Conceptual Disagreements in the Psychology of Memory:
Reverse Engineering “Autobiographical Memory”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51359/2357-9986.2025.266961Keywords:
autobiographical memory, episodic memory, conceptual engineering, reverse engineering, conceptual genealogyAbstract
Philosophical work is usually dependent on mutual conceptual understanding. However, it is common to have disagreements about the precise meaning of certain concepts. Therefore, philosophical work on the clarification of concepts can be useful to avoid terminological confusion. Here I intend to give a first step in the direction of a clarification of the concept of “autobiographical memory” by utilizing the method of “reverse engineering” or “conceptual genealogy” (THOMASSON, 2020). This method reveals that there is a disagreement in the psychological literature regarding the concept of “autobiographical memory”. More specifically, I show that this disagreement stems from differences in content within the conceptions of “autobiographical memory” used by Tulving and Conway. These differences can be spelled out in terms of a difference in phenomenology, type of self-reference, and type of content. Here I take as an underlying notion that clarifying these differences is important because it can help us avoid terminological and conceptual confusion.
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