Events

Epistemically transformative experiences are experiences that bring about epistemic transformation. One cannot know, or run a mental simulation of, what it would be like to have those experiences before undergoing them. Existing discussions of transformative experiences mostly centre on acquiring new identities (e.g., becoming a parent) or new sensory capacities (e.g., seeing colours). By contrast, the standard view holds that memory cannot bring about epistemically transformative experiences: the remembered past experience e itself is (no longer) epistemically transformative for you, nor is the experience of remembering e. This view is supported by several seemingly plausible reasons: first, when undergoing an experience e that is later remembered, one already knows what e is like; second, an alleged function of episodic memory is to store what-it-is-like knowledge of past experiences; third, episodic memory of e is itself regarded as a form of mental simulation of e. This paper challenges the standard view. I illustrate that (1) the process of remembering itself are sometimes epistemically transformative, and (2) some remembered experiences are epistemically transformative. The upshot is that we should reexamine our understanding of epistemic transformation, as well as the function, the phenomenology, and the epistemic generativity of episodic memory.