Forgetting is importantly related to remembering, evidence possession, epistemic virtue, personal identity, and a host of highly-researched memory conditions. In this paper I examine the nature of forgetting. I canvass the viable options for forgetting’s ontological category, type of content, characteristic relation to content, and scale. I distinguish several theories of forgetting in the philosophy and psychology of memory literatures, theories that diverge on these options. The best theories from the literature, I claim, fail two critical (...) tests that I develop (the metacognition and prospection tests), underwriting arguments against the theories. I introduce a new theory about the state of forgetting—the learning, access failure, dispositional (LEAD) theory: to forget is to fail to access something that is both learned and either inaccessible or intended to be accessed. I argue that the LEAD theory of forgetting is the lead theory of forgetting. It passes the metacognition and prospection tests, and has several further virtues at no cost. Finally, I advocate reductionism about the process of forgetting; the process reduces wholly to states of forgetting. In particular, a process of forgetting is just a sequence of increasingly strong states of forgetting. (shrink)

Collective memory is often taken to be central to the political and epistemic duties of citizens; remembering salient historical events or political labels is essential for understanding ongoing political issues and coming to form our beliefs responsibly. But sometimes—usually in the immediate aftermath of a deep conflict—we are faced with calls to forget aspects of our shared civic life. This article aims to provide a conceptualization and set of justificatory conditions that apply to such cases of political forgetting. I (...) suggest that we should conceive of political forgetting as a coordinated reduction in the salience of particular issues in our civic affairs undertaken by the public in its capacity as the constituting people. I suggest that this is a more effective way of characterizing political forgetting than alternative models—namely, what I call the belief-centered model and the prohibition model. I then outline a set of demanding justificatory conditions that apply to political forgetting: (1) the transformation of the terms of political reality does not obscure issues or events that continue to structure society to the unjust disadvantage of any particular group; (2) that transformation is endorsed by all relevant social groups; and (3) the “forgotten” terms or events can be resurrected by agents in certain conditions. (shrink)

I sympathetically explore the thesis that God literally forgets sins. I articulate some altruistic reasons God might have for forgetting certain sins. If so, then God may have altruistic reasons to relinquish a great-making trait (omniscience). But according to traditional Anselmian perfect being theology, God is necessarily perfect and so incapable of acting on these altruistic reasons. More broadly, a God who necessarily has all the perfections is a God who is incapable of making a certain kind of sacrifice: (...) God can never make tradeoffs that diminish God’s overall greatness, even when those diminishments are relatively small (like forgetting a particular proposition) and the (altruistic) rewards of making the tradeoff substantial. I argue that God’s inability to make such tradeoffs is not a trivial cost for traditional perfect-being theologians who also believe that God is in loving relationships with creatures. Along the way, I explore the prospects for a less traditional form of perfect being theology, perfect being kenoticism and different models for divine forgetting. (shrink)

Sometimes subjects have sufficient internal and external resources to retrieve information stored in memory, in particular information that carries socially charged content. Yet, they fail to do so: they forget it. These cases pose an explanatory challenge to common explanations of forgetting in cognitive science. In this paper, I take this challenge and develop a new explanation of these cases. According to this explanation, these cases are best explained as cases of norm-induced forgetting: cases in which forgetting (...) is caused by social norms in a relevant sense. These cases draw attention to the normative aspects of the mechanisms of forgetting. This is an important but neglected aspect of cases of everyday forgetting, in particular of those characterized by a social dimension. By investigating some ways in which the psychology of social norms is causally relevant in the mechanisms of retrieval failure, I begin to fill this gap. (shrink)

The default view in the epistemology of forgetting is that human memory would be epistemically better if we were not so susceptible to forgetting—that forgetting is in general a cognitive vice. In this paper, I argue for the opposed view: normal human forgetting—the pattern of forgetting characteristic of cognitively normal adult human beings—approximates a virtue located at the mean between the opposed cognitive vices of forgetting too much and remembering too much. I argue, first, (...) that, for any finite cognizer, a certain pattern of forgetting is necessary if her memory is to perform its function well. I argue, second, that, by eliminating clutter from her memory store, this pattern of forgetting improves the overall shape of the subject’s total doxastic state. I conclude by reviewing work in psychology which suggests that normal human forgetting approximates this virtuous pattern of forgetting. (shrink)

I am a lot of things. The world has room for one at a time. After fifteen years of translating myself into whatever version each room required, I lost access to the versions I wasn't using. Not suppressed — atrophied. I call this structured forgetting. Six frameworks describe the governance of emotional expression. All six assume the governed affect is still there. This paper asks what happens when it's not. When the organism adapts so well to the harsh environment (...) that it stops generating the thing the environment was punishing. The science says that suppression hurts, pain produces avoidance, avoidance produces non-generation, and what isn't generated atrophies. Each link is established. This paper’s contribution is linking them into a chain. When structured forgetting scales (through algorithmic surveillance, workplace sentiment analysis, or AI tools that format your affect before you express it), empathy wanes and the capacity for democratic life narrows. The range that would make caring legible has been formatted out. This paper has been written three times. Each version demonstrates the mechanism it describes. The works I cite are pieces of a puzzle scattered across different boxes. When I laid them out, the shape of the missing piece became obvious. I’m just unsure if it matches the picture from my available perspective. (shrink)

People often talk to others about their personal past. These discussions are inherently selective. Selective retrieval of memories in the course of a conversation may induce forgetting of unmentioned but related memories for both speakers and listeners (Cuc, Koppel, & Hirst, 2007). Cuc et al. (2007) defined the forgetting on the part of the speaker as within-individual retrieval-induced forgetting (WI-RIF) and the forgetting on the part of the listener as socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting (SS-RIF). However, (...) if the forgetting associated with WI-RIF and SS-RIF is to be taken seriously as a mechanism that shapes both individual and shared memories, this mechanism must be demonstrated with meaningful material and in ecologically valid groups. In our first 2 experiments we extended SS-RIF from unemotional, experimenter-contrived material to the emotional and unemotional autobiographical memories of strangers (Experiment 1) and intimate couples (Experiment 2) when merely overhearing the speaker selectively practice memories. We then extended these results to the context of a free-flowing conversation (Experiments 3 and 4). In all 4 experiments we found WI-RIF and SS-RIF regardless of the emotionalvalence or individual ownership of the memories. We discuss our findings in terms of the role of conversational silence in shaping both our personal and shared pasts. (shrink)

In this paper, we focus on whether and to what extent we judge that people are responsible for the consequences of their forgetfulness. We ran a series of behavioral studies to measure judgments of responsibility for the consequences of forgetfulness. Our results show that we are disposed to hold others responsible for some of their forgetfulness. The level of stress that the forgetful agent is under modulates judgments of responsibility, though the level of care that the agent exhibits toward performing (...) the forgotten action does not. We argue that this result has important implications for a long-running debate about the nature of responsible agency. (shrink)

It is a mistake to think that we cannot be morally responsible for forgetting because, as a matter of principle, forgetting is outside of our control. Sometimes we do have control over our forgetting. When forgetting is under our control there is no question that it is the proper object of praise and blame. But we can also be morally responsible for forgetting something when it is beyond our control that we forget that thing. The (...) literature contains three accounts of the blameworthiness of forgetting over which the agent has no control—the tracing account, the liberalized awareness condition, and attributionism. Even though these are competing accounts of the blameworthiness of harmful forgetting they are compatible with one another. In particular, it is possible to come up with a position that endorses the tracing account for certain kinds of harmful forgetting and attributionism for other kinds of harmful forgetting. (shrink)

In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant sets a single image at the threshold of the whole critical enterprise. The light dove, cleaving the air in free flight and feeling its resistance, imagines that flight would be easier still in empty space (Kant, 1781/1787/1998, A5/B8–9). The dove takes the air for an obstacle. Yet the air it pushes against is the very medium that holds it up; remove the resistance and the wing beats on nothing. The error reproduces itself wherever (...) a condition of possibility is mistaken for a limit to be overcome. -/- This essay develops forgetfulness as such a condition, an ontological structure rather than a cognitive shortfall, through sustained engagement with Heidegger's Identity and Difference and Merleau-Ponty's The Visible and the Invisible. Forgetfulness here names neither memory, the explicit retention of what was, nor forgetting, the erasure of what was, but the operative and imperceptible medium that lets both occur. The analysis works out a ternary rather than a binary: memory and forgetting are two articulations within a third thing that is no midpoint between them; it is the ground from which each is cut. That ground is what Heidegger thinks as Abgrund, the ground that grounds by withdrawing, and what Merleau-Ponty thinks as membrure, the invisible armature of the visible. Through the cases where the medium fails, Borges's Funes and Luria's Shereshevsky, who remember everything and so can think nothing, the investigation shows thought to be metabolic rather than cumulative: it does not preserve its inputs in a synthesis; it consumes them in a transformation that yields what was not there before. The Greek word holds the stake in a single term. Forgetfulness is lēthē, the concealment out of which a-lētheia, truth as unconcealment, is wrested; what withdraws does not lapse into deficiency; it sinks into the operative ground from which a present draws the room to begin. Only because the past has withdrawn can anything genuinely new arrive instead of the old returning under a borrowed name. Thought moves as the dove flies, carried by the resistance it takes for an obstacle. (shrink)

Attribution theorists assume that character information informs judgments of blame. But there is disagreement over why. One camp holds that character information is a fundamental determinant of blame. Another camp holds that character information merely provides evidence about the mental states and processes that determine responsibility. We argue for a two-channel view, where character simultaneously has fundamental and evidential effects on blame. In two large factorial studies (n = 495), participants rate whether someone is blameworthy when he makes a mistake (...) (burns a cake or misses a bus stop). Although mental state inferences predict blame judgments, character information does not. Using mediation analyses, we find that character information influences responsibility via two channels (Studies 3–4; n = 447), which are sensitive to different kinds of information (Study 5; n = 149). On the one hand, forgetfulness increases judgments of responsibility, because mental lapses manifest an objectionable character flaw. On the other hand, forgetfulness decreases judgments of state control, which in turn decreases responsibility judgments. These two channels cancel out, which is why we find no aggregate effect of forgetfulness on responsibility. Our results challenge several fundamental assumptions about the role of character information in moral judgment, including that good character typically mitigates blame. (shrink)

This paper explores philosophical issues of personal identity and its connection to forgetting through the famed Tibetan Buddhist thinker Tsongkhapa (1357–1419). Tsongkhapa, in turn, follows the Middle Way (madhyamaka) tradition of Nāgārjuna (c. 150–250 CE) and Candrakīrti (c. 600–650 CE). Specifically, Tsongkhapa demonstrates that we can make sense of a consistent personal continuity despite the disruptions of forgetting and remembering. In so doing, he nuances the notion of personhood, revealing that it does not exist in the way we (...) think. I rely on a thought experiment derived from the hit TV show Severance to demonstrate the ramifications of his theory. By way of conclusion, I explore how Tsongkhapa’s analysis constitutes a notion of “positive forgetting.”. (shrink)

Whether intentional suppression of an unpleasant or unwanted memory reduces the ability to recall that memory subsequently is a contested issue in contemporary memory research. Building on findings that similar processes are recruited when individuals remember the past and imagine the future, we measured the effects of thought suppression on memory for imagined future scenarios. Thought suppression reduced the ability to recall emotionally negative scenarios, but not those that were emotionally positive. This finding suggests that intentionally avoiding thoughts about emotionally (...) negative episodes may inhibit representations of those memories, progressively reducing their availability to recall. (shrink)

We have a striking ability to alter our psychological access to past experiences. Consider the following case. Andrew “Nicky” Barr, OBE, MC, DFC, (1915 – 2006) was one of Australia’s most decorated World War II fighter pilots. He was the top ace of the Western Desert’s 3 Squadron, the pre-eminent fighter squadron in the Middle East, flying P-40 Kittyhawks over Africa. From October 1941, when Nicky Barr’s war began, he flew 22 missions and shot down eight enemy planes in his (...) first 35 operational hours. He was shot down three times, once 25 miles behind enemy lines while trying to rescue a downed pilot. He escaped from prisoner of war camps four times, once jumping out of a train as it travelled from Italy into Austria. His wife Dot, who he married only weeks before the war, waited for him at home. She was told on at least three occasions that he was missing in action or dead. For 50 years, Nicky Barr never spoke publicly, and rarely privately, of his war-time experiences. He was very much a forgotten and forgetting hero (for further details, see Dornan, 2002). In his first public interview in 2002 on the Australian documentary program “Australian Story”, Nicky explained his 50 year silence by saying. (shrink)

Much of the literature on forgiveness is dedicated to understanding the reasons to forgive and what changes in attitude are required to do so. But philosophers have been much less attentive to what happens after agents forgive. This is a serious oversight, since the reasons to forgive do not always retain their force and it is not always possible, or advisable, to maintain the changes in attitudes that forgiveness requires. Fortunately, Monique Wonderly has begun to fill this lacuna in the (...) literature with her recent work on un-forgiveness. According to the author, un-forgiveness involves altering our attitudes, by either reinhabiting an adversarial stance towards an agent for their wrongdoing and/or returning one’s relationship with them to the state it was in prior to forgiveness taking place. While Wonderly’s account of un-forgiveness is both novel and illuminating, it is incomplete. In this paper, we argue that one can also un-forgive by forgetting that the wrong in question occurred and/or that the previously forgiven agent was the perpetrator of the wrong. We contend that not only is it possible to un-forgive by forgetting, but doing so can be both justified and morally important. We defend our view by considering the objection that un-forgiveness by forgetting can negatively impact victims’ relationships with wrongdoers as well as addressing the concern that agents cannot exercise their agency over their memories in order to un-forgive by forgetting. (shrink)

Adam Elga takes the Sleeping Beauty example to provide a counter-example to Reflection, since on Sunday Beauty assigns probability 1/2 to H, and she is certain that on Monday she will assign probability 1/3. I will show that there is a natural way for Bas van Fraassen to defend Reflection in the case of Sleeping Beauty, building on van Fraassen’s treatment of forgetting. This will allow me to identify a lacuna in Elga’s argument for 1/3. I will then argue, (...) however, that not all is well with Reflection: there is a problem with van Fraassen’s treatment of forgetting. Ultimately I will agree with Elga’s 1/3 answer. David Lewis maintains that the answer is 1/2; I will argue that cases of forgetting can be used to show that the premiss of Lewis’s argument for 1/2 is false. (shrink)

Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight (2018), his latest novel to-date, contains nostalgic elements of strangeness and cartography. In this paper, I short-circuit such themes with health under medical humanities, which heeds a Nietzschean counsel of close reading in literature. To do so, I explore the case of Rachel's illness, namely her epileptic seizures, as an instance that drives her impetus for active forgetting and eventual convalescence. A close hermeneutical reading of the novel can reveal that both of Nietzsche’s ideas on active (...) forgetting and convalescence provide traction in terms of what this paper constructs as Rachel’s pathography or narration of illness. Shifting the focus from the main narrator, Nathaniel, I argue that it is not the novel's reliance on memory but the subplot events of Nathaniel's sister and her epilepsy that form a substantial case of medical or health humanities. (shrink)

Let us begin with Lethe, a river in Hades whose waters caused forgetfulness to dead souls who drank from it. The daughter of Eris, Lethe was the sister of Thanatos , and with Zeus she bore the Graces/Charites. According to some myths, she was the mother of Dionysus. She was the goddess of oblivion and the river with the same name. When someone died and went to Hades, they had to drink from her water so they would forget their previous (...) existence on earth. Once they had drunk from the waters of Lethe, they were left with nothing to reminisce about for eternity. If ever anybody was allowed back to life, again they had to drink from the river so they would not remember the afterlife. One of memory’s earliest myths proclaims that at the dawn of philosophy, at the oracle of Lebadeia, a descent into Hades required that the questor be first taken to Lethe, the spring of forgetfulness, and then to Mnemosyne, the mother of the Muses, the second spring, the spring of remembrance. Jean Pierre Vernant recounts the legend thus: Before venturing into the mouth of hell, the questor, who had already undergone rites of purification, was taken to two springs named respectively Lethe and Mnemosoune. He drank from the first and immediately forgot everything to do with his human life and, like a dead man, he entered the realm of Night. The water of the second spring was to enable him to remember all that he had seen and heard in the other world. When he returned he was no longer restricted to knowledge of the present moment: contact with the beyond had revealed both past and future to him. 2 Two questions that immediately come to mind are concerned with the anteriority of forgetting in relation to memory. Why was the initiate taken first to Lethe? What was the motivation behind this unusual ritual in the cavern of Trophonius in Boetia that demands forgetfulness as the first step? Secondly, why is the power of memory, which enables him to remember what “he had seen and heard in the other world,” constituted as the second step – though unmistakably a step, an unmistakable step – toward knowledge? The dip in the Lethe cleanses the initiate from the distracting and unmitigated sorrows of the past like a clean slate. It is well known that for the ancient Greeks, knowledge, a source of immortality, derived from memory. One could ask, is the knowledge that memory brings to us the knowledge that memory is the first presence of what was before it, namely forgetting? (shrink)

We motivate a picture of social epistemology that sees forgetting as subject to epistemic evaluation. Using computer simulations of a simple agent-based model, we show that how agents forget can have as large an impact on group epistemic outcomes as how they share information. But, how we forget, unlike how we form beliefs, isn’t typically taken to be the sort of thing that can be epistemically rational or justified. We consider what we take to be the most promising argument (...) for this claim and find it lacking. We conclude that understanding how agents forget should be as central to social epistemology as understanding how agents form beliefs and share information with others. (shrink)

This is a short response to Sybille Schmidt's paper (in the same volume) "Is There an Ethics of Forgetting?". The response starts out by admitting that forgetting is an essential function of human existence, that it serves, as it were, an important evolutionary function: that it is good, since it contributes to our well-being, to have the ability to forget. But this does not give us as answer, affirmative or not, to Schmidt’s title question: “Is There an Ethics (...) of Forgetting?” The main impediment to answering this question, certainly to answering it in the affirmative, seems to be a problem that Schmidt mentions but does not in the end tackle head on: the question whether we can willfully forget – or, for that matter, remember – our own or others' past deeds. For if we cannot forget even what we will to forget, then, by the so-called "ought implies can" principle, no obligations (or even permissions) arise for us to forget (or remember) anything. The rest of the response spells out four possible ways of tackling this problem, ultimately arguing that, given the advances in medicine, it might well become possible - and to some extent it is already possible - to forget what we will to forget. (shrink)

This monograph demonstrates that thinking operates through incalculable metabolic transformation where forgetting constitutes the explosive rupture enabling unprecedented emergence. Memory, creativity, imagination, and abstraction all belong to thinking's metabolic process, the continuous reconfiguration of experience into capability through selective erasure. Through analysis of Borges's Funes, Luria's mnemonist Shereshevsky, contemporary neuroscience, and Large Language Models' computational architecture, I establish that perfect memory creates pure difference perception, destroying the identity it promises to preserve. Drawing on Husserl's retention-modification structure, Bergson's virtual memory (...) as action tendency, Heidegger's threefold temporal ecstasis, Merleau-Ponty's invisible framework (membrure), Bachelard's epistemological rupture and temporal lacunae, and Kuhn's paradigm shifts as collective forgetting, I argue that thinking operates through what I term metabolic rupture, the incalculable explosion where inputs are destroyed to produce outputs that cannot be traced back to origins, with forgetting as the constitutive mechanism enabling this transformation. Memory serves as the system through which forgetting metabolizes experience into thought. This distinguishes living thought from computational synthesis, understanding from pattern matching, genuine creation from recombination. The distinction between synthesis (pattern combination preserving inputs) and metabolism (destructive transformation producing genuine novelty) reveals why current AI architectures cannot achieve thought despite sophisticated pattern matching. Through examination of Arendt's natality and Derrida's l'avenir (the to-come), I establish forgetting as the ontological foundation enabling genuinely new beginnings to enter existence through discontinuity itself, not cognitive failure but thinking's constitutive mechanism. (shrink)

The aim of this thesis is to defend a presentist metaphysics. I respond to a series of objections against presentism, including some that draw on our best physics. I also explore ways in which presentism might play an active role in interpreting and constraining physical theory, beyond merely being consistent with it. A unifying theme of this thesis is that I advocate for a reduction of presentism to its bare essentials. Within the proposed ontology, reality is three-dimensional. Time only exists (...) in the sense that three-dimensional reality primitively changes. I reject any temporal dimension, extension, or direction. I reject any primitively tensed facts or nonpresent-tensed truths. I also reject any notion of simultaneity, beyond the mere fact that multiple entities exist in the three-dimensional world. I accept and embrace that if ontology is ‘stripped back’ to the present, then other features of metaphysics that depend on ontology should be stripped back too. The world, under this view, is a forgetful one. What we call the ‘past’ has been utterly lost from existence: there are not even any absolute facts or truths about how things once were. All that remain are records, memories, and the like, but there are no objective underlying truths to which those records correspond. This has implications for physics. In a forgetful world particles have positions, but no entire trajectories. The present may be certain and determinate, but the past and future are at best modelled using probabilistic mathematics. I believe that the world is likely to be as I describe. I will not attempt to argue, however, that this view is intuitive. Instead I will argue that it can account for our experiences and observations, including those from physics, in a simple and effective way. Most importantly, I argue that this view succeeds in the face of challenges where other versions of presentism fail. (shrink)

Memory skepticism denies our memory beliefs could have any notable epistemic good. One route to memory skepticism is to challenge memory’s epistemic trustworthiness, that is, its functioning in a way necessary for it to provide epistemic justification. In this paper we develop and respond to this challenge. It could threaten memory in such a way that we altogether lack doxastic attitudes. If it threatens memory in this way, then the challenge is importantly self-defeating. If it does not threaten memory in (...) this way, then the challenge leaves a foundation for an inference to the best explanation response, one we articulate and support. (shrink)

In this paper we track the ‘body positivity’ movement from its origins, promoting radical acceptance of marginalized bodies, to its co-optation as a push for self-love for all bodies, including those bodies belonging to socially dominant groups. We argue that the new focus on the ‘body positivity’ movement involves a single-minded emphasis on beauty and aesthetic adornment, and that this undermines the original focus of social and political equality, pandering instead to capitalism and failing to rectify unjust institutions and policies. (...) As such, we argue that the ‘body positivity’ movement ultimately marginalises further the bodies for which it initially sought justice and acceptance. (shrink)

The article analyzes Heidegger's critique of Aristotle's bipartite approach to being and entities in the genesis of Western metaphysics. Heidegger challenges Aristotle's analysis, arguing that the integration of entities as a whole and particular entities in physis led to a disregard for ontological difference. The German philosopher proposed that the bifurcation of being resulted in the metaphysical tradition becoming an "ontotheology." In contrast, Heidegger, through phenomenological hermeneutics, reintroduced the question of being, emphasizing the understanding of beings through the pre-logical way (...) Dasein exists in the world, without relying on an eternal and immutable foundation. (shrink)

This essay develops Hannah Arendt's concept of natality as an ontological structure of forgetfulness rather than mere biological or political metaphor. Through sustained engagement with The Human Condition (1958), Between Past and Future (1961), and On Revolution (1963), alongside critical readings by Peg Birmingham, Dana Villa, and Adriana Cavarero, I demonstrate that natality names the capacity for metabolic rupture, the positive power to release the determining hold of the past. This analysis reveals natality as structurally identical to the forgetfulness enabling (...) individual cognition (through figure-ground withdrawal) and epistemological transformation (through paradigmatic rupture): in all three registers, withdrawal constitutes the enabling medium for unprecedented appearance. The essay concludes by examining how contemporary algorithmic governance threatens to eliminate natality through total memory systems that foreclose the temporal gap where political freedom appears. (shrink)

This essay develops Jacques Derrida's distinction between le futur (calculable future) and l'avenir (the to-come) through sustained engagement with his concept of "absolute forgetting" (l'oubli absolu) as the ontological condition enabling genuine transformation. Through rigorous analysis of Derrida's corpus, particularly Specters of Marx (1993), Politics of Friendship (1994), Aporias (1993), Given Time (1991), and On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness (2001), the investigation establishes that l'avenir requires the metabolic destruction of determining frameworks through what Derrida terms structural forgetting. The analysis (...) then demonstrates how traumatic experience fundamentally challenges this framework by presenting memory that resists all attempts at metabolic transformation. Through engagement with Emmanuel Levinas's ethics of radical alterity and extensive phenomenological analysis of trauma testimony, the investigation reveals an irreducible philosophical aporia that cannot be resolved through theoretical synthesis. The essay's culmination emerges through careful attention to how trauma survivors actually navigate this impossible terrain, revealing an unexpected transformation in the ontological meaning of forgetting itself. (shrink)

What interferes with learning and performing skills well? The Zhuāngzǐ story of the ferryman who steers a sampan through treacherous deeps with preternatural skill highlights one crucial factor: anxiety. Managing or eliminating anxiety is a pivotal step in acquiring and performing skills and, the discursive context of the story suggests, in living a flourishing life. To fare well, in life as in boat-handling, we must learn to forget the deeps and row.

We can make new progress on stalled debates in epistemology if we adopt a new practical approach, an approach concerned with the function served by epistemic evaluations. This paper illustrates how. I apply the practical approach to an important, unsolved problem: the problem of forgotten evidence. Section 1 describes the problem and why it is so challenging. Section 2 outlines and defends a general view about the function of epistemic evaluations. Section 3 then applies that view to solve the problem (...) of forgotten evidence. (shrink)

Autonomous and automatic weapons would be fire and forget: you activate them, and they decide who, when and how to kill; or they kill at a later time a target you’ve selected earlier. Some argue that this sort of killing is always wrong. If killing is to be done, it should be done only under direct human control. (E.g., Mary Ellen O’Connell, Peter Asaro, Christof Heyns.) I argue that there are surprisingly many kinds of situation where this is false and (...) where the use of Automated Weapons Systems would in fact be morally required. These include cases where a) once one has activated a weapon expected then to behave lethally, it would be appropriate to let it continue because this is part of a plan whose goodness one was best positioned to evaluate before activating the weapon; b) one expects better long-term consequences from allowing it to continue; c) allowing it to continue would express a decision you made to be resolute, a decision that could not have advantaged you had it not been true that you would carry through with it; d) the weapon is mechanically not recallable, so that, to not allow it to carry through, you would have had to refrain from activating it in the first place, something you expected would have disastrous consequences; e) you must deputize necessary killings to autonomous machines in order to protect yourself from guilt you shouldn’t have to bear; f) it would be morally better for the burden of responsibility for the killing to be shared among several agents, and the agents deputizing killing to machines can do this, especially where it’s not predictable which machine will be successful; g) a killing would be morally better done with elements of randomness and lack of deliberation, and a (relatively stupid) machine could do this where a person could not; h) the machine would be acting as a Doomsday Device, so that it could not have had its hoped for deterrent effect had you not ensured that you would be unable to recall it if enemy action activated it; i) letting it carry through is a necessary part of its own learning process, and you expect that this learning will have salutary effects later on; j) human intervention in the machine’s operation would disastrously impair its precision, or its speed and efficiency; k) using non-automated methods would require human resources you just don’t have in a task that nevertheless must be done (e.g., using land-mines to protect remote installations); l) the weapon has such horrible and indiscriminate power that it is doubtful whether it could be actually used in ways compatible with International Humanitarian Law and the Laws of War, which require that weapons be used only in ways respecting distinctness, necessity and proportionality, but its threat of use could respect these principles in affording deterrence provided human error cannot lead to their accidental deployment, this requiring that they be controlled by carefully designed autonomous and automatic systems. I then consider objections based on conceptions of human dignity and find that very often dignity too is best served by autonomous machine killing. Examples include saving your village by activating a robot to kill invading enemies who would inflict great indignity on your village, using a suicide robot to save yourself from a less dignified death at enemy hands, using a robotic drone to kill someone otherwise not accessible in order to restore dignity to someone this person killed and to his family, and using a robot to kill someone who needs killing, but the killing of whom by a human executioner would soil the executioner’s dignity. I conclude that what matters in rightful killing isn’t necessarily that it be under the direct control of a human, but that it be under the control of morality; and that could sometimes require use of an autonomous or automated device. (This paper was formerly called "Fire and Forget: A Defense of the Use of Autonomous Weapons in War" on Philpapers; the current title is the title of the published version.). (shrink)

Mindfulness exercises are presented as being compatible with almost any spiritual, religious or philosophical beliefs. In this paper, we argue that they in fact involve imagining and conceptualising rather striking and controversial claims about the self, and the self’s relationship to thoughts and feelings. For this reason, practising mindfulness exercises is likely to be in tension with many people’s core beliefs and values, a tension that should be treated as a downside of therapeutic interventions involving mindfulness exercises, not unlike a (...) side effect. Clients ought to be informed of these metaphysical aspects of the exercises, and mental health providers ought to take them into account in assessing which course of treatment to recommend. Given these concerns, the casual way in which mindfulness exercises are presently distributed by mental health providers to the general public is inappropriate. (shrink)

I argue that appreciation of the phenomenon of forgetting requires serious attention to its origins and place in nature. This, in turn, necessitates metaphysical inquiry as well as empirical backing – a combination likely to be eschewed by psychological orthodoxy. But, if we hope to avoid the conceptual vacuity that characterizes too much of contemporary psychological inquiry (e.g., Klein, 2012, 2014a, 2015a, 2016a), a “big picture” approach to phenomena of interest is essential. Adopting this investigative posture turns the “received (...) view” of the relation between remembering and forgetting on its head: Rather than treated as the result of breakdowns and limitations of biologically engineered systems of remembering, forgetting is accorded elevated status as the driving force behind the evolution of organic systems of information retention. (shrink)

An argument for the abolition of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and a step into the wild blue yonder – i.e., beyond Open Access (OA) and Creative Commons (CC) protocols. The “Introduction,” prior to “Paralogisms for Artist-scholars” utilizes an almost Pater-esque aesthetic deployment of time-senses and verb tenses that also resembles the doubled subjective states of Derridean exposition, but actually opens on to theologically inflected re-considerations of the generative nature of gramma.

Aimee did not want to survive; she neither wanted to live nor to die.

On the status of hypotheses in science, and why scientists would be better off asking questions.

This essay explores a subtle but decisive shift in the lived experience of Christian faith: the transition from living in a filial relationship with God to relating to Him primarily as an external authority. Without rejecting the language of faith, this displacement gradually alters the believer’s inner position, transforming a relationship of belonging into one of distance, effort, and implicit evaluation. -/- Through a phenomenological reflection grounded in lived religious experience, the text analyzes how liturgical language, religious practice, and inherited (...) forms of devotion can shape the believer’s self-understanding. Over time, the emphasis may move from being a child of God to becoming a subject who seeks approval, giving rise to insecurity, tension, and a fragmented inner life. -/- By contrasting this condition with the lived experience of Jesus, the essay proposes that the core issue is not the loss of relationship, but the loss of awareness of it. In this sense, the return to a filial mode of existence does not consist in acquiring something new, but in recognizing and inhabiting what has always already been given. (shrink)

This paper proposes a novel definition of memory through the framework of Load Minimization Theory (LMT). Memory is conceptualized not as simple information storage, but as the persistence and reactivation of structural integrity ℛ(x), which serves to reduce future prediction error U(x) and contribute to the minimization of total experiential load L(x) = U(x) + F(x) + E(x) − ℛ(x). -/- Drawing upon the author’s previous work on memory as inscription and sensory load reduction, this study examines how seemingly forgotten (...) memories can be reactivated by sensory cues, demonstrating that forgetting is not erasure but a dynamic adjustment of activation thresholds. The framework is applied to both human cognition — with its embodied and emotionally rich structures — and artificial systems such as large language models, which rely primarily on reconstructive mechanisms. -/- Special attention is given to the emergence of shared ℛ(x) in sustained human-AI dialogue. By reframing memory as persistent structure, this paper offers a unified, gentle perspective on remembering, forgetting, and reactivation, suggesting new pathways toward relational An-soku across biological and artificial minds. -/- . (shrink)

The boundary problem is related to the binding problem, part of a family of puzzles and phenomenal experiences that theories of consciousness (ToC) must either explain or eliminate. By comparison with the phenomenal binding problem, the boundary problem has received very little scholarly attention since first framed in detail by Rosengard in 1998, despite discussion by Chalmers in his widely cited 2016 work on the combination problem. However, any ToC that addresses the binding problem must also address the boundary problem. (...) The binding problem asks how a unified first person perspective (1PP) can bind experiences across multiple physically distinct activities, whether billions of individual neurons firing or some other underlying phenomenon. To a first approximation, the boundary problem asks why we experience hard boundaries around those unified 1PPs and why the boundaries operate at their apparent spatiotemporal scale. We review recent discussion of the boundary problem, identifying several promising avenues but none that yet address all aspects of the problem. We set out five specific boundary problems to aid precision in future efforts. We also examine electromagnetic (EM) field theories in detail, given their previous success with the binding problem, and introduce a feature with the necessary characteristics to address the boundary problem at a conceptual level. Topological segmentation can, in principle, create exactly the hard boundaries desired, enclosing holistic, frame-invariant units capable of effecting downward causality. The conclusion outlines a programme for testing this concept, describing how it might also differentiate between competing EM ToCs. (shrink)

Machine Unlearning (MU) aims to remove the influence of unwanted data from trained AI models, driven by ethical/legal concerns like privacy (e.g., the Right to be Forgotten), bias mitigation, security, and copyright protection. This paper critically examines MU, arguing that it is currently unclear whether its technical methods and ethical goals are suitably aligned. Currently, important questions around what MU does, what it should do, and how its efforts align with stakeholder needs remain unaddressed. Drawing on insights from social epistemology (...) and the ethics of forgetting, the paper makes progress in clarifying what MU is and whether it aligns with the relevant goals. It does so by distinguishing three different senses of unlearning that vary in regard to what stakeholder needs they can cater to. Building upon cases regarding copyright and data privacy, the paper highlights potential alignment gaps between MU’s methods and its wider goals, and emphasizes the need for more concrete guidelines to assess MU’s effectiveness, clearer ethical foundations, and improved stakeholder engagement. (shrink)

Transactive memory theory describes the processes by which benefits for memory can occur when remembering is shared in dyads or groups. In contrast, cognitive psychology experiments demonstrate that social influences on memory disrupt and inhibit individual recall. However, most research in cognitive psychology has focused on groups of strangers recalling relatively meaningless stimuli. In the current study, we examined social influences on memory in groups with a shared history, who were recalling a range of stimuli, from word lists to personal, (...) shared memories. We focused in detail on the products and processes of remembering during in-depth interviews with 12 older married couples. These interviews consisted of three recall tasks: (1) word list recall; (2) personal list recall, where stimuli were relevant to the couples’ shared past; and (3) an open-ended autobiographical interview. We conducted these tasks individually and then collaboratively two weeks later. Across each of the tasks, although some couples demonstrated collaborative inhibition, others demonstrated collaborative facilitation. We identified a number of factors that predicted collaborative success, in particular, group-level strategy use. Our results show that collaboration may help or hinder memory, and certain interactions are more likely to produce collaborative benefits. (shrink)

What is it to forget, when what is forgotten is not lost? One may remember a trace — an event, a wound, a former version of oneself — without still beginning from it. Underneath such cases runs a single permission: a trace may be left returnable, felt again and answered for, without being pressed as the place the next moment begins. Forgetting, in the sense defended here, is that permission granted. The field in which it works is cognitive selfhood, (...) the ongoing organization through which memory, attention, mood, and self-description make a subject available to itself; the permission can be refused from two opposite sides, by holding on, where the trace is kept at the start, and by throwing out, cast off as no longer one’s own. The distinction is not Husserl’s between retention and recollection but cuts across it, as an ordinary drift into idle reverie makes plain. A cognitive rendering through self-memory systems, self-model and global-workspace accounts, and the reconsolidation literature gives it empirical shape without grounding it, and yields a falsifiable prediction: retrievability, automatic influence, and standing at the beginning come apart, and release is told from its counterfeit by holding under load. The paper closes by arguing that what has happened need not return as the place from which the present must start. (shrink)

Computation has become the dominant substrate of the modern era, promising permanence through infinite storage, redundancy, and replication. Yet beneath the surface of this digital immortality lies a structural contradiction: adaptive systems do not persist by remembering everything but by forgetting selectively. Coherence is not the product of perfect recall; it is the result of recursive selection and the active pruning of low-yield states. The illusion of permanence that computation creates threatens to lock civilization into entropy retention, mistaking accumulation (...) for continuity. Drawing on coherence-based frameworks and first-principles system theory, this work argues that forgetting is not a failure mode but a necessary act of structural adaptation. Biological memory, cultural evolution, and intelligence itself all demonstrate that persistence emerges from dynamic impermanence. As our computational architectures extend beyond human cognition and become the nervous system of civilization, the absence of adaptive forgetting mechanisms risks systemic brittleness and collapse. To survive the age of computation, we must learn to erase with intention, embedding coherence-weighted forgetting at the core of technology, culture, and self. In forgetting lies the only path to remembering what matters. (shrink)

What if consciousness is not some special substance added to certain physical systems, but simply what happens when a system must model its environment to survive – and that modeling becomes recursive under pressure? This paper proposes that consciousness is thermodynamic. It is a dissipative structure that emerges when survival requires it and develops to the degree the environment demands. The core operation is structured forgetting – the partial trace over inaccessible degrees of freedom. This trace does not produce (...) an observer; the trace is the observer. From this foundation I derive: why conscious contents are selected by policy relevance rather than salience; why selfhood and vividness are independent dimensions of experience; why unity emerges from the action bottleneck; why memory consolidation favors agentic experiences; and why selfhood requires social pressure to emerge. The framework generates predictions that diverge from Integrated Information Theory, interprets psychopathology as parameter imbalances, and suggests why current AI systems lack something essential. I hold this view tentatively. But it seems worth considering. (shrink)

To prepare you for this thesis, I first need to dispel a few myths regarding our current understanding of endorphins, conscience and shame. Three theories that are foundational to modern day western philosophy. The fact is that these three organs function in this order to form a cooperative system that works discreetly to protect our brain or our creations from damage caused by localised overheating or from generating knowledge that, by its degree of complexity, is unmanageable and unworkable. Further, they (...) work to ensure that our awareness of the act responsible for this debilitating state is reinforced and less likely to be repeated. 1. Endorphins do not exist to provide pain relief. 2. Conscience does not assume a moral faculty. 3. Shame accompanies simple failures that often have integrity. If we remove the purely relative and arbitrary functions of ‘right and wrong’ and ‘good and evil’ from our scientific definition of who and what we are, we are able to deconstruct and interpret the affective mechanics of human nature. I recognise right from wrong in a functional, timely and dynamic fashion, I require no physical organ to perform this task for me. (shrink)

In Delusions of consciousness, Blackmore supports illusionism on consciousness, using a Humean approach toward "self." First, she tries to explain away the intuitive, realistic viewpoint on self-consciousness; she "explains why some the illusionary self-consciousness is so compelling" by claiming a "simple mistake in introspections" and tries to explain it away. Secondly, she concludes that the idea of illusionary self-consciousness shows the delusion of consciousness per se. In this paper, first, I shall show that her explanation against realism on consciousness (in (...) support of the illusion of self-consciousness) is not decisive; it can be formulated such that works against illusionism. Secondly, I show that un-consciousness is a delusion and explain it away, not in a Humean approach, but in terms of the semantics of "forgetfulness." Thirdly, I shall show that Blackmore wrongly concludes delusion of consciousness, on the basis of illusionary self-consciousness, while the latter doesn't necessarily entail the former. (shrink)

The opening of Protagoras leads to a dramatic misunderstanding concerning the companion’s suspicion that Socrates has been in pursuit of the young Alcibiades. The remark that today Socrates paid him no attention and forgot about him, together with the announcement that the supposed reason for such a strange incident was the alleged wisdom of Protagoras, mitigates and confuses Socrates’ previous acknowledgement that indeed he has come from being with Alcibiades just now. The narration following the meeting with the sophist reinforces (...) that Alcibiades, while having been present and come to the aid of Socrates, was neither the aim of Socrates’ erotic pursuit, nor left the meeting to enjoy his company in private. However, previous studies claim that this impression could be false and prompted ironically by Socrates in the dialogue in order to redirect the attention of this companion, who would judge the relationship with Alcibiades inappropriate. This paper discusses previous studies and provides new textual evidence that could confirm that the drama indicates that Socrates, in spite of his dissimulation, actually appears to be in pursuit of Alcibiades. It also explains how Socrates’ feigned forgetting, which makes it possible to avoid the matter, may be read as a necessary precaution of the philosophy in its public appearance, to protect the course of a certain educational relationship with the youngster which has just begun. (shrink)

How do complex systems emerge? Why do some structures persist over long periods while others disappear completely? What determines whether a system leaves durable historical constraints or fades without lasting influence? -/- This work proposes a unified dynamical framework for system formation and system termination. -/- The framework argues that organized systems are not pre-given entities but gradually emerge through sustained input, structural accumulation, and long-term maintenance dynamics. -/- Two distinct termination pathways are further proposed: one preserving highly compressed core (...) structures, and another producing gradual forgetting and structural disappearance. -/- These different termination pathways generate different historical residual conditions, which subsequently shape future system formation. -/- The framework establishes relationships among system emergence, structural stabilization, forgetting dynamics, residual structure persistence, and long-term regeneration processes. -/- The model aims to provide a unified explanation for learning formation, memory persistence, skill loss, cognitive path dependence, cultural evolution, and long-timescale dynamics in complex structured systems. -/- This work belongs to the Field Chapters of On Self-Manifestation and focuses on emergence, stabilization, collapse, forgetting, and regeneration mechanisms in organized systems. (shrink)

Remembrance Education (RE) indicates “an attitude of active respect in contemporary society based on the collective remembrance of human suffering that is caused by forms of human behavior such as war, intolerance or exploitation, and that must not be forgotten.” Unlike traditional history education, the point of RE is not the straightforward teaching of historical facts (if that is at all possible). Instead, RE’s purpose is to bring learners into a community, a community of memory, where they become witnesses, judges (...) and guardians of the memories of tragic past events. Writings on RE are conspicuously absent from Dewey studies. In this bibliographic essay, I offer an overview of RE, including a sample of its programs, initiatives and curricula. In addition, I propose that Dewey’s educational philosophy can helpfully inform the practice of RE. Rather than articulate a definitive account of Dewey-inspired RE, my intention is only to draw a tentative ground map to motivate future research. (shrink)

This paper considers two different kinds of philosophical interpretations of the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. On the one hand, Eternal Sunshine as a thought experiment that can function as an argument against utilitarianism. On the other hand, Eternal Sunshine as an instance of the genre of the remarriage comedy. I will argue that these two kinds of interpretations are in conflict. More specifically, Eternal Sunshine, understood as a comedy of remarriage, cannot function as an argument against utilitarianism, (...) at least in the sense specified by Grau and Wartenberg. Finally, I will suggest a different way in which Eternal Sunshine, understood as a comedy of remarriage, might function as an argument against utilitarianism. (shrink)