ABSTRACT
What is the origin and nature of our subjective experiences? Why do things feel to us the way they do? While these questions may seem too deep and abstract for anyone but the philosophers, some insight can be gained by considering the potential functional role of some types of experiences. An easy example is the experience of pain, which serves an obvious function in discouraging us from damaging our bodies. In this chapter, I will suggest a possible functional role for the subjective experience of familiarity—the feeling that an object or event is usual, typical, or has been seen before. This feeling, I will argue, is rooted in inherent properties of memory systems.
