Episodic Memory, the Cotemporality Problem, and Common Sense

Abstract

Direct realists about episodic memory claim that a rememberer has direct contact with a past event. How- ever, how is it possible to be acquainted with an event that ceased to exist? That is the so-called cotemporal- ity problem. The standard solution, proposed by Sven Bernecker, is to distinguish between the occurrence of an event and the existence of an event: an event ceases to occur without ceasing to exist. That is the eternalist solution for the cotemporality problem. Nevertheless, some philosophers of memory claim that the adoption of an eternalist metaphysics of time would be too high a metaphysical price to pay to hold direct realist intuitions about memory. Although I agree with these critics, I will make two claims. First, that this kind of common sense argument is far from decisive. Second, that Bernecker’s proposal remains the best solution to the cotemporality problem.