Experimental studies show that some corvids, apes, and rodents possess a common long-term memory system that allows them to take goal-directed actions on the basis of absent spatiotemporal contexts. In other words, evidence supports the hypothesis that Episodic Memory —far from being uniquely human— has evolved as a cross-species meaning making system. However, within this zoosemiotic breakthrough, neurocognitive studies now struggle characterizing the relations between teleological factors (e.g. interpretant-based choice-making) and phenomenological factors (e.g. representamen-centered experiences) that would account for the episodic behavior displayed by these living beings (e.g. object-oriented actions). Within such field, this paper identifies four epistemological gaps —the ‘Nagelian’, ‘de Waalian’, ‘Chomskyan’, and ‘semiotic’ gaps—, making a case for the need of a future biosemiotic model of Alloanimal Episodic Memory (AEM) to come into the equation. As a whole, I conclude that experimental developments in AEM research, and philosophical advancements in biosemiotics could converge through the concept of semiosis. Introducing the latter would account for animal episodic agency as a causal influence and continuity between the above relations, outclassing the reductionist and Cartesian separation between ‘external’ bodily behavior and ‘internal’ computational operations.

实验研究表明，一些鸦科动物、猿类和啮齿动物拥有共同的长期记忆系统，使它们能够在缺乏时空背景的情况下采取目标导向的行动。换句话说，有证据支持这样一种假设，即情景记忆——远非人类独有——已经进化为一个跨物种的意义制造系统。然而，在这个动物符号学的突破中，神经认知研究现在难以描述这些关系的特征目的论因素（例如基于解释的选择）和现象学因素（例如以表征为中心的体验）之间的差异将解释这些生物所表现出的情景行为（例如面向对象的行为）。在该领域内，本文确定了四个认识论差距——“Nagelian”、“de Waalian”、“Chomskyan”和“符号学”差距——为未来异源动物情景记忆 (AEM) 生物符号学模型的需要提供了理由进入等式。总的来说，我得出结论，AEM 研究的实验发展和生物符号学的哲学进步可以通过符号学的概念融合. 引入后者将把动物情节机构解释为上述关系之间的因果影响和连续性，超越“外部”身体行为和“内部”计算操作之间的还原论和笛卡尔分离。