Memory, anaphora, and content preservation

Philosophical Studies 109 (2):97-119 (2002)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

  Tyler Burge defends the idea that memory preserves beliefswith their justifications, so that memory's role in inferenceadds no new justificatory demands. Against Burge's view,Christensen and Kornblith argue that memory is reconstructiveand so introduces an element of a posteriori justificationinto every inference. I argue that Burge is right,memory does preserve content, but to defend this viewwe need to specify a preservative mechanism. Toward thatend, I develop the idea that there is something worthcalling anaphoric thinking, which preserves content inBurge's sense of ``content preservation.'' I providea model on which anaphoric thought is a fundamentalfeature of cognitive architecture, consequentlyrejecting the idea that there are mental pronounsin a Language of Thought. Since preservativememory is a matter of anaphoric thinking, thereare limits on the analogy of memory and testimony

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 91,423

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Mental content and the division of epistemic labour.Christopher Gauker - 1991 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 69 (3):302-18.
Is memory preservation?Mohan Matthen - 2010 - Philosophical Studies 148 (1):3-14.
Interlocution, perception, and memory.Tyler Burge - 1997 - Philosophical Studies 86 (1):21-47.
Memory and Externalism.Sven Bernecker - 2004 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 69 (3):605-632.
The intentionality of memory.Jordi Fernández - 2006 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 84 (1):39-57.
Thought and the social community.Andrew Woodfield - 1982 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 25 (December):435-50.
Memory and persons.Tyler Burge - 2003 - Philosophical Review 112 (3):289-337.

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-01-28

Downloads
136 (#132,658)

6 months
15 (#159,128)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Krista Lawlor
Stanford University

Citations of this work

Coreference and meaning.N. Ángel Pinillos - 2011 - Philosophical Studies 154 (2):301 - 324.
Bootstrapping our way to samesaying.Laura Schroeter - 2012 - Synthese 189 (1):177-197.
A Priori Testimony Revisited.Anna-Sara Malmgren - 2013 - In Albert Casullo & Joshua Thurow (eds.), The A Priori in Philosophy. Oxford University Press.
Coordination, Content, and Conflation.Kyle Landrum - 2023 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 101 (3):638-652.

View all 6 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

Content preservation.Tyler Burge - 1993 - Philosophical Review 102 (4):457-488.
Thought without Representation.John Perry & Simon Blackburn - 1986 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 60 (1):137-166.
Interlocution, perception, and memory.Tyler Burge - 1997 - Philosophical Studies 86 (1):21-47.
Reason and the first person.Tyler Burge - 1998 - In Crispin Wright, Barry C. Smith & Cynthia Macdonald (eds.), Knowing Our Own Minds. Oxford University Press.

View all 11 references / Add more references