The recording of the ‘Philosophy Live’ panel ‘Living in the past: exploring memory in humans, animals, and artificial agents’ is now online on YouTube.

Why live in the past? Humans reminisce and remember past events, even ‘replaying’ them in the mind’s eye. But why not just live in the moment? What’s the point in devoting mental resources to storing information about the past? Do other animals do this, or is dwelling on the past a uniquely human innovation? And what happens when we build this kind of memory into intelligent machines?

These are some of the questions our expert panel discussed this week. Many thanks to our panelists Ali Boyle, Felipe De Brigard, Nicola Clayton, Johannes Mahr, and Zafeirios Fountas – and to all guests for the interesting discussion.

Link to the video.