Philosophy at Western Sydney University, Seminar Series 2016

Seminar: Memory and Narrativity


Date and Time: Wednesday, 27 April 2016, 3:30pm — 5:00pm
Location: Western Sydney University, Bankstown Campus, Building 3, Meeting Room 
3.G. 54

Speaker
Daniel D. Hutto

Abstract
This presentation will canvas empirical and theoretical grounds for thinking 
that one familiar kind of memory – autobiographical memory – depends upon the 
mastery and exercise of narrative capacities. It is structured as follows: 
Section 1 contrasts features of utterly non-narrative forms of purely enactive 
and embodied remembering with that of the declarative variety required for 
autobiographical memory. Section 2 explicates the core tenets of the Social 
Interactionist Theory, SIT, of autobiographical memory, highlighting 
differences between weaker and stronger formulations and the roles that the 
mastery of narrative practices is assumed to play in both. Section 3 addresses 
a challenge to SIT, exploring how it is possible to understand pure episodic 
remembering that apparently operates before and below the capacity to 
autobiographically narrate the past. Section 4 concludes by considering 
arguments, motivated by empirical findings, which compel a rethink of what the 
primary function of autobiographical memory is in ways that speak in SIT's 
favour.

Biography
Daniel D. Hutto is Professor of Philosophical Psychology at the University of 
Wollongong and member of the Australian Research Council College of Experts. 
His most recent books include: Wittgenstein and the End of Philosophy 
(Palgrave, 2006), Folk Psychological Narratives (MIT, 2008). He is co-author of 
the award-winning Radicalizing Enactivism (MIT, 2013) and editor of Narrative 
and Understanding Persons (CUP, 2007) and Narrative and Folk Psychology 
(Imprint Academic, 2009). A special yearbook, Radical Enactivism, focusing on 
his philosophy of intentionality, phenomenology and narrative, was published in 
2006. He regularly speaks at conferences and expert meetings for 
anthropologists, clinical psychiatrists, educationalists, narratologists, 
neuroscientists and psychologists.
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