Evolutionary accounts of episodic memory: what are the rules of the game?

If episodic memory is an adaptation, what is its evolutionary function? Several answers have recently been suggested: perhaps episodic memory plays an adaptive role in learning, future-directed thought, or social cognition – or perhaps it has no evolutionary function at all. These answers are often presented as rivals; those defending one account typically also present arguments against competing accounts. 

In this paper, I take a step back from this debate, and ask: what should an evolutionary account of episodic memory do? A tempting, if flat-footed, answer is that it should explain why episodic memory is here, and why it is the way it is. Indeed, objections to evolutionary accounts typically argue that they fail to explain episodic memory’s existence or to explain one or more of its distinctive features. Whilst they are not unreasonable, these desiderata are often deployed in a way that assumes an overly simplistic account of episodic memory’s evolutionary history. I argue that if episodic memory is an adaptation, it most likely emerged through a gradual, step-wise evolutionary process by way of transitional forms, and it may have multiple evolutionary functions. As such, the explanatory demands that can reasonably be made of any given function are reduced. However, I suggest that this points toward some more challenging desiderata for an account of episodic memory’s origins. 

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