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The Philosophy of Daniel Dennett

Memory and the intentional stance

Publication ,  Chapter
De Brigard, F
February 15, 2018

Despite Dennett's vast scholarship, he seemed to only have directly addressed the topic of memory in a relatively unknown coauthored article published in a somewhat obscure volume. The current chapter attempts to reconstruct the ideas from this old article, and argues that it offers a viable and coherent view of episodic memory with substantial empirical support. Specifically, the chapter uncovers three empirically supported theses. A functional thesis, according to which our memory system not only processes information about past events but also uses this information to construct useful anticipations of possible future events. A computational thesis, according to which statistical regularities, along with individual limitations and goals, probabilistically constrain the search space examined during memory retrieval. And a metaphysical thesis, according to which memories do not exist as subpersonal-level brain structures encoding particular intentional contents but rather as personal-level psychological phenomena only accessible from the intentional stance.

Duke Scholars

DOI

ISBN

9780199367511

Publication Date

February 15, 2018

Start / End Page

62 / 91
 

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De Brigard, F. (2018). Memory and the intentional stance. In The Philosophy of Daniel Dennett (pp. 62–91). https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199367511.003.0005
De Brigard, F. “Memory and the intentional stance.” In The Philosophy of Daniel Dennett, 62–91, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199367511.003.0005.
De Brigard F. Memory and the intentional stance. In: The Philosophy of Daniel Dennett. 2018. p. 62–91.
De Brigard, F. “Memory and the intentional stance.” The Philosophy of Daniel Dennett, 2018, pp. 62–91. Scopus, doi:10.1093/oso/9780199367511.003.0005.
De Brigard F. Memory and the intentional stance. The Philosophy of Daniel Dennett. 2018. p. 62–91.
Journal cover image

DOI

ISBN

9780199367511

Publication Date

February 15, 2018

Start / End Page

62 / 91