ABSTRACT

This chapter introduces the contrast between content (what is remembered) and psychological attitude (remembering). This distinction will be helpful in disentangling issues in the phenomenology of memory. The chapter focuses on the contribution of memory content to phenomenology, and the contribution of the attitude of remembering. It is customary to approach mental states with the help of the contrast between content and attitude. Psychological verbs typically report attitudes, while their complements report the contents of these attitudes. The chapter explores how the content of memory contributes to phenomenology by focusing on two kinds of memory contents, which is respectively calles experiential and non-experiential contents. In order to convey the idea that the preserving role of memory is sometimes phenomenologically salient, many scholars use the metaphors of "mental time travel" and "temporal decentring.