ABSTRACT
In an essay in the London Review of Books, the late Jenny Diski describes a remembered scene from her childhood. The scene Diski describes is recalled from what's known as an 'observer perspective'. For Diski, the falsity of this memory stems solely from this 'anomalous point of view'. This chapter discusses the phenomena of perspectival memory. While surveying the field, it suggests that visual perspective alone is not a guide to the truth or falsity of memory, and that genuine memories can be recalled from an observer perspective. Observer perspectives can satisfy factivity constraints, and can stand in appropriate causal connections to the past. The chapter identifies the phenomena and provides an overview of some of the empirical evidence related to point of view in personal memory. It suggests that observer perspectives may retain other forms of internal imagery: there is no neat division between internal and external perspectives.
