Memory as Sensory Modality, Perception as Experience of the Past

Perceptual experience strikes us as a presentation of the here and now. I argue that it also involves experience of the past. This claim is often made based on cases, like seeing stars, involving significant signal-transmission lag, or based on how working memory allows us to experience extended events. I argue that the past is injected into perceptual experience via a third way: long-term memory traces in sensory circuits. Memory, like the receptor-based senses, is an integrated and constituent modality through which we experience the environment. Because of this modality, we experience the sensed properties of stimuli partly as they are now, but also partly as we encountered them in the past.