My name is Marina Trakas and I am finishing a PhD on
philosophy of memory. I am affiliated with the Department of Cognitive Science
at Macquarie University (Sydney) and the Institut Jean Nicod (Paris), working
under the supervision of John Sutton and Jérôme Dokic.
My project aims to develop a general framework for
understanding the content of autobiographical and episodic memory experiences
as they are lived by human beings in everyday situations. In my thesis, first,
I defend the idea that our memories can change through time and so their
content can be “enriched” as well as the thesis that our episodic and
autobiographical memories cannot be always reduced to a simple verbal
description of what happened in our past but they are often charged with
evaluative and emotional components. Second, I explore the implications of this
conceptualization of our autobiographical and personal memories for judging
when our memory experience is faithful to our past. For these purposes, I
approach these topics from an interdisciplinary perspective, taking in
consideration not only research on philosophy –contemporary philosophy as well
as philosophers from XIX and beginning of XX century– but also current research
on cognitive psychology and even neurosciences.
I structure this defence in three major sections.