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In this thesis, I propose to rethink memory in order to rethink personal identity. I start from an interrogation about personal identity. How is it possible that people, despite the changes that affect them, recognize themselves as themselves? A common answer to the diachronic question of personal identity is that memory is what makes the self: memories allow us to connect with ourselves and to have an idea of our diachronic personal identity. But interestingly, the recent empirical research on episodic memory shows that it has a constructive dimension and is not only a storage capacity that allows one to preserve and retrieve accurate representations of the past. What does it change for the question of personal identity? I start with an exploration of John Locke’s memory theory of personal identity, and argue that to be a person, in Locke's view, is to recognize oneself as same at different moments of time and thus, in this act of self-recognition, to constitute oneself as a person with a temporal dimension. I argue that Locke’s preservative view of memory has to be revised, and I propose an empirically informed discussion on the concept of memory. I contend that episodic memory has a constructive dimension and has both epistemic functions and functions related to the constitution of diachronic personal identity. I propose a constructive memory theory of personal identity. Episodic memory is at the same time a capacity which allows me to recognize myself and, because this recognition is not a simple recognition but a construction of a representation of myself through the gathering of information from various sources, it can produce and constitute my personal identity.; Dans cette thèse, je propose de repenser la mémoire afin de repenser l'identité personnelle. Je pars de la question suivante : Comment est-il possible que les personnes, malgré les changements qui les affectent, se reconnaissent comme mêmes à différents moments du temps ? Une réponse classique à la question diachronique de l'identité personnelle est qu’elle repose sur la mémoire : les souvenirs fondent notre continuité psychologique. Cependant, les récentes recherches empiriques sur la mémoire épisodique montrent qu'elle a une dimension constructive et qu'elle n'est pas seulement une capacité de stockage fidèle du passé. Qu'est-ce que cela change à la question de l'identité personnelle ? J’explore d’abord la théorie mémorielle de l'identité personnelle de John Locke, et je soutiens qu'être une personne, selon Locke, c'est se reconnaître comme telle à différents moments du temps et donc, dans cet acte d'auto-reconnaissance, constituer son identité personnelle. Je soutiens cependant que la vision conservatrice de la mémoire de Locke doit être révisée et je propose de repenser le concept de mémoire en m’appuyant sur les sciences contemporaines de la mémoire. Je soutiens qu’elle a une dimension constructive et propose une théorie de la mémoire constructive de l'identité personnelle. La mémoire épisodique est à la fois une capacité qui me permet de me reconnaître et, parce que cette reconnaissance n'est pas une simple reconnaissance mais la construction d'une représentation de moi-même à travers la collecte d'informations provenant de diverses sources, elle peut produire et constituer mon identité personnelle.

The ability of animals to remember the what , where and when of a unique past event is used as an animal equivalent to human episodic memory. We currently view episodic memory as reconstructive, with an event being remembered in the context in which it took place. Importantly, this means that the components of a what , where , when memory task should be dissociable (e.g. what would be remembered to a different degree than when ). We tested this hypothesis by training hummingbirds to a memory task, where the location of a reward was specified according to colour ( what ), location ( where ), and order and time of day ( when ). Although hummingbirds remembered these three pieces of information together more often than expected, there was a hierarchy as to how they were remembered. When seemed to be the hardest to remember, while errors relating to what were more easily corrected. Furthermore, when appears to have been encoded as a combination of time of day and sequence information. As hummingbirds solved this task using reconstruction of different memory components ( what , where and when ), we suggest that similar deconstructive approaches may offer a useful way to compare episodic and episodic-like memories.