving individuality and meaning in the face of tragic experience. (shrink)

Fragmentalism was first introduced by Kit Fine in his ‘Tense and Reality’. According to fragmentalism, reality is an inherently perspectival place that exhibits a fragmented structure. The current paper defends the fragmentalist interpretation of the special theory of relativity, which Fine briefly considers in his paper. The fragmentalist interpretation makes room for genuine facts regarding absolute simultaneity, duration and length. One might worry that positing such variant properties is a turn for the worse in terms of theoretical virtues because such (...) properties are not involved in physical explanations and hence theoretically redundant. It will be argued that this is not right: if variant properties are indeed instantiated, they will also be involved in straightforward physical explanations and hence not explanatorily redundant. Hofweber and Lange, in their ‘Fine’s Fragmentalist Interpretation of Special Relativity’, object that the fragmentalist interpretation is in tension with the right explanation of the Lorentz transformations. It will be argued that their objection targets an inessential aspect of the fragmentalist framework and fails to raise any serious problem for the fragmentalist interpretation of special relativity. (shrink)

There is a traditional interpretation of the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson that portrays him as a champion of nature, wilderness, or country life and an opponent of the city, technology, or urban life. Such a view, though, neglects the role of human activity in the universe as Emerson saw it. Furthermore, this view neglects the proper relation between soul and nature in the universe and risks entailing a philosophy of materialism--an unacceptable position for Emerson. An examination of Emerson's philosophy (...) will show that it is not fundamentally hostile to urban life or technology, and that, in fact, an anti-urban position is opposed to the most central themes of Emerson's philosophical vision. (shrink)

Although he was born in Spain, George Santayana became a uniquely American philosopher, critic, poet, and best-selling novelist. Along with his Harvard colleagues William James and Josiah Royce, he is best known as one of the founders of American pragmatism and recognized for his insights into the theory of knowledge, metaphysics, and moral philosophy. The Essential Santayana presents a selection of Santayana's most important and influential literary and philosophical work. Martin A. Coleman's critical introduction sets Santayana into the American (...) philosophical tradition and provides context for contemporary readers, many of whom may be approaching Santayana's writings for the first time. This landmark collection reveals the intellectual and literary diversity of one of American philosophy's most lively minds. (shrink)

Objects often manifest themselves in incompatible ways across perspectives that are epistemically on a par. The standard response to such cases is to deny that the properties that things appear to have from different perspectives are properties that things really have out there. This type of response seems worrying: too many properties admit of perspectival variance and there are good theoretical reasons to think that such properties are genuinely instantiated. So, we have reason to explore views on which things can (...) have the incompatible properties they appear to have across perspectives. This paper explores the view that things can have incompatible properties if the world is not a metaphysically unified place but is instead fragmented. There is a sensible notion of co-obtainment, on which two facts can each obtain without co-obtaining. Using this notion, we can step back from our embedded perspectives on the world without deeming the contents of those perspectives to be mere appearances. This renders th.. (shrink)