Remembering Dreams: Parasitic Reference by Minimal Traces in Memories from Non-veridical Experiences

Episodic memories are widely regarded as factive: Linguistic reports of a memory make the presupposition that the memory refers to an actually existent object and that the properties remembered of the object actually apply to it. Focusing on memories from perceptions—where factivity can indeed be assumed—the two main historical strands in the philosophy of memory, intentionalism and relationalism, disagree, amongst others, over (i) whether memory reports should be analyzed as de re or de dicto, (ii) to what type of entity agents are related when they episodically remember, and (iii) how the time gap between experience and remembering is bridged. However, what about memories from dreams or hallucinations, where factivity is violated? Here, we can still distinguish remembering from misremembering and confabulation. We show that the intentionalist as well as the relationalist faces insurmountable problems in those cases. We develop a new account according to which reference in episodic memory is parasitic on the reference relation in the primary experience—the host attitude. Accordingly, we replace de re and de dicto analyses of memory reports with a de hospite analysis. Referential parasitism overcomes the problems of intentionalism and relationalism. We argue that referential parasitism obviates the need to transmit representational content from experience to remembering, as postulated by the Causal Theory of Memory. Minimal traces without representational content suffice. Trace minimalism (Werning 2020) paired with referential parasitism provides a uniform, non-disjunctivist explanation of remembering and misremembering from veridical and non-veridical experiences.