Kursinformation

Ever since John Locke famously equated personal identity with memory have philosophers investigated the intimate relation between memory and the self. In recent years, these investigations have been fruitfully informed by the ever-increasing experimental data on memory gathered by cognitive scientists. For example, evidence of perspective switching in episodic remembering, the role of lifelogging technologies on one's autobiography, and the postulation of false memories all point towards the need to radically shift the way we think about our selves, past, present and future. Can we still consider ourselves to be stable entities existing throughout time? Is it true that who we are depends on how we remember? Or is it how we cast ourselves into an ever-changing immediate future in varying contexts?

Is memory really a storage of past experiences, or is more akin to a predictive process depending our our projected present and future self and amounting to a construction of a past scenario? Moreover, empirical findings have prompted a heated debate on the role of imagined future scenarios on the sense of who we are and the related issue of whether and how they can foster, and in what circumstances, our capacity to resist temptation and exercise self-control.

The seminar will provide an overview of the current controversies on memory and the self, addressing also their relation to discussions on future foresight and self-control. It starts by examining a traditional view of memory as constitutive for personal identity. We will then move on to contemporary accounts of memory and self that draw on recent research on cognitive science. Among these is the finding that people tend to switch from a first-person (or field perspective) to a third-person (or observer perspective), which has informed discussions on self-control and mental time travel. Certain ethical implications arise out of the consideration that persons sometimes heavily depend on evocative objects for recalling their personal past, or that imagined episodes can supposedly be implanted in their autobiography. Finally, we will turn to questions concerning the distinct phenomenology of memory and the self.

Students will have the opportunity to link up with our DFG research group “Constructing Scenarios of the Past” as well as with our DFG Research Training Group “Situated Cognition”.

Aside from active participation, participants will be expected to give a presentation in English. Assistance regarding the English language will be provided upon request.