Immersing oneself into one’s past: Subjective presence can be part of the experience of episodic remembering

A common view holds that episodic remembering allows us to relive many features of a past perceptual experience, but not its sense of presence. This paper challenges that view by distinguishing two kinds of presence in perception: temporal presence and locative presence, the latter having objective and subjective sides. While temporal and objective locative presence cannot be relived in remembering, the authors argue that subjective locative presence—the feeling of being immersed in a scene—can be. They identify self-projection, imaginative pretence, and attentional focus as mechanisms underlying subjective locative presence in quasi-perceptual imagination, and note that these same mechanisms underpin episodic remembering. They conclude that episodic remembering can indeed relive subjective locative presence, a position they call 'mnemonic immersivism,' with implications for understanding memory, imagination, and the phenomenology of remembering.

Study at a glance

Abstract

A common view about the phenomenology of episodic remembering has it that when we remember a perceptual experience, we can relive or re-experience many of its features, but not its characteristic presence. In this paper, we challenge this common view. We first say that presence in perception divides into temporal and locative presence, with locative having two sides, an objective and a subjective one. While we agree with the common view that temporal and objective locative presence cannot be relived in remembering, we argue that subjective locative presence – the feeling of being immersed in a certain scene – can be so. Our argument for this claim starts by determining independently the underpinning mechanisms of subjective locative presence in quasi-perceptual imagination. These mechanisms are self-projection, imaginative pretence, and attentional focus. We then proceed to establish that they have been found to underpin conscious states of episodic remembering too. We conclude that episodic remembering can bring us to relive the subjective locative presence characteristic of a perceptual experience, and that the common view is mistaken. Our view – ‘mnemonic immersivism’ – has important consequences regarding the relationships between memory and imagination and the phenomenology of episodic remembering.