Title: Memories as Data
Wednesday, 19 February at 1:30pm
Location: AC04-303

Abstract: Evidence, in ordinary English, denotes a kind of object: something you could put in a box, or at least on a hard-drive. But recent epistemologists prefer to think of evidence as part of a thinker’s mental state, her knowledge, beliefs, or the way things appear to her. I'll argue in favor of the objectual view, by showing that in the case of memory, the very features thought to be weaknesses of this conception are in fact strengths. Just as objects are shared between two people, the causal relationship we have to our memory allows us to share access to the very same memory over time. By drawing a parallel with the use of legacy data in science, I show how one kind of memory success is only explicable if we think of memories as evidential (mental) objects.