Department of Philosophy, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK.
School of Psychology, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, UK.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2024 Nov 4;379(1913):20230396. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2023.0396. Epub 2024 Sep 16.
Over the course of his research, Endel Tulving offered a number of somewhat different characterizations of episodic memory. Do they indicate that he changed his mind over time as to what episodic memory is, or did his core understanding of the nature of episodic memory stay the same? In this article, we offer some support for the latter claim, and in particular for thinking that, throughout his life, Tulving took as a defining feature of episodic memory the distinctive awareness of the self in time it involves. We argue that it is easier to see the continuities rather than the discontinuities in Tulving's writings once their historical context is taken into account, where this involves both the authors who influenced his thinking, as well as the intellectual climate at the different times he was writing. We also discuss two recent bodies of work on episodic memory that take aspects of Tulving's writings as their point of departure, but try to factor out into separate ingredients what he arguably saw as a unitary phenomenon. Considering aspects of the dialectic between them and Tulving's view might shed further light on some of the motivations behind the latter.This article is part of the theme issue 'Elements of episodic memory: lessons from 40 years of research'.
在他的研究过程中，恩德尔·图尔文（Endel Tulving）对情景记忆提供了一些略有不同的描述。这是否表明他随着时间的推移改变了对情景记忆的看法，或者他对情景记忆本质的核心理解保持不变？在本文中，我们为后者提供了一些支持，特别是认为，在整个一生中，图尔文将情景记忆的独特自我意识作为其定义特征。我们认为，一旦考虑到其历史背景，包括影响他思维的作者以及他写作时的不同时代的知识氛围，就更容易看到图尔文著作中的连续性而不是不连续性。我们还讨论了最近关于情景记忆的两个研究领域，这些研究以图尔文的著作作为出发点，但试图将他认为是一个统一现象的各个方面分解为单独的成分。考虑到它们与图尔文观点之间的辩证关系的各个方面，可能会进一步阐明后者的一些动机。本文是主题为“情景记忆的要素：40 年研究的经验教训”的一部分。
