Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-v5vhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-17T02:50:09.116Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What Counts as a Memory? Definitions, Hypotheses, and “Kinding in Progress”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2022

David Colaço
David Colaço*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany
*
Email: djc60@pitt.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper accounts for broad definitions of memory, which extend to paradigmatic memory phenomena, like episodic memory in humans, and phenomena in worms and sea snails. These definitions may seem too broad, suggesting that they extend to phenomena that don’t count as memory or illustrate that memory is not a natural kind. However, these responses fail to consider a definition as a hypothesis. As opposed to construing definitions as expressing memory’s properties, a definition as a hypothesis is the basis to test inferences about phenomena. A definition as a hypothesis is valuable when the “kinding” of phenomena is ongoing.

Type
Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 89 , Issue 1 , January 2022 , pp. 89 - 106
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

To contact the author, please write to: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1, D-80539 München; email: djc60@pitt.edu.

†

Thanks to John Bickle, Eric Hochstein, Edouard Machery, Sarah Robins, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. This paper was presented at York University’s “Natural Kinds in Cognitive Science” workshop as well as “Issues in Philosophy of Memory 2” at Université Grenoble Alps. Thank you to those who attended these presentations.

References

Allen, Colin. 2017. “On (not) Defining Cognition.” Synthese 194:4233–249.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, John Robert. 1990. The Adaptive Character of Thought. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Asok, Arun, Félix, Leroy, Rayman, Joseph B., and Kandel, Eric R.. 2019. “Molecular Mechanisms of the Memory Trace.” Trends in Neurosciences 42:14–22.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baluška, František, and Michael, Levin. 2016. “On Having no Head: Cognition Throughout Biological Systems.” Frontiers in Psychology 7:902.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bédécarrats, Alexis, Shanping, Chen, Kaycey, Pearce, Diancai, Cai, and Glanzman, David L.. 2018. “RNA from Trained Aplysia Can Induce an Epigenetic Engram for Long-term Sensitization in Untrained Aplysia.” eNeuro 5(3):e0038-18.2018 1–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bich, Leonardo, and Sara, Green. 2018. “Is Defining Life Pointless? Operational Definitions at the Frontiers of Biology.” Synthese 195:3919–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bickle, John. 2003. Philosophy and Neuroscience: A Ruthlessly Reductive Account. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brigandt, Ingo. 2003. “Species Pluralism Does Not Imply Species Eliminativism.” Philosophy of Science 70:1305–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, Richard. 1991. “Realism, Anti-foundationalism and the Enthusiasm for Natural Kinds.” Philosophical Studies 61:127–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carney, Rosalind. 2018. “An Emerging Role for RNA in a Memory-like Behavioral Effect in Aplysia.” eNeuro 5(3):e0193-18.2018 1–2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, Wei, and Erin, Schuman. 2016. “Circular RNAs in Brain and Other Tissues: a Functional Enigma.” Trends in Neurosciences 39:597–604.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cleland, Carol. 2012. “Life Without Definitions.” Synthese 185:125–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colaço, David. 2018. “Rip It Up and Start Again: The Rejection of a Characterization of a Phenomenon.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 72:32–40.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Colaço, David. 2020. “Recharacterizing Scientific Phenomena.” European Journal for Philosophy of Science 10:1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Brigard, Felipe. 2014. “The Nature of Memory Traces.” Philosophy Compass 9:402–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deochand, Neil, Mack, Costello, and Michelle, Deochand. 2018. “Behavioral Research with Planaria.” Perspectives on Behavior Science 41:447–64.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dudai, Yadin. 2007. “Memory: It’s All About Representations.” Science of Memory: Concepts 13–16.Google Scholar
Feest, Uljana. 2010. “Concepts as Tools in the Experimental Generation of Knowledge in Cognitive Neuropsychology.” Spontaneous Generations: A Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science 4:173–90.Google Scholar
Figdor, Carrie. 2018. Pieces of Mind: The Proper Domain of Psychological Predicates. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Griffiths, Pail. 2004. “Emotions as Natural and Normative Kinds.” Philosophy of Science 71:901–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Havstad, Joyce. 2018. “Messy Chemical Kinds.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 69:719–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hochstein, Eric. 2016. “Categorizing the Mental.” The Philosophical Quarterly 66:745–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Josselyn, Sheena A., Stefan, Köhler, and Frankland, Paul W.. 2017. “Heroes of the engram.” Journal of Neuroscience 37:4647–57.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Josselyn, Sheena A., and Tonegawa, Susumu. 2020. “Memory Engrams: Recalling the Past and Imagining the Future.” Science 367:(6473).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kandel, Eric R. 2009. “The Biology of Memory: a Forty-year Perspective.” Journal of Neuroscience 29:12748–756.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kendig, Catherine, ed. 2016. Natural Kinds and Classification in Scientific Practice. Routledge.Google Scholar
Khalidi, Muhammad Ali. 2018. “Natural Kinds as Nodes in Causal Networks.” Synthese 195:1379–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langille, Jesse J., and Gallistel, Charles R.. 2020. “Locating the Engram: Should we Look for Plastic Synapses or Information-storing Molecules?” Neurobiology of Learning and Memory 169:107164.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Levin, Michael, and Martyniuk, Christopher J.. 2018. “The Bioelectric Code: An Ancient Computational Medium for Dynamic Control of Growth and Form.” Biosystems 164:76–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Machery, Edouard. 2009. Doing without concepts. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Machery, Edouard. 2012. “Why I Stopped Worrying about the Definition of Life … and Why You Should as Well.” Synthese 185:145–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McConnell, James. 1962. “Memory Transfer via Cannibalism in Planaria.” J. Neuropsychiat 3:1–42.Google Scholar
McConnell, James, Allan, Jacobson, and Daniel, Kimble. 1959. “The Effects of Regeneration upon Retention of a Conditioned Response in the Planarian.” Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology 52:1.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Menary, Richard. 2010. “Introduction to the Special Issue on 4E Cognition.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 9:459–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mercer, Tim R., Dinger, Marcel E., Jean, Mariani, Kosik, Kenneth S., Mehler, Mark F., and Mattick, John S.. 2018. “Noncoding RNAs in Long-term Memory Formation.” The Neuroscientist 14:434–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michaelian, Kourken. 2010. “Is Memory a Natural Kind?” Memory Studies 4:170–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Millikan, Ruth. 2000. On Clear and Confused Ideas: An Essay about Substance Concepts. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, Rebecca S., Rachel, Kaletsky, and Murphy, Coleen T.. 2019. “Piwi/PRG-1 Argonaute and TGF-β Mediate Transgenerational Learned Pathogenic Avoidance.” Cell 177:1827–41.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pezzulo, Giovanni, and Michael, Levin. 2015. “Re-membering the body: applications of computational neuroscience to the top-down control of regeneration of limbs and other complex organs.” Integrative Biology 7:1487–1517.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Posner, Rachel, Itai Antoine, Toker, Olga, Antonova, Ekaterina, Star, Sarit, Anava, Eran, Azmon, Michael, Hendricks, Shahar, Bracha, Hila, Gingold, and Oded, Rechavi. 2019. “Neuronal Small RNAs Control Behavior Transgenerationally.” Cell 177:1814–26.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Putnam, Hillary. 1973. “Meaning and Reference.” The Journal of Philosophy 70:699–711.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rupert, Robert. 2004. “Challenges to the Hypothesis of Extended Cognition.” The Journal of Philosophy 101:389–428.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rupert, Robert. 2013. “Memory, Natural Kinds, and Cognitive Extension; or, Martians Don’t Remember, and Cognitive Science is not about Cognition.” Review of Philosophy and Psychology 4:25–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schacter, Daniel. 2007. “Memory: Delineating the Core.” Science of Memory: Concepts.Google Scholar
Shannon, Claude. 1956. “The Bandwagon.” IRE Transactions on Information Theory 2:3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shomrat, Tal, and Michael, Levin. 2013. “An Automated Training Paradigm Reveals Long-term Memory in Planarians and its Persistence through Head Regeneration.” Journal of Experimental Biology 216:3799–810.Google ScholarPubMed
Slater, Matthew. 2014. “Natural Kindness.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66:375–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Squire, Larry. 1987. Memory and Brain. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Squire, Larry. 2004. “Memory Systems of the Brain: A Brief History and Current Perspective.” Neurobiology of Learning and Memory 82:171–77.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Squire, Larry. 2007. “Memory systems: A biological concept.” Science of Memory: Concepts 339–43.Google Scholar
Thompson, Robert, and James, McConnell. 1955. “Classical conditioning in the planarian, Dugesia dorotocephala.” Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology 48:65.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tulving, Endel. 1985. “How many memory systems are there?” American Psychologist 40:385.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zlotnik, Gregorio, and Aaron, Vansintjan. 2019. “Memory: An extended definition.” Frontiers in Psychology 10:2523.CrossRefGoogle Scholar