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2018 Annual Uehiro Lectures (1/3): Dementia & The Social Scaffold Of Memory

Monday, 21 May '18   4:30pm – 6:30pm BST
Oxford Martin School, Lecture Theatre, Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3BD
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Details

Jointly arranged with the Moral Philosophy Seminar Series.

Speaker: Professor Richard Holton, University of Cambridge

Loss of memory is a central feature of dementia. On a Lockean picture of personal identity, as memory is lost, so is the person. But the initial effect of dementia is not the simple destruction of memory. Many memories can be recognized with suitable prompting and scaffolding, something that thoughtful family and friends will naturally offer. This suggests a problem of access. More radically, if memory itself is a constructive process, it suggests a problem of missing resources for construction - resources which can be provided by others. This applies equally to procedural memories—to the practical skills likewise threatened by dementia. This leads us away from a narrowly Lockean approach: the power to recognize a memory, or exercise a skill, may be as important as the power to recall; and contributions from others may be as important as those from the subject.

Richard Holton is professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge, and a fellow of Peterhouse. Before that he taught at MIT, Monash, the ANU, Sheffield and Edinburgh. I obtained a BA in PPE at University College, Oxford,before completing a PhD at Princeton. His areas of research are moral psychology and related areas, but also in ethics, philosophy of law and philosophy of language.

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Location

Oxford Martin School, Lecture Theatre, Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3BD