ABSTRACT
In opposition to the causal theory of memory, which holds that remembering is distinguished from imagining by the fact that it involves content originating in the subject’s experience of the remembered event, the simulation theory of memory holds that memory is a form of imagination and therefore that it need involve no such content. McCarroll has recently argued that, because it denies that remembering must involve content originating in the subject’s experience of the remembered event, simulationism is unable to account for forgetting. Responding to McCarroll’s argument, this chapter demonstrates that simulationists are in fact able to explain what forgetting is, why it occurs, and why it occurs as often as it does. Indeed, the simulationist account of forgetting is similar in key respects to the causalist account. Forgetting thus poses no special problem for the simulation theory.
