Once the contrast between the two theories has been put in those terms, however, we might find ourselves wondering how much of an advance over traditional memory theories the modified memory theory actually offers. In fact, we seem to be landed with a dilemma. Prima facie, having an experience of succession requires being aware of two events that happen in succession — Phillips puts this in terms of the idea that a memory theory needs to explain how an experience of succession can involve “cognitive contact” not only with the present but also with the past. Now, the traditional memory theory does manage to explain this, by appealing to my memory of the past whizz as a separate component of my overall state of being aware of the whizz preceding the currently experienced bang. But it is clearly phenomenologically inadequate, as Broad’s objection shows. The modified memory theory, by contrast, claims that experiencing the succession is a matter of having a particular sort of perceptual experience of the present bang, namely as having been preceded by a whizz. Yet, it is difficult to read this as anything other than a denial of the idea that my present state of awareness involves an awareness of the past whizz itself, or that cognitive contact with that past whizz itself is indeed preserved, as Phillips puts it. Rather, it is easy to get a sense here that we are left with a view on which the whizz has a similar kind of paradoxical existence as the Cheshire cat, whose smile can still be around even if the cat no longer is.
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