  The general theory is that an initial cognition, e.g. a perceptual experience of an object, generates a dispositional mental state, which has the capacity, when certain other causal factors are present, to trigger an active memory of that object. (The whole process might be likened to that of someone who, having learned to swim, has a dispositional capacity to swim, which they exercise on certain occasions.) The resultant memory state has the same content as the originating perceptual experience, and can be said derivatively to be ‘true’ or ‘false’, depending on whether the original perception was veridical or not. Memory, on this account is represented as an entirely infallible faculty: there is no mention of the possibility of what is called “false memory”, i.e. having memories without any originating experience, or of “faulty memory”, in which the content of the memory does not exactly match that of the originating experience.