Bochum-Grenoble Memory Colloquium

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.

Bochum-Grenoble Memory Colloquium

Bochum-Grenoble Memory Colloquium

Johannes Mahr (Harvard University)

What is the function of episodic memory?

29.10.2020, 16:15-17:45 CET (UTC+01:00)

Online Lecture via zoom

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Zoom:

https://univ-grenoble-alpes-fr.zoom.us/j/95146807125?pwd=TWpMSDVCdVJ6cmVkVGVnUVFPZjRvUT09

  • meeting ID: 951 4680 7125
  • password: 631879

Abstract:

Accounts of episodic memory function differ according to whether they target ‘memory’ or ‘remembering’. While ‘memory’ refers to the capacity to encode, store, and retrieve information (a ‘preservative’, ‘diachronic’ activity), ‘remembering’ describes the psychological activity of generating a representation about the past in the present (a ‘generative’, ‘synchronic’ activity). Based on this distinction, I will argue that an account of episodic memory function needs to be an account of the function of ‘remembering’ rather than ‘memory’. Such an account, however, requires us to proceed from ‘form’ to ‘function’; that is, it requires us to first specify the features of the kind of representations that remembering generates before we can ask why it might do so. After providing a characterization of the representational structure of remembering I will evaluate whether the most common views of episodic memory function can account for its form. It will turn out that neither preservationism (the idea that episodic memory must be for recalling the past), nor simulationism (the ideat that episodic memory must be for imagining the future) can adequately account for the representational structure of remembering. Instead, I will propose an alternative account according to which remembering functions to stabilize human communication about the past.

Psychopathology and the ‘Scaling Up’ Problem 

Psychopathology and the ‘Scaling Up’ Problem 

Zoom Conference 

15.00-17.30 (CET), October 5-7, 2020 

This conference will focus upon the extent to which phenomenological and enactive accounts of psychopathology are, or must be, ‘representation hungry’. Whilst explicitly anti-cognitivist phenomenological and enactive accounts of psychopathology are present in the literature, very little work has been carried out on discerning the extent to which they require the positing of representation. This is somewhat surprising, because ‘representation hungry’ cognition (thought, imagery, hallucination) plays a prominent role in most psychopathologies. The aim of the conference is to fill this gap by determining whether the concept “representation” is helpful, harmful, or irrelevant to understanding (phenomenological and enactive accounts of) psychopathology. 

Participation in the conference is free, but please do e-mail Adrian Downey (a.downey@sussex.ac.uk) in order to register for the conference and so receive the Zoom Meeting ID and password. 

Speakers 

Sanneke de Haan (Tilburg University) 

Adrian Downey (Ruhr Universitӓt Bochum) 

Regina Fabry (Ruhr Universitӓt Bochum) 

Shaun Gallagher (University of Memphis) 

Annemarie Kalis (Utrecht University) 

Julian Kiverstein (University of Amsterdam) 

Further Information 

www.rub.de/philosophy/scalingup 

Organisation 

Adrian Downey and Tobias Schlicht 

Institute for Philosophy II 

Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany