I argue that causal theories of memory are typically committed to two independent theses. The first thesis pertains to the necessity of appropriate causation in memory, specifying a condition token memories need to satisfy. The second pertains to the explanation of memory reliability in causal terms, and it concerns memory as a type of mental state. Post-causal theories can reject only the first or both theses.

The paper offers a modeling account of episodic representation. I argue that the episodic system constructs mental models: representations that preserve the spatiotemporal structure of represented domains. In prototypical cases, these domains are events: occurrences taken by subjects to have characteristic structures, dynamics and relatively determinate beginnings and ends.

I argue that declarative memory is a faculty performing a kind of cognitive triage: management of information for a variety of uses under significant computational constraints. In such triage, memory representations are preferentially selected and stabilized, but they are also systematically modified and integrated into generalized, model-like representational structures.

I argue that, contrary to a widely held opinion, episodic memories are not always about singular personally experienced past events. In support, I marshal evidence from the psychology of memory, concerning general event memories, the transformation of memory traces and the minimized role temporal information plays in major psychological theories of episodic memory.