Lots of memories are constructed and modified post hoc, sometimes confabulating about events that you cannot have witnessed, or that cannot have formed memories from. (Two famous examples: Memory of seeing both twin towers collapse one after the next as it happened (when it fact the latter was shown only after a large gap), memory of being born / being in the womb.)
I’m not positing that you can have causeless memories, but there is a large swath of evidence indicating that the causal experience does not have to match your memory of it.
As a thought experiment, imagine implanted memories. They do have a cause, but certainly their content need not mirror the causal event.
Lots of memories are constructed and modified post hoc, sometimes confabulating about events that you cannot have witnessed, or that cannot have formed memories from. (Two famous examples: Memory of seeing both twin towers collapse one after the next as it happened (when it fact the latter was shown only after a large gap), memory of being born / being in the womb.)
I’m not positing that you can have causeless memories, but there is a large swath of evidence indicating that the causal experience does not have to match your memory of it.
As a thought experiment, imagine implanted memories. They do have a cause, but certainly their content need not mirror the causal event.