José Carlos Camillo
Universidade Federal de Goiás
In his paper ‘Is memory for remembering?’, Felipe de Brigard proposes that the memory system is not primarily for accurately remembering but for constructing simulations of possible counterfactual events. I reconstruct his argument and argue that it is misleading.
De Brigard’s argument rests on two assumptions. Firstly, he employs a mechanistic notion of function, suggesting that the function of a mechanism is the behavior its parts tend to produce. Consequently, one way to assess the function of a mechanism is to examine what the mechanism does under normal circumstances and compare it to what it does under unhealthy circumstances. He provides evidence that people under normal circumstances often misremember past events, whereas people with memory-related disorders often recall events with greater accuracy, proportionally. This implies that the function of memory is not to remember accurately.
Secondly, De Brigard supports the Rational Analysis of Memory (RAM), which posits that cognitive systems optimize adaptive behavior. He argues that storing gists or schemas of past events, rather than accurate details, is more adaptive. The more adaptative is the content, the more adaptative is the behavior the organism produces based on that content.
In this talk, I develop on both assumptions to argue that the function of the memory system is to accurately store and retrieve relevant information about past events. Regarding relevant information, there is ample evidence that the human memory system is accurate in healthy circumstances and less accurate in unhealthy circumstances. RAM reinforces my argument: relevant information is better stored and better retrieved. Relevance, here, is measured by what is likely to be needed in future situations. Therefore, de Brigard was mistakenly looking for accurate information of entire events when the function of the system is to accurately remember relevant information of those events, not only gists.
Chair: Melina Bardt
Time: September 11th, 13:30 – 14:00
Location: SR 1.006
SOPhiA 2026 