14

The Remembered Mark RowlandsThe Remembered

Understanding the Content of

Episodic Memory
Mark Rowlands

1  Propositional Content
Philosophical thinking about mental content, to a considerable extent, been
dominated by a model supplied by the propositional attitudes. The expression
‘propositional attitude’ was originally coined by Bertrand Russell (1912) to
denote any mental state that is attributed by way of a that-clause. Jones
believes that snow is white, that grass is green, or that the cat is on the mat.
What follows the ‘that’ is a complete sentence (“Snow is white,” “Grass is
green, “or “The cat is on the mat”). A complete sentence has a meaning
or as philosophers sometimes put it, expresses a proposition. Hence, we
arrive at the expression, ‘propositional attitude.’ To believe something (or to
think it, hope it, fear it, expect it, and so on) is to stand in a certain relation
(believing, thinking, etc.) to a proposition—where this is understood as the
meaning of the sentence that follows the occurrence of ‘that.’ Thus, in the
grip of this sort of picture, philosophers came to think of mental content as
propositional or at least, proposition-like. The content of mental states has
the same sort of structure as a proposition. In the content of the belief that
the cat is on the mat there is a component that stands for the (subject) cat,
a component that stands for the (object) mat, and a component that stands
for the (predicate) relation of being on.
At the same time, it is difficult to overlook the fact that many mental states
are not attributed by way of a that-clause. I intend to make a snowman, cut
the grass, and feed the cat. Any attempt to render attributions of intention
in that-clause terms—I intend that I make a snowman, that I cut the grass,
and that I feed the cat—seem contrived at best. “To make a snowman,” “to
cut the grass,” “to feed the cat,” are not complete sentences and, as such
do not express propositions. How, then, are we to understand the content
of intentions? Perception occupies a curious middle ground: attributions
of perception being seemingly expressible in both with and without a that-
clause. I can see the cat on the mat, and I can also see that the cat is on the mat.
Are these two different perceptual states? They might be. Or they might not.
Episodic memory, however, is a particularly interesting case because here
there seems to be a well-known vocabulary in situ that precludes attributing
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such memory by way of a that-clause. I remember, let us suppose, falling out
of a tree on my tenth birthday. This is an episodic memory. Suppose we try
to render this in that-clause terms: I remember that I fell out of a tree on my
tenth birthday. This we cannot do—without turning the episodic memory
into a semantic memory. We have turned it into a memory of a fact, and that
seems to be the hallmark of semantic memory. In the case of perception, it
seems possible to attribute perception both with and without a that-clause.
In the case of intention, there was at least a contrived—perhaps desperate—
way of attribution via a that-clause. But in the case of episodic memory, this
is what we cannot do. This makes the case of episodic memory, I shall argue,
especially interesting. When I attribute an episodic memory, I must do so by
way of a dependent clause rather than a complete sentence. A dependent
clause does not express a proposition. How, then, are we to understand the
content of episodic memory? That is the subject of this chapter.
It may be that episodic memory is merely a curiosity. However, I suspect
that this is not, in fact, the case. I suspect that no mental content is re-
ally propositional, and its appearance as such derives from the distorting
influence of the language we use to both attribute and describe such con-
tent. Episodic memory, for this reason, provides us with a crucial template
for understanding mental content more generally. However, to argue for
this broader claim here would take us beyond the scope of this chapter.
Here, I shall focus on understanding exactly what the content of episodic
memory is.

2  The Content of Episodic Memory 1: Episodes

Semantic memory fits the propositional template nicely: semantically,
I remember that something is the case—that Paris is the capital of France,
that a platypus is monotreme, and so on. This is no surprise: the category
of semantic memory seems to be nothing more than a sub-category of
belief (Rowlands, 2009; Klein, 2014). That is, while not all beliefs are
semantic memories, all semantic memories are beliefs. I find persuasive
Klein’s (2014) argument, that this casts doubt on the utility of thinking of
semantic memory as a form of memory at all—but this issue is tangential
to my current concerns. Whether or not it really merits the appellation
‘memory,’ we can understand the content of a semantic memory as having
propositional structure: the structure of the sentence that follows the ‘that.’
But episodic memory is not attributed in this way. How do we understand
the content of episodic memory?
One obvious option is to take our cue from the name and understand
episodic memory as memory of an episode. An episode is a state-of-
affairs, broadly construed. And a state-of-affairs is an arrangement of
objects and properties, including relational properties. When the content
is propositional, the corresponding state-of-affairs must, it seems, have
propositional structure. For example, one constituent of the state of affairs
 The Remembered  281
corresponds to the subject of the proposition, another to the predicate etc.
There is, however, no reason for supposing the content of episodic memory
is propositional. Nevertheless, it must have some structure: it cannot simply
be a collection of objects and properties: these must be arranged in a specific
way. To episodically remember the cat being on the mat is not to episodically
remember the mat being on the cat. How do we get the right structure?
Since episodes are, in effect, events, we might borrow from a well-known
theory of events, associated with Jaegwon Kim, among others: the property-
exemplification theory. According to this, any event should be understood as
the instantiation of a property by an object at a time. That is, any event has
the structure [x, P, t], where x is the constitutive object, P is the constitutive
property, and t is the constitutive time of the event. Thus, I might episodically
remember me (a constitutive object) instantiating a constitutive property
(falling out of a tree) at a constitutive time (on my tenth birthday). When
I episodically remember, I remember episodes understood in this way.
The problem with any attempt to understand episodic memory as
memory of episodes is that it threatens to collapse the distinction between
episodic and semantic memory. This is for the simple reason that many
semantic memories are also memories of episodes. The semantic memory
that Paris is the capital of France is not a memory of an episode, but the
semantic memory that Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE certainly seems to be. In
semantically remembering this, I remember that a certain object (Vesuvius)
instantiated a certain property (erupting) at a certain time (79 CE). If we do
not want to lose the distinction between episodic and semantic memory, we
should not understand the content of episodic memory simply as an episode.
I shall argue later that the notion of episode does have a significant role to
play in the content of episodic memory, but to properly play this role it
needs supplementation with something else.

3  The Content of Episodic Memory 2: Experiences

What is missing from the bare idea of remembering an episode is what often
goes by the name of mental time travel. I do not remember the eruption
of Vesuvius as an episode I formerly experienced. This might suggest we
should understand episodic memory as memory of experiences. This is a
common, and historically respectable way of thinking about episodic mem-
ory. John Locke, for example, took memory to be a power of the mind “to
revive perceptions, which it has once had, with this additional perception
annexed to them, that it has had them before” (Locke, 1690/1975, p. 150).
William Brewer defines episodic memory in similar terms, as a ‘reliving’
of the individual’s phenomenal experience from a specific moment in their
past, accompanied by a belief that the remembered episode was personally
experienced by the individual in their past (Brewer, 1996, pp. 60–61).1 On
this construal, then, experiences are the immediate objects of experiential
memory. To the extent that episodic memory involves the recall of episodes,
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this recall proceeds via the recall of the experiences that accompanied them.
Episodes may be the distal objects of episodic recall; but its proximal objects
are always experiences.
The well-documented (see Locke, 1971; Nigro & Neisser, 1983) Debus,
2007; Sutton, 2010; Eich et al., 2011; Goldie, 2012; McCarroll, 2015)
phenomenon of perspective switching provides a serious problem for this
understanding of episodic memory. Often episodes are remembered from a
perspective one could not have had when that episode occurred. Suppose, to
purloin a memory I anticipate my children one day having, you remember
sitting in the back of the family car singing a song called “The Man,” by a
band called The Killers, with your brother when you were 7 years old. Let us
suppose this event actually did happen. However, you remember this from
a perspective only others could have had of that event: from a third-person
perspective—as it might have been witnessed by your parents, turning
around to watch you rather than as experienced by you. This phenomenon
is often expressed in the distinction between ‘field’ and ‘observer’ memories.
As Goldie puts it: “In field memory, one remembers ‘from the inside,’ the
events as they took place. In observer memory, one remembers ‘from the
outside’ so that one is oneself part of the content of what one remembers.”2
In perspective switching one can shift from remembering an episode in
which one was involved to remembering how you might have appeared to
others as that episode unfolded.
Perspective switching militates against the understanding of episodic
memories as memory of experiences. In this sort of case—“The Man”
memories—the experiences that you seem to remember are ones that
you never had. In other words, the claims that (1) episodic remembering
is remembering of experiences, and (2) perspective switching in episodic
remembering is relatively common, yields (3) many of our episodic memories
are false. It is, of course, well known that many of our episodic memories
are false or inaccurate (see Neisser & Harsch, 1992). But the problem with
understanding episodic memory as memory of experiences is that it blurs
the distinction between truth and falsity in an unacceptable way.
To see why, consider two scenarios. In the first, it is true that the 7-year-
old you once sat in the back of the family car singing “The Man” with
your brother. However, your perspective has switched: you remember this
from a perspective, and so remember experiences, you never actually had.
If episodic memory is memory of experiences, this memory is false. In the
second scenario, the event of your singing “The Man” with your brother,
in the back of the family car, never actually happened at all: your apparent
memory is, let us suppose, the result of confabulation. In this scenario, your
episodic memory is also false. But it is false in a very different way. We do
not want to lose the distinction between these two different ways in which
episodic memories can be false. Therefore, we should abandon the idea that
episodic memories are simply memories of experiences. Whether or not
the episode in question actually happened is important to the status of the
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memory in a way that is lost if we think of episodic memory simply as the
remembering of experiences.
One might object: we can capture the difference between the two kinds of
falsity simply on the basis of experiences. The field and observer memories
of the same episode are sufficiently similar for us to be able to deny that the
perspective-switched memories are false.3 However, is this claim really true?
Consider, for example, the visual component of the two sorts of memory. In
one memory, the person who remembers pictures himself as he imagines he
must have looked to someone else: that is, he sees his face, as he imagines it
must have looked to another. This is an observer perspective. But in the field
perspective, he sees the fields and mountains that pass by as he sings, and
the faces of his parents in front of him. On what basis can we say that these
memories are similar? Admittedly, there is a song involved in both memo-
ries: the auditory components are the same. But that is not enough to justify
an overall claim of similarity. The perspective-switched version of the same
memory could easily, in other circumstances, be two distinct memories, one
true and the other false. Therefore, the claim that there is sufficient similar-
ity of perspective-switched memories for us, on this basis alone, deny the
falsity of perspective-switched memories should be treated with consider-
able suspicion. Please note that I am not claiming perspective-memories are
false. That is what I wish to deny. Rather, my claim is that if we regard the
content of episodic memory as simply experiences, this yields the conclusion
that perspective-switched memories are false. This conclusion needs to be
resisted. And to do this, we need to reject the idea that episodic memories
are simply memories of experiences.
I suspect the only real temptation for judging the perspective-switched
memories to be similar stems from the fact that they are both memories
of the same episode. If this is correct, then it is the episode, rather than
the experiences, that is doing the work required to ground the distinction
between the two sorts of falsity. If so, this is once again indicative of the
indispensability of the episode to our understanding of the content of
episodic memory. In understanding this content, we need to incorporate
both experiences (otherwise we will lose the distinction between episode
and semantic memory) and episode (otherwise we will lose the distinction
between falsity and perspective-switching).

4  The Content of Episodic Memory 3: The Fregean Model

There is a well-known account of intentional states that will allow us to
insert both episode and experience into the content of memory: we think
of the content as an episode-subsumed-under-a mode-of-presentation. We
might label this account the Fregean model, after its principal inspiration,
Gottlob Frege. According to this model, any episodic memory should be
analyzed into (1) the act of remembering, (2) the episode remembered, and
(3) the mode of presentation of that episode.
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You remember, let us suppose, singing “The Man,” with your brother, in
the back seat of the family car when you were 7 years old. Let us suppose this
episode actually did take place. Your memory is, therefore, of an episode.
This, by itself, is not sufficient for the memory to qualify as episodic. To
thus qualify, the episode needs to be subsumed under a specific mode of
presentation: an experiential mode of presentation of a quite specific sort.
Minimally, you must remember the episode as one that you formerly
experienced (that is, in this case, orchestrated or performed). What makes
a memory episodic is not that it is a memory of an episode but, rather, that
it is a memory of an episode that is subsumed under this specific mode of
presentation.
There is quite a bit built into this notion of remembering as. Consider
a semantic autobiographical memory: you remember that when you were
three your parents took you on a trip to Europe. You now, however, have
no episodic recall of the trip. This would not count, in the sense in which
I am employing the term, as remembering: you do not remember the Eu-
ropean trip as one that happened to you.4 You believe it happened to you.
You have a semantic autobiographical memory of the episode happening to
you. But episodically remembering an episode as an episode one formerly
encountered involves an experiential component that is lacking in the case
of semantic autobiographical memory: the episode must be experienced as
an episode one formerly encountered rather than merely thought of as an
episode that one formerly encountered.5
This general Fregean apparatus for thinking about the content of mental
states in general is familiar. It is a relatively straightforward application
of the general model to the specific case of episodic memory—to which,
I think, it fits both naturally and nicely. It is the next question that is the
most important—and also the most overlooked. What sort of thing must
the content of episodic memory be if it essentially presents an episode as
one formerly encountered by the subject—that is, as falling under modes
of presentation such as I have seen this before or I have done this before?

5  Memories vs. Photographs

In answering this question, it is instructive to contrast episodic memories
with photographs. There are many problems with a photographic model of
memory—and it is not possible to overcome many of these problems merely
by replacing a static photograph with a moving film. For example, photo-
graphs (or films) are, for example, notoriously indiscriminate at capturing
detail, quite independently of the photographer’s intentions or attention—
that is what photo bombing is all about. Memories are not like this. But
there is one, less familiar, problem that is important for our purposes. There
is nothing in the scene presented by a photograph that is essentially de se.
That is, there is nothing in a photograph that guarantees that the scene
depicted is presented as one the viewer formerly witnessed, orchestrated,
 The Remembered  285
or otherwise encountered. This is so even if the viewer is actually depicted
in the scene: the viewer may not recognize him- or herself as the person in
the scene.
Photographs are, in this respect, akin to nonindexical descriptions.
Consider Perry’s famous argument for what he calls the ‘essential indexical’
(Perry, 1979). To be aware that I am currently typing this page it is not
sufficient to be aware that a philosopher of Welsh descent currently employed
by the University of Miami is typing this page—for I may not know that
I am a philosopher of Welsh descent currently employed by the University of
Miami. No matter what description one employs, or how many of them one
employs, it will only guarantee awareness of self if we add the extra premise:
and I satisfy this description or descriptions. Similarly, your awareness of an
episode depicted in a photograph or film clip provides no guarantee that the
episode will be presented as one you have formerly encountered. This is true
even if you are present in the scene. For you might not recognize yourself as
you. A photograph may portray an episode that once happened to you, and
you may be in the photograph with the episode happening to you. But there
is no guarantee that you will see the photograph as depicting an episode that
once happened to you.
The case of photographs, however, diverges from that of the essential
indexical in at least one respect. Recognition of the person depicted in the
photograph as you is a necessary but not sufficient condition of recognizing
the episode portrayed as one you have formerly encountered. You might
recognize yourself, but still not remember the scene depicted in the
photograph: “Yes, that’s me all right. But I can’t remember where this was
or what I was doing there.” This is a perfectly possible reaction, indeed far
from unlikely once you reach a certain age. Once again, this reaction has
no echo in the case of episodic memory. If you episodically remember, then
what you remember must be presented to you as something you formerly
encountered. If it is not, then it is not an episodic memory.
The moral seems to be this: The mode of presentation I have encountered
this before is an essential feature of episodic memories, but only a contingent
feature, at best, of photographs. The relevant question, now, is this: is: why
is there this difference between memories and photographs? The answer,
I shall argue, can be found in a certain theme identifiable in the work of the
later Wittgenstein.

6  The Two-Factor Model

A prominent theme of the Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein, 1953)
was that meaning something by a sign does not consist in an inner state or
process. Wittgenstein adopted a particular conception of an inner state or
process: it consists in an item “coming before one’s mind.” Meaning some-
thing by a sign, therefore, does not consist in an item coming before one’s
mind. In particular, an item’s coming before one’s mind—equivalently, one’s
286  Mark Rowlands
being presented with a particular object of awareness—is neither necessary
nor sufficient for meaning something by a sign. Against the idea that it is
sufficient Wittgenstein advised to conduct a phenomenological investiga-
tion: look and see! If we do so, we will realize that much of the time we
use signs in perfectly meaningful ways without being presented with any
particular object of awareness. For our purposes, however, the argument
against sufficiency is more important.
Wittgenstein’s argument against sufficiency is based on the idea that any
object of awareness has the logical status of a symbol. A symbol is an item
that has both syntax and semantics and, crucially, the semantics is something
that must be supplied by an act of interpretation. Written and spoken words
are the most obvious examples of symbols: a written word—a sequence of
shapes against a contrastive background—can mean anything. In order to
mean something, it must be interpreted. The same, Wittgenstein argued, is
true of anything that comes before the mind—whether the item is external
(words, pictures, etc.) or internal (for example, a mental picture).
Consider, for example, a picture of a dog. In principle, this picture might
mean or signify any number of things. It might signify a particular dog, or
dogs in general. It might be used to signify a mammal, or a furry thing, or a
thing with four legs, or a tail, or floppy ears. It might be used, if the picture
is of a certain sort, to signify happiness, or sadness, or laziness, boredom or
comfort. In order to mean one thing, rather than all possible alternatives,
the picture must be interpreted. The same is true, logically speaking, if we
move the picture inwards—make it a mental picture rather than a physical
one. Understood as something that ‘comes before the mind’—as an object of
awareness—the mental picture could mean any number of things. To mean
something in particular, it must be interpreted.
At this juncture, there are two ways of interpreting Wittgenstein. The
first is constructive. If, to mean something, an item that comes before our
mind must be interpreted, then the task is to find what supplies the relevant
interpretation. Wittgenstein developed a line of argument—it later became
known as the rule-following paradox—to show that there are no facts about
an individual that supply the required interpretation. Then, according to the
constructive interpretation, Wittgenstein’s appeal to custom or practice can
be enlisted to show that there are other facts—facts about the customs or
practices in force in a given linguistic community that do provide the required
interpretation. This constructive interpretation of Wittgenstein’s argument
raises at least two difficult questions. First, is this the correct interpretation
of Wittgenstein? Second, independently of whether it is Wittgenstein’s view,
does it work? I think negative answers to both questions can be defended
(See Rowlands, 2006, 2010 and 2016 for further discussion), but I shall not
argue for these answers here. Instead, my focus is on another interpretation
of Wittgenstein that is more pertinent to my current concerns.
The interpretation I have in mind is based on the observation that
providing constructive solutions to philosophical problems contradicts
many facets of Wittgenstein’s avowed philosophical method. On this
 The Remembered  287
interpretation, Wittgenstein’s concern is not with providing a positive
account of how meaning is possible, but to elucidate the assumptions
that led us to think there is a problem in the first place (see McDowell,
1992). On this deflationary interpretation, the primary blame should be
assigned to the assumption that meaning involves an item ‘coming before
the mind’ of a subject. This assumption tempts one into adopting a two-
factor model of how mental items relate to the world. On the one hand,
there is the item that “comes before the mind,” and on the other is the
interpretation of that item that links it to the world. In themselves, the
items that come before the mind are semantically inert: in principle, they
could be about many things, even anything. Only by being interpreted
by the subject can these items be about anything else. On the proposed,
deflationary account of Wittgenstein’s arguments, they target this two-­
factor model of meaning. Assuming such a model is, as Wittgenstein
would put it, is the decisive movement in the conjuring trick, the very one
we thought most innocent.
There is no reason to suppose that meaning something by a sign can be
factored into (i) an item that is, intrinsically, semantically inert, and (ii) an
act of interpretation that supplies the semantics. That is, we should reject
the idea that meaning something by a sign consists in encountering an object
of awareness that is, in itself, semantically inert, combined with a mental
act that supplies an interpretation to this object. We reject, that is, the two-
factor model of meaning. If items that were, in themselves, semantically
inert did ‘come before the mind’ then we would need an act of interpreta-
tion to supply them with a semantics. And we may have a very hard time
understanding what could supply that. But if there are no such items, then
no such interpretational act is needed.
Whether this view can be correctly attributed to Wittgenstein, it is the
view I wish to defend regarding the content of episodic memory. This
is what the reflections on the inadequacies of the photographic model
are intended to highlight. Remembering an episode is not like being
acquainted with a photograph. The photograph is, in itself, semantically
inert—it could represent an indefinite number of things—and therefore
requires interpretation. What is remembered is not like this. I do not, for
example, remember a face, and certain transformations it undergoes, and
then subsequently identify it as that of my father—not if this memory is
accurately characterized as a memory of the face of my father. I do not even
do this unconsciously. To remember the face of my father is to remember
the face-as-the-face-of-my-father. Of course, in other circumstances, I might
remember my father’s face without remembering it as the face of my father.
Suppose for example, that my father had deserted his family when I was
very young. I have a dim recollection of a man’s face, a recollection that
manifest itself from time-to-time, but no idea who it is. Nevertheless,
I remember this face as something: for example, as a face from my past
whose owner I cannot identify. To remember a face is to remember it as the
face of someone, or, least, as a face seen in some circumstances. (I remember
288  Mark Rowlands
the face I saw last summer, even though I do not know the identity of the
person to whom it belongs. The interpretation here is this: I remember it as
the face I saw last summer.)
We might put the point in this way. Let us call what I episodically
remember, in any given case, the remembered. Then, we can say that some
or other as is essentially built into any token of the remembered. Of course,
I always see a photograph in some way or other too. But this is because
I bring to the photograph an act of interpretation that is distinct from
the photograph itself: the photograph exists independently of the act of
interpretation. Thus, that the photograph, at any given time, represents this
or that, or something else, is a contingent feature of the photograph. This is
not how it is with the content of episodic memory. That an episodic memory
is a memory of this, that or something else, is not a contingent but essential
feature of the memory. That is, when I episodically remember something,
I remember this something precisely as something. There is no remembered
to which the ‘as’ must be subsequently attached, by an act of interpretation,
as a logically posterior addendum. The remembered is always, essentially,
remembered as something.6
The crucial question, then, is: why this is not true of the photograph?
What is the difference between the remembered and the photograph that
allows the ‘as’ to be essentially built into the former but not the latter. To
see what this difference is, we should remember that the two-factor model
is entirely appropriate to the photograph. On the one hand there is the
photograph, and on the other, there is the act of interpretation that allows
us to form beliefs as to what it is about. The two-factor model is appropriate
precisely because the existence of the photograph is logically independent of
the act of seeing, and interpreting, it. It exists if I do not see it, and even if
no one sees it. This independence of photograph and act of interpretation,
therefore, makes the two-factor model unavoidable. I might be presented
with a photograph of the face of my father and not recognize it as him. But
this cannot happen when I episodically remember the face of my father: if I,
in fact, episodically remember the face of my father, then I must remember
it as the face of my father.7
The photograph contains no inherent ‘as’ because it exists independently
of the act of seeing. This is why a two-factor model is appropriate in
explaining the semantics of the photograph. But if such a model is not
appropriate to the remembered, then this supports (inductively) the claim
that the content of episodic memory does not exist independently of the
act of remembering. The implications of this lack of independence of act
of remembering and content remembered are significant. In the rest of this
chapter, I shall briefly outline some of these.

7  The Face of My Father, April 26, 1965

Much recent debate in work on memory has concerned the extent to
which memory is reconstructive. Very roughly, memory is constructive to
 The Remembered  289
the extent it involves nonperceptual operations performed on content at
the time of encoding. Memory is reconstructive to the extent it involves
operations performed on memory content at the time of retrieval. The
arguments for reconstruction in memory have typically been empirical.
There is, for example, the groundbreaking work of Karim Nader (2003)
and colleagues on reconsolidation in memory, which strongly supports the
idea that memory is reconstructive. Here, I shall supplement these empirical
arguments with an a priori argument. Given the nature of the content of
such memory, episodic memory must be reconstructive. There was really no
other way for it to be.
One of my earliest memories is of a nosebleed I suffered one night, on the
small settee in the small house in which I spent the first six years of my life.
The memory in question is that of the face of my father—in particular, of
certain transformations this face underwent—in the early hours of April 26,
1965 (GMT), which I know because that was the date of the second Cassius
Clay (as he then was)-Sonny Liston fight.
The order of events apparently transpired thusly: A few seconds before
the opening bell, my nose begins to bleed. My father dutifully runs off to get
some tissues. When he returns, mere moments later, the fight is over. Clay
has knocked Liston out with a punch so fast that many had trouble seeing it.
But that is not important. What is important, for my purposes at least, is my
father’s face. His face is a study in confusion, flitting between the TV screen
and me—as if I were somehow responsible for the events unfolding in black
and white. What is going on? Is this a rerun of the end of the first? (I assume,
no doubt retrospectively, that thoughts such as these were running through
his head.) Then I remember his face slowly transforming from confusion,
to suspicion (was this it, had he missed it?), and from suspicion to resigned
acceptance (he had, indeed, missed it) to joy (my father was an admirer of
Clay’s intelligence and skill). That memory was about my father, not me.
But I am still in there: these scenes, the transformations undergone by my
poor father’s face, are ones that are presented, precisely, as ones that I once
experienced: as events that I once saw.
One should not get hung up on the veracity of this memory, whether
it is a real memory or confabulation. At the very least, while I have good
reasons to suppose this episode actually happened, I have equally good
reasons to believe some of its elements are inaccurate. (I remember a nose
bleed, but it was really my desire for warm milk that was the reason for my
father temporary vacation of the TV room.) The memory, if that is what
it is, functions, here, as the central element in a thought experiment. In
this context, there is a striking feature of this memory, and one particularly
pertinent to the issue of reconstruction. When this fight took place, my
father would have been a relatively young man, in his early-to-mid thirties.
However, the face I remember, slowly transforming from confusion to
suspicion to acceptance to joy is the face of an old man. It is the face he wore
in his final years. I think I know why this is: it can be traced to the paucity
of photographs at that time—a paucity that will be difficult to grasp for
290  Mark Rowlands
someone who has grown up in the selfie-age. Making a photograph was a
long, drawn-out affair, which involved a camera that wouldn’t work at least
50 percent of the time, a trip to a pharmacist (a chemist, as they were known
back then), and a wait of approximately two weeks while the photos were
developed. As a result, people couldn’t, in general, be bothered. Photographs
were something reserved for special occasions: holidays, birthdays, and the
like. My parents were not averse to capturing their children in celluloid,
but they certainly weren’t going through this rigmarole for photographs of
themselves. As a result, photographs of my father were few and far between.
With this historical context in mind, consider what might have happened
if, in my memory, the face slowly transforming, in stages, from suspicion
to joy were the face of my father as a young man. Then, there would
be a significant chance I would not recognize him. Episodic memory, as
we have seen, is not like this. If I do episodically remember the face of
my father, transforming in these ways, then I remember it precisely as
something I formerly encountered. If it is true that, because of the dearth of
photographs, I cannot remember the face of my father as a young-ish man
then, in order to experience these transformations of the face as something
I have previously encountered, the face has to be changed to make it
recognizable to me. If the face hadn’t been changed in this way, then there
is no necessary reason why this episode would be presented to me as one
that I formerly experienced. This episode can only be presented as one that
I formerly experienced if the face that it presents is presented, precisely, as
the face of my father. Thus, given the paucity of photographs from that time
in my life, the face has to be updated to make it recognizable, precisely, as
the face of my father. The only frame of reference I have that could be used
to supply an interpretation is the face of my father I actually remember—the
face my father of his later years.
One should be clear what this example claims and what it does not. I do
not assume, of course, that our ability to recognize previously encountered
scenes and people is dependent on the availability of photographs of ­relevant
scenes and people.8 Of course, some people might be able to remember
the face of their younger father without photographs. I am, in this case,
apparently not one of those people. But my abilities or lack thereof are
not the issue. As I mentioned earlier, one is free to treat this example as a
thought experiment. The essential elements of this thought experiment are
(i) ‘I’ (or some random person if you prefer) episodically remember the face
of my father during a specific episode from a long time ago, and (ii) ‘I,’ for
whatever reason, am unable to remember what my father looks like at that
time. In such circumstances, the face of my father must be transformed from
the way it actually was at that time into a form that allows me to recognize
it as the face of my father.
In short: if, in episodic memory, an episode is presented, necessarily, as one
that I formerly encountered, then some memories must be reconstructive. This
is not to say how much reconstruction is involved. If someone is effortlessly
 The Remembered  291
able to remember the younger face of their father without photographic
help, then in having this sort of memory, little or no reconstruction might be
required. But in other circumstances, such as the ones outlined previously,
significant reconstruction might be required. We can see, in outline, the
circumstances that require reconstruction: I remember an episode as one that
happened to me, but I don’t remember specific elements of the episode. Put
in terms of the apparatus introduced earlier, we might say that my father’s
face is the constitutive object of the episode. I remember my father’s face
(instantiating the property of) transforming, but I do not remember the face
and so I have to reconstruct this constitutive object to make it necessarily true
that I experience this episode as one I formerly encountered. Any particular
token of episodic remembering must involve sufficient reconstruction to
underwrite the sense that the episode presented is one formerly encountered.
In some cases, this may entail little or no reconstruction. In other cases, the
necessary reconstruction may be substantial.

8  Memory and the Self

It is not unreasonable to suppose—and has indeed been supposed by
many—that our episodic memories play a significant role in making us the
people we are. After all, what could make us the people we are if not the
experiences we have had on these tracks through space and time that are our
lives? And how could these experiences be retained—and so play a role in
shaping who we are in the present—if not through episodic memories? This
intuition has received several, quite different, theoretical articulations, but
it is the underlying intuition that is of interest here.
The intuition seems to fall foul of two inconvenient truths. The first is that
we forget—a lot! For each one of us, forgotten experiences far outnumber
the remembered. Second, even when we do remember, memories often bear
little relation to the experiences of which they purport to be records (See
Neisser & Harsch, 1982 for a classic study). It is as if you were writing an
autobiography—something that you hoped to be an accurate and honest
recounting of your life. However, when you open the book, you find vast
swathes of redactions, which greatly outnumber the printed words. Worse,
although you are not in a position to know this, the sentences that remain
are not particularly accurate records of the episodes you encountered. Some
of them bear virtually no relation to the episodes you encountered. In such
circumstances, how can this book—this purported autobiography—be the
book of you?
On the one hand, one might hope there is enough salvageable content to
do the trick. Much content may be lost, and much of the remaining content
may be inaccurate. But, if there is just enough content left to tell a coherent
story of a life, perhaps that is all we need? Perhaps. It is this sort of idea that
underlies the memory theory of personal identity. But the view of episodic
memory content outlined here suggests a very different picture. The person
292  Mark Rowlands
is not something constructed out of episodic memory contents that are, in
themselves, neutral with regard to who has them. Rather, the person is al-
ready in the content of episodic memory. It is not as if the person emerges
subsequent to our putting the contents together, arranging them, in so far as
we can, into a coherent whole. Rather, the person who remembers is already
in the memory content she has retained. The person is in her memories in
the way, very roughly, that a sculptor is in her sculpture. The person has
shaped—transformed—the episode encountered into a content remembered.
The person has to do this, for there is nothing in an episode encountered
that guarantees it will be recalled as an episode one formerly encountered.
For this to occur, the episode must be transformed—reconstructed—into
content that is, necessarily, de se. The person who episodically remembers
transforms the episode encountered into content recalled. And she does this
by subsuming the episode under the mode of presentation, encountered
(witnessed, orchestrated etc.) before. For the episode to be thus subsumed—
as we saw in the case of the memory of the face of my father—the episode
might need to be reconstructed into something that can be subsumed under
this mode of presentation. Sometimes the reconstruction will be minimal,
and sometimes it will be far from this. But the possibility of reconstruction
must always there, for this is required to transform episode encountered
into content remembered. The episode must be reconstructed for it to be
capable of fitting into a person’s life, and it is that same person performs
that reconstruction. The indelible stamp of the person, therefore, lies on the
content of many of her episodic memories.

Notes
1 Brewer calls this ‘recollective’ rather than ‘episodic’ memory. For purposes of
exposition, I shall treat this as one form of what I am calling episodic memory.
2 Goldie (2012, p. 49).
3 I would like to thank Dorothea Debus for this objection.
4 I would like to thank an anonymous referee for allowing me to clarify this point.
5 In earlier work (1999, 2009), I have argued that the distinction between semantic
and episodic memory is one of degree rather than kind. The present point rein-
forces this idea. Thought can be more or less rich in phenomenology. Given that
certain veridicality conditions are met, the richer the phenomenology of a thought
that an episode happened the more this thought approximates an experience of
the episode as happening to you.
6 I’d like to thank another anonymous referee for allowing me to clarify this point.
If I were a philosopher of a certain bent, I might be tempted to put this point in
terms of distinction in the scope of the model operator: wide scope in the case of
photographs, narrow scope in the case of episodic memory content. Necessarily
a photograph is seen in some or other way—but precisely which way is a contin-
gent matter. But in the content of an episodic memory, an episode is necessarily
presented in some way or other, Helpful to some, but perhaps baffling to others.
I have, therefore, relegated this way of stating matters to a footnote.
7 This is not the same, as the earlier discussion indicated, as episodically remember-
ing something that is the face of my father. I can episodically remember something
 The Remembered  293
that is the face of my father without episodically remembering the face of my
father.
8 I would like to thank an anonymous referee for allowing me to clarify this point.

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