The phenomenology of generalized episodic remembering

The orthodox idea that episodic memory refers to particular events in the past has recently been challenged in light of the pervasive presence of episodic memories for multiple but similar events. Most authors implicitly endorse that these memories, which I will call “generalised episodic memories,” are experienced differently from particular ones. It is through these experiential features that the subject becomes aware of the generalized character of an episodic memory. However, most authors have focused on the objective factors that make an episodic memory generalized, particularly in questions concerning mnemic reference. In this paper, I turn instead to the subjective question, i.e. what distinguishes particular episodic memories from generalized ones from the subject’s point of view. I explore different ways in which this subjective question could be addressed and then favor a metacognitive view, according to which generality is experienced as an epistemic feeling produced by metacognitive monitoring. Finally, I argue that this conception of the generality–particularity dimension has important implications for the overall study of the phenomenology of episodic memory.