[Revised entry by Rebecca Copenhaver on November 7, 2024.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
Thomas Reid held a direct realist theory of memory. Like his direct realism about perception, Reid developed his account as an alternative to the model of the mind that he called ‘the theory of ideas.’ On such a theory, mental operations such as perception and memory have mental states – ideas or impressions – as their direct objects. These mental states are understood as representations that encode information about their causes. The mind is directed towards and reads off from these representations,…

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