The intentionality of memory

Abstract

Memory differs from both introspection and perception in scope. One can only introspect one’s own mental states and one can only perceive events in the external world. However, one can remember events in the world as well as one’s own perceptual experiences of them. An interesting phenomenological fact about memory is that those two kinds of memories come together. You can’t apparently remember a fact without apparently remember having perceived it. And you can’t apparently remember what perceiving a certain fact was like without apparently remembering the fact in question. Why is that? The project in this essay is to try to explain this by appealing to the content that memory experiences have.