Abstract

What is the nature of semantic memory? Philosophers and cognitive scientists have long held that semantic memory stores invariant knowledge structures to be retrieved as such. In this paper, I argue that this conception of semantic memory is likely false. In particular, I argue that if episodic and semantic memory share causal mechanisms, and episodic memory is (re)constructive, then semantic memory is likely constructive too. I review evidence that suggests that episodic and semantic memory are subserved by a domain-general system that supports representing and navigating relations among various kinds of stimuli, including space, time, events, and semantic relations. I then review the supposed hallmark properties of constructivism in episodic memory and show that they appear in semantic memory as well. To increase the inductive support for my proposal, I show how the view predicts some of the evidence others have marshaled in favor of a constructivist semantic memory system. Finally, I close by providing a proof of concept for the view on offer, the semantic pointer architecture.