Remembering from the Outside: Personal Memory and the Perspectival Mind

When recalling events that one personally experienced, one often visualises the remembered scene as one originally saw it: from an internal visual perspective. Sometimes, however, one sees oneself in the remembered scene: from an external 'observer perspective'. In such cases one remembers from-the-outside. This book is about such memories. Remembering from-the-outside is a common yet curious case of personal memory: one views oneself from a perspective one seemingly could not have had at the time of the original event. How can past events be recalled from a detached perspective? How is it that the self is observed? And how can we account for the self-presence of such memories? Indeed, can there be genuine memories recalled from-the-outside? If memory preserves past perceptual content then how can one see oneself from-the-outside in memory? This book disentangles the puzzles posed by remembering from-the-outside. The book develops a dual-faceted approach for thinking about memory, which acknowledges constructive and reconstructive processes at encoding and at retrieval, and it uses this approach to defend the possibility of genuine memories being recalled from-the-outside. In so doing it also elucidates the nature of such memories and sheds light on the nature of personal memory. The book argues that field and observer perspectives are different ways of thinking about a particular past event. Further, by exploring the ways we have of getting outside of ourselves in memory and other cognitive domains, the book sheds light on the nature of our perspectival minds.

Table of Contents:
Preface Acknowledgements 1. Remembering From-the-Outside: An Introduction 2. Being Faithful to the Past 3. Getting Outside of Ourselves 4. Seeing Oneself From-the-Outside: Point of View in Imagery 5. The Plurality of Perspectives 6. Modes of Presentation in Personal Memory 7. Personal Memory and the Perspectival Mind References Index

About the Author :
Christopher McCarroll is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Philosophy of Memory, University of Grenoble-Alpes.

Review :
"Recommended." -- CHOICE "...the book provides a comprehensive treatment of the subject at hand. I would recommend the book to serious students of memory with an interest in philosophy of mind." -- Lokendra Shastri, International Computer Science Institute, Berkeley, Metascience "I really can't recommend this book enough. As an interdisciplinary researcher, and as someone who is interested in philosophical and scientific questions about the nature of memory and remembering, McCarroll's book has it all: it offers a thorough and illuminating review of the philosophy and the psychology of observer memories, it adumbrates the phenomenon of remembering from the outside with autobiographical and fictional examples, and it presents clearly articulated and thoroughly developed arguments in favor of the claim that observer memories can be genuine, veridical, and definitely worth thinking about." -- Felipe De Brigard, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews