The wall separating Germany
Memory
To begin with, recent studies show that memory can be manipulated, consciously and unconsciously. This not only adds a question mark to the certainty of witnesses, but to every day life as well.
Of course, there is undoubtedly no question concerning the main parts of the memory, more likely the details. But in order to discuss time, which I will do after this, a brief debate about memory is in order.
In theoretical philosophy, uncertain memory is quite a valuable piece of information. For whereas philosophy questions existence, but cannot question one’s own existence, if your memories would be imaginary, it would allow for some serious toying with your mind.
However, to stay in touch with reality, it is highly doubtful that memory would be made up in any larger sense. With the invention of writing and similar physical memories, it is quite obvious that what you remember is largely related to the rest of the sense-data we perceive as the physical world.
It is thus rather a question of however the rest of the world exists, than whether your memories about it are true. However, we should be doubtful concerning the details of our memories. Over time, memories fade and quite often change. Dark parts become brighter, and so forth.
I however admit that it would be good matrix-material if we could conclude that our memories are artificial and never happened. This, however, makes it difficult to trace a limit, for what I did a second ago is as much a memory as is what I did 10 years ago, although the former may be easier to find signs of.
Thus we can conclude that such memory-manipulation would make the past obsolete and only the present to be existent. It is an interesting thought, although something one cannot easily comprehend. Similarly, all you would ever do would be of no importance, as the memories would always be made up and affect your present, if you could even said to be living in a present when the one-millisecond-ago-memories would be made up.
I leave the rest up to your minds to figure out,
cheers.
| Print article | This entry was posted by Kennie on November 15, 2009 at 02:24, and is filed under Philosophy. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
about 8 months ago
Missclicks can get you to some interesting places. At least sometimes
Btw, did you notice that text in comment box displays with black fonts on very dark blue background? :] Keep in mind that i cannot see what i’m writing
You’ve got an interesting approach here but imo you are making a faulty assumption at the very beginning of this deliberation. You assume that there is a world where something is happening, we record it with our senses and than it can be subjected to manipulation of various types. On this basis you put a thesis than there can be 3 types of memories (I let myself to categorize them
): precise (our own and not manipulated/changed), inaccurate (“damaged” by various factors) and false (theoretical category of imprinted, false memories).
I don’t agree with the assumption that we are able to create any reliable memories because of a simple fact: our understanding of events, facts, and in general of every situation is limited by our cognitive capabilities. In simple words – memories are derivatives of subjective judgments and opinions and can be only as accurate as they are.
It wasn’t as clear as I meant it to be so let me show my position on an example. Let’s say that there is a marriage – devoted catholic and his wife, an atheist. Their child is born with a serious disease. She will remember the day as a tragedy caused by either their damaged genes or or simply misfortune as human procreation is a complicated process prone to many errors. For him it will be the beginning of a mission given to him by god. They will remember the same situation but they will remember completely different things. The same thing and two different memories? Would it be eligible to say that one of these personas remembered something wrong or his or her memory was somehow altered? I must disagree.
Point of the text above is that imo we shouldn’t put too much attention to memories because past events may have, and usually do have, at least several interpretations. They may be contradictory but this doesn’t have to mean that any of them are false. If we want to base on past (I think that a human is made by his past), we should put much more attention to things that followed certain events as their outcomes than to our memories of those events.
You ask yourself a question if your memories are still as accurate after several years as when were fresh. My answer would be: yes. They weren’t neither “true” nor reliable in the beginning
about 8 months ago
Alright, comments should be okay now. Oversaw that somehow when I made the theme.
Okay, what we are talking about here, seems to me to be two different parts of the subject. I passed on the different kinds of memories and focused on memory in general, which I still would say can be manipulated later on. You are though right about the different kinds of memories, and how our subjective view of the world shapes our memories.
I overlooked that subjective gathering of memories, which I admit I shouldn’t have done.
However, this is mostly additive to the theory as a whole, as memories are subjective, we still rely on them in order to grasp what “the past” is, and without memories it would be hard to grasp time at all.
Additionally, I would still say that memories become more inaccurate, or at least changed, after a while. Bad memories become weaker and the brighter parts become brighter.
So, although our memories are subjective and inaccurate, we still need them in order to have any concept for “time”, and we rely on such memories as those we like to call “facts”, for instance our memories of mathematics, how to build or paint something, and so on. These memories are not of particular events, but of knowledge, and although we practice our subjective agenda on these as well, they are not as subjective, at least after numerous empirical experiments with them.
But then again, if you want to question the existence of the world around you, none of these things really matter, and to discuss any issue which happens in the world but outside your mind (memories are subject to sense-data obtained from the world, and thus I don’t think of that as “inside your mind”
, we must assume the existence of the world.
It would be useless to always begin by discussing the existence of the world, as the subject you ought to discuss may be ruined by such things as Descartes’ Categorical Imperative.
Hence, I leave that topic to itself.