‘A picture is worth a thousand words’ ; ‘Picture this!’ ; ’She is painting a black picture’ . . . — Many of our familiar idioms about depiction – however trite they may be – capture some salient property of pictures: pictures are informationally rich, can be of particular objects or events, and allow the viewer to take a new perspective or immerse themself in the picture. Pictures can further abstract away from, alter some (or more) details of, or even change the overall valence of the depicted target. In fact, given sufficient creative liberties, pictures need not depict any target whatsoever. My talk investigates the similarities between pictures and the intuitive objects of our episodic memories [= memories of personally experienced events]. It argues that these similarities warrant applying the rich analytical tools from picture semantics to current issues in the philosophy of memory. I contend that such application will help structure and advance discussion in contemporary philosophy of memory. I will illustrate the merits of such application on the debate about the propositional nature of episodic memory contents.
