Editing Thought (section)

===Episodic memory and imagination===
When thinking is understood in a wide sense, it includes both [[episodic memory]] and [[imagination]].<ref name="DictThink"/> In episodic memory, events one experienced in the past are relived.<ref name="Perrin">{{cite journal |last1=Perrin |first1=Denis |last2=Michaelian |first2=Kourken |last3=Sant’Anna |first3=André |title=The Phenomenology of Remembering Is an Epistemic Feeling |journal=Frontiers in Psychology |date=2020 |volume=11 |pages=1531 |doi=10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01531 |pmid=32719642 |pmc=7350950 |issn=1664-1078|doi-access=free }}</ref><ref name="Gardiner">{{cite journal |last1=Gardiner |first1=J. M. |title=Episodic memory and autonoetic consciousness: a first-person approach |journal=Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences |date=29 September 2001 |volume=356 |issue=1413 |pages=1351–1361 |doi=10.1098/rstb.2001.0955 |pmid=11571027 |pmc=1088519 |issn=0962-8436}}</ref><ref name="Michaelian3">{{cite web |last1=Michaelian |first1=Kourken |last2=Sutton |first2=John |title=Memory: 3. Episodicity |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/memory/#Epis |website=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |access-date=2 October 2021 |date=2017}}</ref> It is a form of mental time travel in which the past experience is re-experienced.<ref name="Michaelian3"/><ref>{{cite web |last1=Tulving |first1=Endel |title=Learning and Memory: Episodic Memory |url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/psychology/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/episodic-memory}}</ref> But this does not constitute an exact copy of the original experience since the episodic memory involves additional aspects and information not present in the original experience. This includes both a feeling of familiarity and chronological information about the past event in relation to the present.<ref name="Perrin"/><ref name="Michaelian3"/> Memory aims at representing how things actually were in the past, in contrast to imagination, which presents objects without aiming to show how things actually are or were.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Michaelian |first1=Kourken |last2=Sutton |first2=John |title=Memory: 4. Mnemicity |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/memory/#Mnem |website=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |access-date=2 October 2021 |date=2017}}</ref> Because of this missing link to actuality, more freedom is involved in most forms of imagination: its contents can be freely varied, changed, and recombined to create new arrangements never experienced before.<ref name="Manser"/> Episodic memory and imagination have in common with other forms of thought that they can arise internally without any stimulation of the sensory organs.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Russell |first1=Bertrand |title=Sensation and Imagination |journal=The Monist |date=1915 |volume=25 |issue=1 |pages=28–44 |doi=10.5840/monist191525136 |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/RUSSAI}}</ref><ref name="Manser">{{cite web |last1=Manser |first1=A. R. |title=Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Imagination |url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/medicine/psychology/psychology-and-psychiatry/imagination |access-date=3 October 2021}}</ref> But they are still closer to sensation than more abstract forms of thought since they present sensory contents that could, at least in principle, also be perceived.