Remembering is an imaginative project

Philosophical Studies https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-024-02220-9 Remembering is an imaginative project Seth Goldwasser1 Accepted: 3 September 2024 © The Author(s) 2024 Abstract This essay defends the claim that episodic remembering is a mental action by arguing that episodic remembering and sensory- or experience-like imagining are of a kind in a way relevant for agency. Episodic remembering is a type of imaginative project that involves the agential construction of imagistic-content and that aims at (veridically) representing particular events of the personal past. Neurally intact adults under normal conditions can token experiential memories of particular events from the personal past (merely) by intending or trying to. An agent’s ability to actively remember depends not only on her being able to determine that some memory event occurs but on her ability to construct the relevant scene at will as well. I claim that the ability to guide construction with respect to imagistic-content is distinctive feature of a subset of active imagining. Episodic remembering is of a kind with that subset of active imagining by being a process of agential construction of imagistic-content, in this case, scene construction that aims at (veridically) representing the personal past. Agential scene construction in the context of remembering is the agent’s exploring her personal past as a highly circumscribed region of modal space. Keywords Episodic memory · Sensory/experiential imagining · Imaginative projects · Active imagining · Constraints 1 Introduction This essay defends the claim that episodic remembering is a mental action by arguing that episodic remembering and sensory- or experience-like imagining are of a kind in a way relevant for agency. Episodic remembering is a type of imaginative project that involves the agential construction of imagistic-content and that aims at (veridically) representing particular events of the personal past. Neurally intact adults under normal conditions can token experiential memories of particular * Seth Goldwasser 1 Department of Philosophy, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA Vol.:(0123456789) S. Goldwasser events from the personal past (merely) by intending or trying to. An agent’s ability to actively remember depends not only on her being able to determine that some memory event occurs but on her ability to construct the relevant scene at will as well. I claim that the ability to guide construction with respect to imagistic-content is a distinctive feature of a subset of active imagining. Episodic remembering is of a kind with that subset of active imagining by being a process of agential construction of imagistic-content, in this case, scene construction that aims at (veridically) representing the personal past. Agential scene construction in the context of remembering is the agent’s exploring her personal past as a highly circumscribed region of modal space. My main argument starts with an appeal to constraints. Constraints are limits or rules imposed on processes or activities. Some constraints are enforced ultimately in virtue of an agent’s intending to perform some action—her intention sets limits on what is to be done. Both imagining and remembering are subject to agentially-mediated constraints of this sort. More specifically, both intentional imagery-involving imagining and intentional episodic recall are subject to the same kinds of agentiallymediated constraints on the construction of content appropriate to the execution of the agent’s intention. Such constraints are constitutive of the category of imaginative projects (see Dorsch, 2012, 46–47, 145ff.). In which case, the agent’s episodic remembering is an imaginative project. To argue that remembering and imagining are subject to the same agentiallymediated constraints, I appeal to the agent’s ability to determine what it is she’s doing and, to some extent, what her doing it consists in. I claim that these abilities comprise a characteristic feature of intentional agency. In intentionally raising her arm, the agent not only determines that her arm goes up but also what her movement consists in, namely, the relevant properties of its trajectory. I argue that, of the types of mental state that contain imagistic-content, only sensory or experiential imagining is determinable by the agent both with respect to its occurrence and with respect to what that occurrence consists in, namely, the specific imagistic-content it has. In intentionally imagining a dancing banana, the agent not only determines that she imagines a dancing banana but also what her imagining it consists in—conjuring imagery as of a banana that is dancing. Episodic memory’s trading in imagistic-content and being determinable in the way intentional action is together suggest a continuity with experiential imagining. When an agent successfully intentionally remembers her last birthday party, she determines that she remembers that party and what her remembering it consists in, namely, constructing imagery that constitutes the retrieval of experiences she had of her last birthday party. She might choose, say, to focus on some details rather than others, to construct imagery of the events in the order in which they occurred or in some other order, to take on an observer perspective of herself blowing out the candles, and so on. Of course, the agent’s success in remembering will depend on her mnemic activity working within certain constraints whose imposition is partly definitional of the intentional action itself. Perhaps most important is the constraint that the imagery she constructs is really that of her experience of her last birthday party. After all, she cannot remember anything she likes. Yet, when intentionally remembering, this Remembering is an imaginative project constraint is indirectly self-imposed by her intention along with the directly selfimposed constraint that she engage in an attempt to remember. Such indirectly selfimposed constraints are likewise present when an agent intentionally imagines, say, what (really) would have happened had she thrown a rock at a window or what (really) will happen if she throws that rock at that window now. Intentionally remembering involves the selection of appropriate (veridical) content by the remembering agent. Its being so controllable suggests that the agent’s remembering is no different than her engaging in imaginative projects like episodic counterfactual and hypothetical thought. When successful, all three are agency-involving cognitive processes of constructing imagery in compliance with the relevant constraints and appropriate to their respective aims. All three are ways of actively imagining. Here’s the essay’s structure: §1 sets out two commitments that come with the claim that remembering is a mental action. §2 introduces the notion of constraints and applies the notion to constraints imposed on memory and imagination. §3 accounts for the imposit (...truncated)