Memory

Edited by
Dimitri Nikulin

pp. 71-87

in: Marie-Luise Schubert Kalsi, Meinong's theory of knowledge, Berlin, Springer, 1987

Abstract

Meinong begins his paper "Von der erkenntnistheoretischen Würdigung des Gedächtnisses" as follows:¹ "From times immemorial the capability to recall things past by memory into the present has attracted the interest of psychological thought,… but it was never or rarely suspected by anyone that the epistemological investigation of the fact of remembering is of principal interest. … We remember something real in the same way … as we judge or are able to know something real." The theme of the memory paper is "not … to shed doubt on the reliability of (memory judgments) … but by presupposing it to find out if it is based on reasons which it has in common with the reliability of other judgments which have already been epistemologically studied."² The question must be answered "if our trust in memory originates from immediate insight or has to lean on any proof procedure."³