Abstract

It is widely, if not universally, assumed by philosophers that it is impossible to justify the reliability of memory without recourse to the use of memory. This so-called “epistemic circularity” is supposed to infect all attempts to justify memory as a source of knowledge in a noncircular way. In this paper, we argue that advances in cognitive science radically upheave the traditional, folk-psychological conception of memory which epistemologists have hitherto been subjecting to analysis. With an updated view of the nature of the diverse systems typically falling under the umbrella term “memory”, it can be shown that the epistemic circularity associated with the justification of memory no longer rears its ugly head. We show that it is possible to give a noncircular justification of memory. In so doing, we believe that we have solved a perennial problem in epistemology.