Abstract
The relationship between memory and imagination has been discussed throughout the history of philosophy. Discussion of the difference between these two mental phenomena already can be found in Plato and Aristotle, and the debate continues today, with a new emphasis on empirical findings. Two positions have emerged in the debate: continuism and discontinuism (Perrin, 2016). Continuists maintain that memory and imagination are mental states of the same kind, while discontinuists argue that they belong to different kinds. This book approaches the (dis)continuist debate from a variety of angles. As an edited volume, it brings together a broad range of contributions to the debate (with some chapters, nonetheless, discussing the relationship between memory and imagination without reference to mental kinds).
The volume is divided into four parts. Part 1, Memory and Imagination: Ontological Questions, deals directly with the (dis)continuism debate, giving new answers to well-known questions and proposing new questions as well. In chapter 1, Peter Langland-Hassan discusses the attitudinal version of (dis)continuism. After defining what he takes to be relevant forms of memory (episodic memory) and imagination (constructive imagining), setting the stage for future discussion, he argues that some instances of constructive imagining involve the same attitude as remembering, in that they aim at truth. In chapter 2, Christopher Jude McCarroll discusses the directions of fit of memory and imagination and reviews cases in which memory and imagination have different directions of fit, concluding that these mental states can be continuous in some aspects and discontinuous in others.
In chapter 3, Alma Barner deals with the problem of collective mental time travel. She argues that, while success in collective memory requires collaborative effort, imagination does not require such collaboration. If one considers the process responsible for the formation of a mental state as what defines it as belonging to a given kind, then collective memory and imagination should be taken to belong to different kinds. In chapter 4, Kourken Michaelian responds to a criticism concerning the ability of simulationist and continuist views to explain forgetting. If one holds that memory and imagination are underwritten by the same processes, it is unclear how one might explain why forgetting occurs, but Michaelian argues that simulationists/continuists can explain forgetting in much the way in which causalists/discontinuists do. In the final chapter of part 1, Paul Noordhof argues against non-representational relationism about memory. He describes a number of problems for this account and argues that a representationalist account of memory’s objects better explains the relevant phenomena. He concludes by drawing out the implications of representationalism regarding the (dis)similarities between memory and imagination.
Part 2 of the book, Memory, Imagination, Justification, and Perspective, is focused on the accuracy and veridicality of memory and imagination in relation to their quasi-sensorial characters. Chapter 6, by Kengo Miyazono and Uku Tooming, argues against the idea that memory and imagination are epistemically generative because they involve psychologically generative processes, suggesting that the idea cannot be correct because psychologically generative processes are not epistemically generative. Chapter 7, by Margherita Arcangeli, provides a novel defence of the view that observer memories are genuine memories. A common criticism for considering those memories as genuine comes from recreativism, a notion according to which memory and imagination are dependent on sensorial experiences, and that, as such, should maintain a field point of view, which does not happen in observer memories. Against this common criticism, she suggests two possibilities on either of which recreativism is compatible with observer memories. Chapter 8, by Anco Peeters, Erica Cosentino and Markus Werning, approaches the same problem as chapter 7 but does so from a different angle. The authors argue that memory involves perspectives in different interdependent dimensions (visual, agential, emotional and self/social-related) and that all of these must be taken into account in discussions of perspective in memory.
Part 3 of the book concerns Memory, Imagination, Skills, and Abilities. In this part, the authors investigate memory and imagination as skills or abilities and explore the consequences of such an understanding for (dis)continuism. Amy Kind, in chapter 9, reviews methods to improve mnemic and imaginative skills. Comparing these, she finds basic differences but also underlying similarities, suggesting that both the differences and similarities need to be taken into account. Robert Hopkins, in chapter 10, approaches both mental states as agential powers, discussing their actualisations, similarities and dissimilarities. He proposes that, while memory differs from imagination with respect to its actualisations (such as specificity), it is likely the case that the power of memory incorporates the power of imagination. Sarah Robins, in chapter 11, shows how memory and imagination are entangled in the Method of Loci (also known as the Memory Palace). Despite this entanglement, she argues, there are significant differences between the Method of Loci and episodic memory.
The chapters making up part 4 of the book, Memory, Imagination, and Emotion, continue to be concerned with the relationship between memory and imagination, but are not concerned with the (dis)continuism debate, strictly understood. Íngrid Vendrell Ferran, in chapter 12, proposes an account of what is involved in imagining how an emotion feels. In her view, phenomenal properties are used to identify the targeted emotion and re-create an emotion-like imagining. In this process, previously felt emotions play an important role even when one imagines a new emotion. Anja Berninger, in chapter 13, proposes a definition of nostalgia based on family resemblance. Nostalgia, she argues, is characterised not by necessary and sufficient conditions but rather by a pool of features that some cases of nostalgia will share, given that this pool can be extended. Fabrice Teroni brings the volume to a close with chapter 14. In this chapter, he argues that personal identity is best defined in terms of traits and that traits, in their turn, should be treated as dispositions to manifest emotions. After that, he considers how emotions are related to mental time travel and the stream of consciousness, providing a conciliatory proposal between two of the most prominent accounts of personal identity.
The book makes a significant contribution to the philosophical debate over the relationship between memory and imagination, moving forward a number of ongoing discussions. For example, chapter 4 is an interesting response to a criticism raised by McCarroll (2020), according to whom simulationism is unable to account for forgetting. Chapters 7 and 8 add new depth to the question of the veridicality and genuineness of observer memories raised by McCarroll (2018). And chapter 5 is an insightful contribution to the recently reinvigorated debate between relationalists and representationalists about memory (Barkasi and Rosen, 2020; Barkasi and Sant’Anna, 2022), linking that debate to the (dis)continuism debate.
Perhaps the book’s most important virtue is its inclusion of cutting-edge contributions. For example, the attitudinal approach to (dis)continuism is quite recent (Robins, 2020; Sant’Anna, 2021), and the first two chapters offer two new but almost directly opposed treatments of the approach. Along the same lines, the relationship of (dis)continuism to collective mental time travel has, with few exceptions (Michaelian and Sutton, 2019), remained untouched, and Chapter 3 shines a spotlight on this issue. Similarly, the two final parts of the book, by focusing on skills and emotions, highlight previously neglected aspects of the relationship of memory to imagination. Comparing memory and imagination understood as agential powers (chapter 10), for instance, represents a novel approach to the relationship between these two mental states, as does looking at the role played by each in mnemotechnics (chapters 9 and 11). The topic of emotional imagination (chapter 12) is novel in its own right and also provides a new way of looking at the contribution of memory to imagining. Similar praise can be directed to the discussion of emotions and their role in personal identity, especially in connection with mental time travel (chapter 14). Although novelty is not synonymous with quality, the editors have ensured a uniformly high level of quality and thematic coherence throughout the book, as the chapters, without exception, are not introductory in character but, instead, move the debate forward in significant ways.
That being said, two aspects of the book might arguably have been improved. The first concerns engagement between chapters. As many of the chapters discuss related issues, they could have benefitted from engaging more closely with each other’s arguments. For example, chapters 1 and 2 present almost directly opposed views regarding the attitudes of imagination, but they largely do not engage with each other’s arguments. Similarly, chapters 7 and 9 debate the nature of sensory versus experiential imagination, but they do not reply to each other’s analyses. Doing more to encourage this sort of engagement might have enabled the book to do even more to move the debate forward. The second element that is arguably missing from the book is a metaphilosophical discussion of the (dis)continuism debate: while the chapters do move the debate forward in important ways, there is little discussion on why various (dis)similarities between memory and imagination matter when considering them as kinds of mental state. As the empirical data may be insufficient to settle the debate, each view in the debate should contend over the features they prescribe as being the most important ones (Dos Santos et al., 2023).
But these weaknesses are negligeable, and the book makes an outstanding contribution to the debate on the relationship between memory and imagination. Both philosophers working on either memory or imagination and researchers in a wide range of other disciplines stand to benefit from it, given the fundamental character of the issues covered by the book.