<p>In a recent paper, Kristina Liefke argues that linguistic data about the verbs ‘remember’ and ‘imagine’, and the respective memory and imagination reports they can be used to form, supports the view in the philosophy of memory known as ‘continuism,’ i.e., the claim that episodic remembering is a kind of imagining, differing from it at most in non-fundamental ways, such as temporal orientation, or merely in degree. Liefke’s argument is predicated upon a method positing that insights into the nature of mental attitudes denoted by these verbs can be gleaned through analyzing their linguistic profiles. In this paper, I argue that, even if we grant Liefke this approach, her argument for continuism ultimately fails. I identify two major flaws. First, I demonstrate that the method she employs to generate certain truth-conditional data, which are central to her argument, begs the question against numerous types of her discontinuist adversaries. Furthermore, I show also that Liefke fails to convincingly dismiss certain data that undermine her continuist conclusion.</p>

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Do Linguistic Data Really Support Continuism about Remembering and Imagining?

  • Jakub Rudnicki

摘要

In a recent paper, Kristina Liefke argues that linguistic data about the verbs ‘remember’ and ‘imagine’, and the respective memory and imagination reports they can be used to form, supports the view in the philosophy of memory known as ‘continuism,’ i.e., the claim that episodic remembering is a kind of imagining, differing from it at most in non-fundamental ways, such as temporal orientation, or merely in degree. Liefke’s argument is predicated upon a method positing that insights into the nature of mental attitudes denoted by these verbs can be gleaned through analyzing their linguistic profiles. In this paper, I argue that, even if we grant Liefke this approach, her argument for continuism ultimately fails. I identify two major flaws. First, I demonstrate that the method she employs to generate certain truth-conditional data, which are central to her argument, begs the question against numerous types of her discontinuist adversaries. Furthermore, I show also that Liefke fails to convincingly dismiss certain data that undermine her continuist conclusion.