Rational Structures in Learning and Memory

Abstract

My dissertation aims to disrupt an increasingly ubiquitous view of epistemology which claim that we can study rationality by considering a single belief at a single time. I target three areas where diachronic (i.e. temporal) factors make a difference in the three sections:

1. memory, a system of tremendous importance in our cognitive lives yet which is often reduced to a one-sided question of whether to trust what one’s memory says,

2. learning, where I argue that we should sometimes believe in a way that’s not warranted or reasonable in light of our current evidence, but which puts us in a better position to acquire evidence in the future, and

3. the connection between memory and learning, as exemplified in the case of remembering anomalous events.

This project is important because our whole lives are organized around getting things right at the right time. When we try to act morally, we might try to have a life that is built around moral principles, or to become wiser and kinder over time, as opposed to amassing a collection of acts that all have independent moral value. I think the same thing is true of our endeavors to acquire knowledge the process of inquiry is not made up of individual, independent good inferences that happen to follow one another, but is instead about a trajectory where we learn over time, and take the right steps now to get things right in the future, and overall. So I think that to understand this more complete sense of inquiry, philosophy needs to make a place for memory, the system that sustains and directs inquiry in the background, over long periods of time even as the sciences are learning more and more about how natural memory systems work, philosophers have boxed it out of relevance.My methodology is to study natural and artificial learning and memory systems as a process of discovery, a way of using real-world cases as inspiration and guide to the normative landscape. Conversely, I hope that figuring out new normative possibilities can shed light on empirical facts - though this is not the main focus of my dissertation.