Facts and what we remember

Rowan

A rather new branch of philosophy is experimental philosophy. It gathers experimental data in order to test fundamental philosophical questions and suppositions, usually by interviewing non-philosophers in an experimental setting. Actually “experimental philosophy” is a contradiction, for traditionally philosophy is seen as a kind of a priori reasoning – “armchair philosophy” – but experimental philosophy is just a reaction to the idea that truths can be found only by arguing from intuitions. One problem with this is that what is intuitively true for some need not to be so for others. Moreover, philosophers can disagree on the right argumentation leading to a certain conclusion. Etc. Then experimental testing can help to find out what is right and what isn’t.
Although experimental philosophy has forerunners in the sense that late mediaeval / early modern natural philosophy can be seen so, present-day experimental philosophy began around 2000, especially within analytical philosophy. Leading experimental philosophers are Joshua Knobe and Shaun Nichols. In several blogs I have discussed already some results from experimental philosophy. In this blog I want to discuss results from an article by the Lithuanian philosopher Vilius Dranseika about a philosophical intuition on memory. (see Source)
A common Claim among philosophers is (although not all philosophers say so) “that one can be truly said to ‘remember’ some event only if that person originally experienced or observed that event.” (p. 175). It is true that people can be blamed for saying that they remembered to be present at an event or that they took part in it, if it is clear that they weren’t there. Nevertheless, as an experimental study by Dranseika showed, Claim is too strict. For investigating its truth, he distinguished three kinds of memories: true memories (T), quasi-memories (Q) and artificial memories (A). To make things short, Q is for example a dream of something you never experienced but after the dream you think you did. A is for example a chip with someone else’s memories put in your brain. In order to check whether non-philosophers will consider cases of quasi-remembering and artificial memories as cases of remembering Dranseika presented vignettes with variations for T, A and Q to test persons. By way illustration, here is such a vignette:
Imagine it is 2086. Scientists have invented a technology that allows one [to install human memories (for Q and T) / to create artificial memories and to install such memories (for A)] into biological storage devices created for this purpose. This technology also allows one to transfer such memories into the brains of other people. A person, into whose brain such [other people’s (for Q and T) / artificial (for A)] memories are transferred, cannot distinguish such transferred memories from their own memories. Also, no available technologies can distinguish such memories from others. This technology at the moment is experimental and secret, but it is already sometimes used as an educational tool, since it provides an easy way to transfer knowledge that was memorized by another person. It is also sometimes used as a means to improve psychological wellbeing by transferring pleasant [memories of other people (for Q and T) / artificial memories (for A)]
Imagine now that Albertas is a teenager who had a lot of [other people’s (for Q and T) / artificial (for A)] memories transferred into his brain in his childhood. Albertas does not know and has no reason whatsoever to suspect that such memory transfer was performed on him. [Not all his memories, however, are transferred memories of other people. Some of his memories are from the period before memory transfer. (only in T)] One of [the transferred (for Q and A) / such original (for T)] memories is about tasting rowan-berries in childhood. When someone asks Albertas whether he has ever tasted rowan-berries, Albertas replies with confidence: “Yes, I clearly remember eating rowan-berries when I was a child.” (pp. 178-9)
Test persons got vignettes either for the quasi-memory case, or for the artificial memory case or for the true memory case. After having read them, they were asked two questions: “Do you agree that Albertas remembers that he has tasted rowan-berries when he was a child?”; the second question reads “knows” instead of “remembers”. They had to answer on a Likert scale. The result was that the test persons were willing to say that the agent “remembers” both in case of artificial memory and of quasi-memory. This is contrary to Claim, for the artificial and quasi memories in the vignettes were not based on what Albertas truly remembered!
In order to avoid the science fiction scenario in the test just presented, Dranseika made a new vignette and did a new test but for misidentified dreams (one thinks to have experienced a certain event, but in fact had only dreamed it), again with the same result, in this case that the test persons tended to agree that misidentified dreams were memories.
Dranseika makes yet a few refinements in his test, but they do not substantially change his results. So the upshot is (following Dranseika): Claim is not an essential feature of our ordinary use of “remembering” and “having a memory of”. We sometimes say “s/he remembers” while actually s/he doesn’t. We know s/he doesn’t, but we don’t see it as a problem. In view of other studies in the field of experimental philosophy (and not only there) once again there is reason to be skeptical about philosophical intuitions: Philosophers often think things are intuitively the way they claim, but once tested it appears to be nothing more than an opinion among other opinions. 

Source
Vilius Dranseika, “False memories and quasi-memories are memories”, in Tania Lombrozo, Joshua Knobe and Shaun Nichols (eds.), Studies in Experimental Philosophy, Vol. 3. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020; pp. 175-188. I have extensively quoted from this article. A preliminary version can be found here.