Sidney Shoemaker

…by the contemporary American philosopher Sydney Shoemaker, is to replace the notion of memory with that of “quasi-memory.” A person quasi-remembers a past experience or action if he has a memory experience that is caused in some appropriate way by that past action or experience. It may be theoretically possible…

, Sidney Shoemaker—think that one should engage in philosophical analysis of possible cases (“analytical functionalism”); and still others—e.g., William Lycan and Georges Rey—look to empirical psychological theory (“psychofunctionalism”). Although most philosophers construe such functional talk realistically, as referring to actual states of the brain, some (e.g.,…