In this chapter, we delve into the intriguing world of memory development, from infancy to adulthood. We begin by emphasizing the fundamental role memory plays in learning. We explore two distinct memory systems: one we are conscious of and another that operates behind the scenes. We examine various memory types, their testing methods, and the brain regions responsible for them. Our focus then shifts to episodic memory, questioning its exclusivity to humans. We dissect the brain structures involved in memory formation and their developmental changes. Additionally, we explore the interconnectedness of memory, thinking processes, and decision-making. Our goal in this chapter is to provide a comprehensive understanding of memory development across different life stages, laying the groundwork for a deeper grasp of this intricate cognitive process.

This chapter discusses the kind, episodic memory, which has recently garnered a great deal of attention from philosophers. In light of current empirical work, it has become increasingly challenging to accept an influential and intuitively plausible philosophical account of memory, namely the “causal theory of memory.” It is unlikely that each episodic memory can be associated with a trace or “engram” that can be shown to be linked by an uninterrupted causal chain to an episode in the thinker’s past. Some philosophers and psychologists have responded by effectively abandoning the category of episodic memory and assimilating memory to imagination or hypothetical thinking. But I argue that there is still room for a distinct cognitive kind, episodic memory, a cognitive capacity whose function it is to generate representational states that are connected to past episodes in the experience of the thinker, which bear traces of these episodes that are individuated not at the neural level but at the “computational level.”