Bochum-Grenoble Memory Colloquium


James Openshaw (University of Warwick)

Remembering objects and imagining the past.

05.11.2020, 10:00-11:30 CET (UTC+01:00).

Online Lecture via zoom.

Login information:

Zoom:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82970505769?pwd=NGpHL3VHUUg0bktTbnBIT2kxMWVYZz09

  • meeting ID: 829 7050 5769
  • password: 8rraW0

Abstract: Taxonomies of memory typically come with ontological baggage. Episodic memory supports the recollection of experienced events, semantic memory of facts, and so on. Where does the recollection of objects fit into this picture? Of course, one can recall an object by episodically recalling event in which it featured, or perhaps by recalling certain facts about it. Are these possibilities exhaustive? Or might there be distinctive kinds of conscious occurrence which put one in a position to have singular thoughts about past objects? In this talk I’ll explore a challenge for the view that recalling an object (in such a way as to support past-tensed singular thought about it) requires episodically recalling an event in which that object featured. I will then consider what an alternative, ‘non-reductive’ view of object memory might look like.