“First-Person Experience” and “Episodic Memory”

Mart Wijn · October 2026

On two widely used terms that are applied just slightly wrongly, how they should be used, and why that difference changes the whole picture. Status is marked throughout: what is established, and what is the author’s own (phenomenological) refinement.

The underlying principle

Many scientific terms are third-person operationalisations: they measure something from the outside — a test performance, a reportable state — and are then given a name. Used that way, nothing is wrong. The confusion arises when the term is applied as if it named the first-person, lived reality itself. Then an outside-measure stands in for an inside-thing — and that tips the conclusions. Two concrete, consequential examples follow.

Term 1 — “First-person experience” / “subjective experience”

How the term is conventionally used [established usage]: in the consciousness debate (Chalmers, Nagel, Friston) the subjective, first-person experience is the inner, lived-from-within experience — “I am in pain”, “I see red”. Subjective = first person = from the inside; objective = third person = from the outside.

Where it goes wrong: the term is treated as if it were the bottom layer — the bare, direct experience itself. But “I am in pain” already contains an I that makes the experience “mine”, a point of view that has itself as a point of view. That is already a step: there is already a subject. The genuinely direct experience lies deeper still — the bare appearing before there is an I that takes it as its own (the child who sees red before it knows that it is seeing; the animal that appraises without a self that says “I appraise”).

How it should be used [author’s refinement, phenomenological]: keep the conventional term — there is no point quarreling over it, and it keeps the bridge to science passable — but be explicit that the “subjective first-person experience” already has the subject in it and is therefore not the floor. The direct experience lies before the subject — before the subjective/objective distinction itself, because a split between an I-here and a world-there is already that next layer.

Why this tips the picture: the debate begins at the subjective first-person experience and treats it as the thing to be explained. It thereby looks past a layer that eludes the description precisely because it has no subject yet to be “subjective” of. Whoever takes the term as the floor is searching in the wrong place.

Term 2 — “Episodic memory”

The technical definition [established]: episodic memory is memory for specific events with time-and-place context (what / where / when), which requires conscious recollection and depends on the hippocampus. Semantic memory is general facts and knowledge, decontextualized.

Where it goes wrong: the term is used to carry a different distinction — “episodic = direct, sensory, embodied, lived” versus “semantic = abstract, acquired, labelled”. On that basis one then claims, for instance, that “episodic memory lasts longest in Alzheimer’s”. But technically, episodic memory (especially recent, recollective) is hit first — the hippocampus is affected early. What actually survives longest is non-declarative memory (procedural, emotional / implicit) plus deeply consolidated, remote memory. [Established: the Ribot gradient — remote spared before recent; non-declarative relatively preserved into advanced stages.]

How it should be used: do not use “episodic / semantic” to carry the “direct-embodied vs abstract-acquired” load — the meanings do not match and partly invert. Use the axis that does hold: declarative / recent versus non-declarative / consolidated. Or, if you want to keep your own pair (“embodied, lived experience” vs “acquired factual knowledge”), anchor it explicitly at first use — “by this I mean X, not the technical sense of ‘episodic’” — so it does not collide with the fixed meaning.

Why this tips the picture: say “episodic survives longest” to a scientist and they read the technical meaning (episodic goes first) and dismiss the claim. The real point — that the embodied, non-declarative, lived substrate lasts longest — is defensible, but falls on the wrong word. One term decides whether the whole thesis stands or is waved away.

The common thread

Both cases are the same kind of error: a third-person category (the operationalised “first-person experience”; the test-measured “episodic memory”) is used as if it named the first-person, direct reality that it cannot in fact capture.

• For “first-person experience”: the term already has the subject built in, and misses the layer beneath it.
• For “episodic memory”: the term is a testable recollection measure and does not coincide with “directly lived experience”.

The rule for clean usage: keep the established term in its own technical sense, and name separately — explicitly anchored — the direct, lived layer that lies beneath or beside it. Do not mistake the outside-measure for the inside-thing. It is precisely on that confusion that the whole picture keeps tipping.

Status, in brief

• Conventional usage of “subjective/first person = from inside, objective/third person = from outside”: established.
• That this first-person experience already contains the subject, and that a direct layer lies before it: the author’s phenomenological refinement — not settled consensus, but coherent and defensible.
• The technical definition of episodic/semantic, and the Alzheimer’s pattern (recent/episodic first, non-declarative/remote spared): established.
• The claim “embodied/lived survives, abstract/acquired goes first”: defensible with the right terms (declarative / non-declarative), not with “episodic/semantic” in the technical sense.