A remembers a particular event or thing f if and only if

conditions:
Points of View 179
A remembers a particular event or thing f if and only if
i. within certain limits of accuracy he represents f as having been encountered
in the past;
ii. if f was public, he observed f; if f was private, then it was “his”;
iii. his past experience of f was (causally) operative in producing a state
or succession of states that ultimately produced his representation of f.
(Martin and Deutscher 1966, 166)
I take this to be a relatively uncontroversial theory of memory. Conditions
(i) to (iii) can be satisfied whether or not f is located by A within a temporal
frame of reference associated with the particular orientation toward
the past. If A is capable only of phasal orientation toward the past, then
it follows, of course, that he is not capable of representing the temporal
difference between f in temporal phase P and f9 in temporal phase P9,
and hence the particular times at which they occur. But if A currently
represents f and his current representation is causally derived from his
experience of f, then, given that f is a particular event occurring at a
particular time, it follows from conditions (i) to (iii) that A is enjoying a
memory of a particular event that occurred at a particular time.
It might be objected, though, that A is not properly described as representing
f in the situation described. Let us assume that two particular
events f and f9 within temporal cycles P and P9 are phenomenologically
indistinguishable for A. If this were the case, then a subject would only
be able to distinguish them by referring them to different points in a single
temporal series that includes both P and P9, and this, ex hypothesi, is
something that A cannot do. In such a case, the objection runs, A cannot
be properly described as representing f rather than f9, and hence would
not satisfy condition (i). The point of the causal theory, however, is that
whether A is representing f or f9 is determined by the causal history of
A’s current representation. It is, of course, perfectly possible that there is
no single determinate causal history, and that A is really representing a
generic f-type event or object in a manner causally traceable to the conjunction
of its experiences of f, f9, f0, . . . . But itwould be a mistake to
think that this is all that A can properly be described as doing. Memory
is best analyzed as a form of perception, and it cannot generally be a
requirement upon perceiving a particular f that one be able to distinguish
that f from any other f-type event or object that might have been causally
responsible for one’s current perception.
180 Chapter 7
This is a good moment to comment on some potential ambiguities in
the concept of episodic memory. Campbell defines ‘episodic memory’ so
that it counts as an instance of the particular orientation: “I will be interpreting
‘episodic memory’ to mean memory of a past happening conceived
as having a particular past time at which it took place” (Campbell
1994, 40). I have no objection to this stipulation. But it is important to
bear in mind that many psychologists operate with a simple binary
distinction between memory of things happening and memory for facts
and skills (semantic and procedural memory). If memory is classified
in this binary way, then accepting Campbell’s definition will have the
consequence that all memories of things happening will count as instances
of particular orientation toward the past. This is an unwelcome
conclusion, because it makes analytically true a claim that is controversial
and in any case (as I have just argued) false. It would be helpful to enrich
the vocabulary here by distinguishing the class of autobiographical memories
within the more inclusive class of episodic memories.5 Autobiographical
memories are those memories of particular events that are
temporally indexed so that they fit within a linear, autobiographical frame
of reference.
Let me take stock. I have used the notion of a temporally extended
point of view to characterize the structure of experience in a creature
capable of making a rudimentary distinction between its experiences and
what those experiences are experiences of. When we looked more deeply
at this idea, it emerged that the capacity to make such a distinction is
available only to creatures who are capable of exercising certain basic
recognitional abilities: the interlocking abilities to recognize places and
features. Moreover, these recognitional abilities must involve the exercise
of explicit or conscious memory. Putting the matter like this, however,
brings out into the open two important problems that need to be confronted.
The first is a practical problem. It is relatively straightforward to
establish the presence of explicit or conscious memory in language-using
subjects, since their subjective reports are usually a reliable source. But
when we are dealing with nonlinguistic animals, all we have to go on are
observable facts about differential responses to stimuli as a function of
previous exposure. How can we decide whether to explain these responses
in terms of implicit or explicit memory? The second problem is
Points of View 181
theoretical, and more radical. It emerges because we are looking for
cognitive abilities that it makes sense to ascribe to non-concept-using
creatures, like young infants and many animals. But many philosophers
are skeptical about the very possibility of nonconceptual recognitional
abilities. At the very least, then, this skepticism must be set to rest.
To begin with the skeptical worry, one reason for thinking that the notion
of nonconceptual recognition does not make sense is the thought that
recognition is essentially an activity of classification that involves relating
objects of experience under concepts. There is, I think, a simple reply to
this. If there were no nonconceptual recognition, then it would be impossible
to see how any concepts could ever be acquired. Whatever detailed
theory of concept acquisition we adopt, it is obviously true that the acquisition
of observational and perceptual concepts takes place on the basis
of perceived resemblances between items.6 But there can be no perceived
resemblances without basic recognitional abilities. Recognition is the
most fundamental step in categorization and classification, and it is correspondingly
absurd to make it depend on more sophisticated cognitive
abilities.7 But in contrast to the very clear sense we have of what it is to
classify things under concepts, we have very little understanding of what
nonconceptual recognition might consist in at the level of conscious or
explicit phenomenal experience (i.e., when we are dealing with recognitional
abilities that cannot be understood solely in terms of nonconscious
information processing). There are three points that it is worth making in
this context.
First, it is a mistake to hold that there can be no organized experience
without the experience of conceptually classifiable particulars. On the
contrary, we have already looked at two ways in which experience can be
organized without the application of concepts. The first emerged in my
first discussion of nonconceptual content in chapter 3, where I noted that
infants seem to be capable of parsing their experience into bounded segments
that support certain basic expectations. This is a clear example of
experience being organized without the application of concepts. Comparable
types of organization emerged earlier in this section with featureplacing
modes of thought. Of course, neither of these types of experience
can count as experience of particular items, if ‘particular items’ is read to
mean ‘enduring material objects’, but that would be a question-begging
reading.