Abstract
Though De Brigard is generally classified as a simulationist, the relationship of his view to the various theories that have emerged in the simulationist-causalist debate has so far been unclear. He himself seems to think that he has now made that relationship clear: he is a simulationist, but the form of simulationism that he defends “dissolves the conflict” between simulationism and causalism. In this paper, we argue, in response to his recent book and to a recent paper that further develops some of the ideas proposed therein, first, that the view that De Brigard defends does not in fact dissolve the conflict between simulationism and causalism and, second, that he in fact has yet to take a clear stand with respect to the claim that distinguishes simulationism from causalism. While our focus throughout is on De Brigard, our discussion sheds light on the nature of the relationship between simulationism and causalism in general, reveals that certain causalists have, like De Brigard, failed to take a clear stand with respect to the claim that distinguishes simulationism from causalism, and raises more general issues about the nature and future of the simulationist-causalist debate.
References
Andonovski, N. (2018). Is episodic memory a natural kind? Essays in Philosophy, 19(2), 178–195. https://doi.org/10.7710/1526-0569.1609
Andonovski, N. (2020). Singularism about episodic memory. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 11(2), 335–365. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-020-00464-y
Andonovski, N., & Michaelian, K. (2024). Naturalism and simulationism in the philosophy of memory. In A. Hossein Khani, G. Kemp, H. S. Rezaei, & H. Amiriara (Eds.), Naturalism and its challenges (pp. 252–273). Routledge.
Bernecker, S. (2010). Memory: A philosophical study. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199577569.001.0001
Cheng, S., & Werning, M. (2016). What is episodic memory if it is a natural kind? Synthese, 193(5), 1345–1385.
De Brigard, F. (2014). Is memory for remembering? Recollection as a form of episodic hypothetical thinking. Synthese, 191(2), 155–185. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-013-0247-7
De Brigard, F. (2017). Memory and imagination. In S. Bernecker & K. Michaelian (Eds.), The routledge handbook of philosophy of memory (pp. 127–140). Routledge.
De Brigard, F. (2020). The explanatory indispensability of memory traces. The Harvard Review of Philosophy, 27, 23–47. https://doi.org/10.5840/harvardreview202072328
De Brigard, F. (2024). Memory and remembering (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108955447
De Brigard, F. (forthcoming). Simulationism and memory traces. In S. Aronowitz & L. Nadel (Eds.), Space, time, and memory. Oxford University Press.
Fernández, J. (2019). Memory: A self-referential account. In Estudios de Filosofı́a (pp. 237–243). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.ef.n64a13
Langland-Hassan, P. (2022). Propping up the causal theory. Synthese, 200(2), 95. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03635-9
Langland-Hassan, P. (2023). Remembering, imagining, and memory traces: Toward a continuist causal theory. In A. Sant’Anna, C. J. McCarroll, & K. Michaelian (Eds.), Current controversies in philosophy of memory (pp. 19–37). Routledge.
Martin, C. B., & Deutscher, M. (1966). Remembering. The Philosophical Review, 75(2), 161–196. https://doi.org/10.2307/2183082
McCarroll, C. (2018). Remembering from the outside: Personal memory and the perspectival mind. Oxford University Press.
McCarroll, C., Michaelian, K., & Nanay, B. (2024). Explanatory contextualism about episodic memory: Towards a diagnosis of the causalist-simulationist debate. Erkenntnis, 89, 2273–2301.
Ménager, D. H., Choi, D., & Robins, S. K. (2022). A hybrid theory of event memory. Minds and Machines, 32(2), 365–394. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-021-09578-3
Michaelian, K. (2011). Generative memory. Philosophical Psychology, 24(3), 323–342. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2011.559623
Michaelian, K. (2016). Mental time travel: Episodic memory and our knowledge of the personal past. MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10591.001.0001
Michaelian, K. (2023). If remembering is imagining, then what is forgetting? In A. Berninger & Í. Vendrell-Ferran (Eds.), Philosophical perspectives on memory and imagination. Routledge.
Michaelian, K., Sakuragi, S., Openshaw, J., & Perrin, D. (2024). Mental time travel. In L. Bietti & M. Pogačar (Eds.), Palgrave encyclopedia of memory studies. Palgrave.
Perrin, D. (2021). Embodied episodic memory: A new case for causalism? Intellectica. Revue de l’Association Pour La Recherche Cognitive, 74(1), 229–251. https://doi.org/10.3406/intel.2021.1992
Robins, S. (2016). Representing the past: Memory traces and the causal theory of memory. Philosophical Studies, 173(11), 2993–3013. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0647-x
Robins, S. (2023). The 21st century engram. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 14(5), e1653. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.1653
Schacter, D. L., & Addis, D. R. (2007). The cognitive neuroscience of constructive memory: Remembering the past and imagining the future. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 362(1481), 773–786. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2007.2087
Shanton, K., & Goldman, A. (2010). Simulation theory. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 1(4), 527–538. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.33
Sutton, J. (1998). Philosophy and memory traces: Descartes to connectionism (1. publ). Cambridge University Press.
Sutton, J., & O’Brien, G. (2023). Distributed traces and the causal theory of constructive memory. In A. Sant’Anna, J. C. McCarroll, & K. Michaelian (Eds.), Current controversies in philosophy of memory (pp. 82–104). Routledge.
Werning, M. (2020). Predicting the past from minimal traces: Episodic memory and its distinction from imagination and preservation. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 11(2), 301–333.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright (c) 2025 Kourken Michaelian, Juan F. Álvarez, James Openshaw