On Episodic Memory: Preservation, Reconstruction, and Modeling

In this dissertation, I investigate episodic memory. I do so through the lens of the relationship between memory systems (functionally integrated cognitive structures) and the activity of remembering the personal past (supported by these structures and occurring in a variety of epistemic contexts). In Chapter 1, I present an empirical challenge to a class of theories that take episodic remembering to be characterized by the kind of relation it affords to unique personally experienced events. Against such theories, I argue that the episodic system also supports the construction of memories that are not about such unique events. In Chapter 2, I turn to the influential simulation theory, which characterizes remembering as a process of simulating past events, performed by a properly functioning episodic system. I argue that the system can be taken to simulate past events only on a broad (modeling) conception of simulation. Moreover, I propose that the theory introduces criteria of remembering success not linked to the satisfaction of the episodic system's proper function. In Chapter 3, I argue that declarative memory systems perform a distinctive activity analogous to triage: they manage information for a variety of uses under significant computational constraints. In such triage, representations are preferentially selected and stabilized, but also systematically modified and integrated into generalized, model-like representational structures. In Chapter 4, I offer a novel account of the episodic memory system. I argue that the system constructs mental event models: representations that 'aim' to preserve the (spatiotemporal) structure of represented events. In virtue of their simplicity and manipulability, the models can be used for remembering, but also in future-oriented and counterfactual imagination. In Chapter 5, I examine the relationship between these processes. Adopting a form of pluralism, I argue that the systemic connection between episodic remembering and imagination doesn't compel us to consider them processes of the same psychological kind. Finally, I propose that remembering successfully requires not only the possession of the right kind of memory systems but also the satisfaction of certain norms that govern the familiar epistemic practices of witnessing and testimony