ABSTRACT
Every memory, although mediated by an antecedent perception, is not on that account an inference from perception. The memory is an effect of the perception from which it derives and, in the role of epistemologist, I may infer that such and such a memory implies such and such earlier perceptions, but as a reminiscent subject I simply remember the past thing or event and accept memory at its face value as I do perception. Thus memory is, like perception, a primitive and non-inferential cognition in spite of the fact that it is causally conditioned by perception. The length of the causal chain intervening between an act of cognition and the cause or occasion of the cognition has nothing to do with the directness or indirectness of the resultant cognition. Memory is causally mediated by an earlier perception, yet the remembering subject is cognitively present to the remembered object precisely as the perceiver is ostensibly present to the perceptual object. Memory is epistemologically neither more nor less direct than perception.
