William Hirst, Clinton Merck, and Meymune Topcu
The New School for Social Research

The Spanish Philosopher George Santayana averred, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  This dictum is reflected in the recent psychology work that establishes that the way people remember their past influences the way they imagine their future.  The extant psychological work does not, however, address Santayana’s concerns, in that it focuses almost exclusively on autobiographical memory, rather than semantic or more to Santayana’s point, collective or historical memories.  In this talk, we summarize recent work that explores the extent to which the psychological work on episodic simulation applies to the semantic and collective domains.  We discuss the ways it extends and possible limitations on extensions.