Philosophical Perspectives on Memory and Imagination

This post is by Anja Berninger (University of Göttingen) and Íngrid Vendrell Ferran (University of Marburg). Today their post is on the edited volume Philosophical Perspectives on Memory and Imagination (Routledge 2022).

Íngrid Vendrell Ferran

Having been neglected for many years, the subjects of memory and imagination have started to gain more attention in recent philosophical debates. While there has been some interaction between philosophers working in these different fields (for publications that make significant headway towards establishing a more integrative perspective, see, for instance, Perrin and Michaelian 2017; MacPherson and Dorsch 2018; Michaelian, Debus, and Perrin 2018, and Michaelian, Perrin, and Sant’Anna 2020), we still lack a properly integrative approach to these issues.

With this volume our aim is to fill this lacuna. Our objective is to both broaden and deepen current debates on memory and imagination within the philosophy of mind. This volume explores the structure and function of memory and imagination, as well as the relation and interaction between the two states. The papers contained in the volume address a series of questions that can be summarized under the following main headings:

What are the central structural features of memory and imagination?
Are memory and imagination two clearly distinct kinds of mental states?
What are the norms that govern imagination and memory?
How do memory and imagination interact with each other and with other mental states (such as emotions)?
What roles do memory and imagination play in our lives?

The contributors to this volume have chosen a wide array of different approaches and methods to discuss the topic. Some authors draw heavily on empirical research, while others take inspiration from phenomenology or conceptual analysis. Quite a few of the papers take novel perspectives on the issues by looking at memory and imagination through the lens of other central concepts such as skills, abilities or directions of fit or by putting both in relation to other concepts such as the notion of forgetting.

Anja Berninger

The volume is structured into four main parts. The first consists of novel contributions to ontological issues regarding the nature of memory and imagination and their respective structural features. These topics are explored in chapters by Langland-Hassan, McCarroll, Barner, Michaelian and Noordhof. The second part focuses on questions of justification and perspective regarding both states.

These issues are explored in chapters by Miyazono and Tooming, Arcangeli, and Peeters, Cosentino, and Werning. The papers in the third part discuss issues regarding memory and imagination as skills or powers. These issues are explored by Kind, Hopkins and Robins. The last part explored by Vendrell Ferran, Berninger and Teroni focuses on the relation between memory, imagination, and emotion.

Each contribution to this volume contains pioneering work in examining the interrelation between memory and imagination. We hope that this volume will be of value and interest to researchers working in fields relevant to both mental states, and that this collection will serve to advance the recently inaugurated debate on memory and imagination.

Delusions in the DSM 5

This post is by Lisa Bortolotti. How has the definition of delusions changed in the DSM 5? Here are some first impressions. In the DSM-IV (Glossary) delusions were defined as follows: Delusion. A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person's culture or subculture (e.g., it is not an article of religious faith). When a false belief involves a value judgment, it is regarded as a delusion only when the judgment is so extreme as to defy credibility.

Rationalization: Why your intelligence, vigilance and expertise probably don't protect you

Today's post is by Jonathan Ellis , Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Public Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Eric Schwitzgebel , Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. This is the first in a two-part contribution on their paper "Rationalization in Moral and Philosophical thought" in Moral Inferences , eds. J. F. Bonnefon and B. Trémolière (Psychology Press, 2017). We’ve all been there. You’re arguing with someone – about politics, or a policy at work, or about whose turn it is to do the dishes – and they keep finding all kinds of self-serving justifications for their view. When one of their arguments is defeated, rather than rethinking their position they just leap to another argument, then maybe another. They’re rationalizing –coming up with convenient defenses for what they want to believe, rather than responding even-handedly to the points you're making. Yo...

A co-citation analysis of cross-disciplinarity in the empirically-informed philosophy of mind

Today's post is by Karen Yan (National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University) on her recent paper (co-authored with Chuan-Ya Liao), " A co-citation analysis of cross-disciplinarity in the empirically-informed philosophy of mind " ( Synthese 2023). Karen Yan What drives us to write this paper is our curiosity about what it means when philosophers of mind claim their works are informed by empirical evidence and how to assess this quality of empirically-informedness. Building on Knobe’s (2015) quantitative metaphilosophical analyses of empirically-informed philosophy of mind (EIPM), we investigated further how empirically-informed philosophers rely on empirical research and what metaphilosophical lessons to draw from our empirical results. We utilize scientometric tools and categorization analysis to provide an empirically reliable description of EIPM. Our methodological novelty lies in integrating the co-citation analysis tool with the conceptual resources from the philosoph...

Imperfect Cognitions

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