An Action-First Account of Episodic Memory

Building off of a recent account of intentionality, the action-forward framework, we introduce a novel account of episodic memory and defend its plausibility as a how-possibly account of such memory. According to our account, episodic remembering consists in acts of performative retelling of the remembering subject’s initial experience of an event where such retelling activates connected capacities for perceptual recognition of the event and its constituents. When such acts are overt, the remembering subject expresses their memory, say, verbally, imagistically, through performance, etc. where doing so reactivates those recognitional capacities. When such acts are covert, the remembering subject merely activates capacities for such expressions without going on to overtly express where doing so reactivates the relevant recognitional capacities. In §2, we introduce two desiderata on accounts of episodic memory. In §3, we give an overview of the action-forward framework for intentionality. In §4, we introduce our account of episodic memory. In §5, we show how the account satisfies the desiderata. We conclude by saying how the account differs from standard accounts in the literature while retaining what we take to be their insights.