It's a question about my relation to, my experience of, how the mind works. — J

That's close to where I'd find room for philosophy, but it's tricky.

Consider emotions. The average person is under the impression that an emotion wells up from within them more-or-less fully formed, and that it's a definite thing. What's interesting is that people in the post-Freud world also accept that they might misunderstand or misread or misinterpret their own emotions ― hence the sitcom joke of angrily shouting "I'm not angry!" But the assumption here is that there is a fact of the matter, in the sense that your emotion is something definite itself.

Thing is, it probably isn't. We have whatever feelings we have for whatever reasons (that is, causes) and then "we" ― our minds ― construct for us a story in which we are angry or happy or whatever. The inputs for those stories are manifold, notably including social as well as internal elements, but there's no pure internal emotional state to be represented. Emotions are thoughts and constructed like all thoughts.

Roughly speaking, my expectation is that what we're talking about is similar: along with the content of your awareness there's a little story, often quite vaguely sketched, about this being a memory or a fancy.

So I think in a way there is an answer to "Why do I think this particular thought I was just having is a memory?" and the answer is because your mind said it was, or some perhaps much more subtle and noncommittal equivalent ― maybe your mind tested the waters a bit in suggesting this is a memory to see if you'd bite, if that characterization of the thought got any traction and we should carry on with that, or if not we should start hedging a bit, maybe eventually admit it wasn't memory at all.

I think the story is probably very similar to emotion, because ordinary people have unearned certainty about both. We all know that memory is pretty much always confabulation, but most people are still convinced that when they remember something their memory is trustworthy; in the same way they are quite certain that their emotions are from deep inside, from their very essence as individuals, and not, for example, shaped to fit the social situation.

So ― coming at last to it, I think ― when you talk about our relationship to our thoughts, I'm afraid a lot of that is already stuff the mind is getting up to. Always busily rewriting the story.

You could, of course, give up talking about our experience of our thoughts and instead spend your time on our concepts of memory and imagination, but I think there's a middle way.

It does, after all, often matter to us a great deal whether we really remember something. That's pretty interesting, that we should care so much about a distinction that isn't all that trustworthy. When we insist that we remember something, we are fundamentally making that up ― a thought just isn't definitely a memory or not, even if your mind strongly encourages you to think that it is. So why do we do that?

So maybe your reason for posting was somewhere near here. We feel one way about a thought if we think of it as a memory, and another if we think of it as fancy. Even though those two toys came out of the same bin.

So yes I would be up for examining what "memory" means to us, why it's so important to us to determine whether a thought is a memory (yours or mine), the role all these reflections and commitments play in our mental lives. But I doubt there's anything worth chasing that would turn out to be the "genuine experience" of memory rather than imagination, because I doubt there's any such thing. Still, we behave as if there is, and that feeds back into our mental lives quite powerfully.

the act of remembering involves an implicit self-awareness that “this is something from my past,” — Number2018

I like Gallagher's perspective, and what you write in your post is reasonable and interesting. It falls under the category that both @Srap Tasmaner (I think) and I would call psychology rather than philosophy. In the quoted phrase above, it's the "implicit self-awareness" that I'm trying to bracket and focus on. Is there anything more that can be said about it, as an experience? I'm reluctant to accept that it's merely definitional of "the act of remembering."

Emotions are thoughts and constructed like all thoughts. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, I've seen some research about this. Apparently the physical or somatic experience of "this emotion" is much more general than we think. The same physical experience, for instance, can be read as either anger or fear, depending on the rest of the story we're telling at the moment. Even joy and terror, I've heard, may be identical below the level of consciousness. It's all "arousal."

Is this like memories? Are we telling a little contextual story, when an image comes to mind?

So I think in a way there is an answer to "Why do I think this particular thought I was just having is a memory?" and the answer is because your mind said it was, or some perhaps much more subtle and noncommittal equivalent — Srap Tasmaner

Here I worry that bringing in "your mind" is one entity too many. Is this the picture?: An image occurs, my mind says it is a memory, and then some other item called "I" identifies it as a memory? Or when you say, "My mind said it was," does this just mean that I said it was?

This kind of question does help us see how hard it is to work with a term like "mind". Do I want to identify "mind" with some psychological account of how images et al. get generated? Or would it be better to make "mind" equivalent to the "I", the self? Or is it this third activity that can mediate between the first two conceptions?

I actually think your "much more subtle and noncommittal equivalent" is closer to how it is.

We all know that memory is pretty much always confabulation — Srap Tasmaner

We do? I guess you're thinking of narrative accounts where there's a lot of filling-in. But surely image-memories are reliable, by and large? Or is there evidence that this is not so? Well, the fallibility of witness testimony, I suppose -- but here too there's a story involved.

I think there's a middle way. — Srap Tasmaner

. We feel one way about a thought if we think of it as a memory, and another if we think of it as fancy. Even though those two toys came out of the same bin. — Srap Tasmaner

Sure, this sounds like a good inquiry -- why does it matter so much which is which?

I doubt there's anything worth chasing that would turn out to be the "genuine experience" of memory rather than imagination, because I doubt there's any such thing. Still, we behave as if there is, and that feeds back into our mental lives quite powerfully. — Srap Tasmaner

Well, that's the question that grounds the OP. I think your suggestion is that we behave as if there is because the outcome matters quite powerfully to us. If it didn't, we might be content with a hazier borderline between memory and imagination. Quite possibly. And yet . . . the plausibility of this account lessens for me when I try to use it to describe what I've been calling unbidden mental images. I persist in believing that, in this context, there is a crucial difference between my experience of a purported memory image and my experience of a fancied image. What is that difference? Quite simply, the different recognitions involved. Yes, the "mental content" is the same, if you like, but I am not aware of adding anything to that content in the process of recognition. The experience of seeing image X and recognizing image X as, say, a memory, is simultaneous, and thus makes the experience different from recognizing image Y as a fancy. I'm not adding anything to some unlabeled or unrecognized image; it's all of a piece.

Of course, as you say, this is how it seems, and this is how we behave. That doesn't mean it's true.

Here I worry that bringing in "your mind" is one entity too many. Is this the picture?: An image occurs, my mind says it is a memory, and then some other item called "I" identifies it as a memory? Or when you say, "My mind said it was," does this just mean that I said it was?

This kind of question does help us see how hard it is to work with a term like "mind". Do I want to identify "mind" with some psychological account of how images et al. get generated? Or would it be better to make "mind" equivalent to the "I", the self? Or is it this third activity that can mediate between the first two conceptions? — J

The intent of putting it this way was just to suggest that you might not ever be aware of entirely decontextualized (let alone "raw") bits of content. There's always some story to go along with it, however vague or incomplete or even inapposite that story might be. I really could have said "brain" where I said "mind', but I liked the sound of pitching it more at the level of function than mechanism.

― I will add that I have no idea how to talk about most of this coherently because I don't know what the purpose, even what the use of consciousness is, why we become aware of some of what the brain is getting up to.

Here's a tiny example that just occurred to me in the last day or so, a phenomenon I was familiar with that I hadn't ever bothered connecting to my desultory reading about psychology. You're doing something which goes awry, say, closing a door awkwardly and it looks like you're about to pinch your fingers in it, and you just barely miss getting hurt but you say "Ow!' anyway. I've seen people do this in front of me, and everyone I've talked to about it has had this experience, the needless "ouch!"

It's perfectly clear why this happens, psychologically speaking. Your brain is busy predicting future states of your body and preparing to respond to them, and forming and emitting words takes a little time so it doesn't wait until they're needed but prepares them a little ahead of time based on predicted or expected need. (Every human conversation shows signs of this.) When the moment of truth arrives, the needed "ouch!" is already on its way to being ejaculated, even if it turns out not to be needed.

That means this "ouch!" is not quite the same as the automatic and involuntary scream of surprise pain. So what's "ouch!" for? I don't know, but my suspicion is that it is vaguely narrative supporting, either for your own consumption or others present, if there are any. "And then he pinched his finger in the door, and it hurt." It's a little label on the experience that drags along a little context, probably adds some little tabs that allow it to be in turn slotted into other, larger, probably narrative, contexts. It tells you what that moment means or could mean by telling you what it is or could be. Something like that.

My suspicion was that these glimpsed images that flash through your mind arrive similarly with a suggested meaning or context and prepared a little to be taken up by other uses and contexts. So indeed tagged as a memory, but maybe weaker than that, offered as possibly a memory, and then we'll see if that holds when you (that is, your brain) do whatever you do with it. If it just goes on by, its status is left somewhat indeterminate, but if you do indeed treat it as a memory, next time it comes up it'll be more strongly suggested that this is a memory. (We know for a fact that this happens; Paul McCartney reports that he, like everyone else, had come to believe over the years that he broke up the Beatles, but that watching Peter Jackson's documentary brought back to him what it was really like, and everything that was going on then, and that it wasn't entirely his fault.)

The experience of seeing image X and recognizing image X as, say, a memory, is simultaneous, and thus makes the experience different from recognizing image Y as a fancy. I'm not adding anything to some unlabeled or unrecognized image; it's all of a piece. — J

Right, I'm saying I doubt anything arrives unlabeled, whether that label is large and clear or small and hard to read, but that's not because the world itself is labeled but because your brain has a labeling process and you don't see anything until it's been through that process. You get them in consciousness at the same time, but I think they are still distinguishable because you can question their accuracy or usefulness separately.

We can also go backwards now and note that to lay down a durable memory it has to makes sense. People have trouble remembering random bits of stuff, but stuff in sensible patterns they can. That suggests that there might always be some minimal gesture toward making sense of what's in your mind, in case you want to remember it, if it turns out to be important in some way, for instance. (An interesting variation on this is the Columbo method, in which you pay particular attention to details that seem out of place or inexplicable, to be missing part of the context in which they would make sense.)

This is all just psychology, and, what's worse, psychology I'm mostly making up.

What initially struck me while perusing this thread is that participants generally seemed to assume, at least tacitly, a representationalist/indirect-realist conception of mental states. According to this conception, distinguishing real memories from false ones, or identifying one's own memories as the specific type of mental states they are (as @J first inquired), would be a matter of singling out particular features of these mental states themselves.

I'm glad my attention was dawn (by an AI!) to @Richard B's post, which I had overlooked. Norman Malcolm, who attended Wittgenstein's Cambridge lectures on the philosophy of mathematics and befriended him, seems to introduce a perspective that doesn't rely on representationalist assumptions.

Although I'm not acquainted with Malcolm's work myself (knowing him mostly by reputation), my perspective is informed by the same (or an adjacent) Aristotelian/Wittgensteinian tradition carried forward by philosophers like Ryle, Kenny, Anscombe, Hacker, and McDowell, among others, (and anticipated by Thomas Reid!).

From such a direct-realist perspective, I tend to construe "the memory that P" not as inspecting an inner representation, but as the persistent ability to know that P, where P typically (but not always) refers to a past event or experience. Any accompanying mental imagery (which can be absent, for instance, in people with aphantasia) would be considered acts of the imagination that might help scaffold a recollective process, rather than being the memory itself. This recollective ability is, in essence, a constitutive part of our general capacity to acquire and retain knowledge, particularly when that knowledge pertains to past events.

Furthermore, as Hacker has stressed, memory isn't necessarily of the past. It can also be of the future: for example, when I remember that I have a dentist appointment tomorrow. I knew yesterday that I had this appointment, and I have retained this knowledge today. This act of remembering might be reinforced by an episodic memory of how the appointment was made, but I could forget those details entirely and still remember that I have an appointment tomorrow. Here, memory is the retained knowledge.

Therefore, based on these considerations, I think an answer to J's initial query might productively begin by questioning some of the underlying assumptions about the nature of memory itself.

I think it's possible that there are several levels of reality. Not one single reality but realities at variable intensities. Not to confuse with truth: There is just one truth. That's a logic axiom. Reality, on the other hand, may have a substance, and that substance might be scalable.

A dream, when sleeping, contains little substance of reality. When I'm awake, I'm in a state that contains more substance of reality.

This is really interesting. Could I ask a simple-minded question? When you say:

I tend to construe "the memory that P" not as inspecting an inner representation, but as the persistent ability to know that P — Pierre-Normand

are you denying that there is any mental representation at all? Or only that inspecting such a representation couldn't result in recognizing "the memory that P"?

I tend to construe "the memory that P" not as inspecting an inner representation, but as the persistent ability to know that P — Pierre-Normand

That is what I was trying to get at. Good stuff.

Recall, as a present act, may be the real discussion.

We say we recall a memory, as if the memory sits somewhere waiting to be recalled. But maybe recall is simply a focus on what persists, and recollection is a collection of what is present, knowledge.

Like right now, we are reading and focused on what we see, but, while keeping our eyes open, we can focus on the sounds instead, or while keeping our eyes open and ears open, focus on how comfortable our socks feel… or we can recall reading what someone said above and focus on that which persists as the knowledge you have right now.

Recalling a memory, is just refocusing (perhaps widening the focus beyond sensation) on all that is present.

This doesn’t really address the OP question to me, but it may provide a new approach to how/what makes remembering uniquely remembering and not imagining or sensing.

And the example of remembering an appointment you have tomorrow is interesting. This shows how “past” and “future” are maybe appended after an act of recollection and that the past is not some sort of essential, temporal component to a memory. (However, I do think you could say that when you make an appointment, and later recall it, you are recalling a decision you made in the past; you are not remembering something in the future, but remembering the promise or desire to attend to something. Regardless, nothing exists in an existential way in the past, as it is gone which makes it past, so we can’t look to the past for anything, only the present.).

But the next part that is interesting is that we don’t need images at all to behold a “memory”, as recalling an appointment for tomorrow may have zero images attached to the recollection.

I had used the term “inspect” in distinction from “create” to point to possible distinctions between how one views “a memory” versus “a unicorn (for instance).” I needed to make “a memory” into this representational type of thing in order for the word “inspect” to work. But this discussion is probably mired in metaphors that we aren’t fully conscious of, they are so ingrained in speech and naive understandings of “memory”.

What may be the case is, when we seek to recollect something, we are seeking, analogically, like when we are presently looking with eyes. Our eyes may inform the color and shape of the object sought (thanks Kant), but nevertheless, we seek something that is not in the eye when we seek with the eyes. We seek a thing in itself. If we see a mirage we look again and again to confirm what is really there apart from our eyes and the light as reflected in them.

If we don’t think the thing we recall is what it is because of itself, if we think the thing we recall is constructed merely by ourselves, we wouldn’t call it a memory. We might call it imaginary. A memory has to have some sort of independent presence/existence/ontological status/process of verification to it.

Like if I say, “I remember seeing that yesterday; it was blue.”
And my friend says, “No, don’t you remember, it was white, and there was this blue light on it that made it look blue until the light was turned off.”
And I say, “Oh yeah, I recall, it was white.”

My ability to imagine the thing being blue and imagine the thing being white is imagination. My ability to correct myself and say I agree that the thing was not blue at all has to do with something besides imagination.

But, although not purely a construction, like an imaginary thing, a memory is still found only within one’s conscious mind. When we try to recall, we (metaphorically) look in a specific direction and that is inward. But what we look at are the present existing impressions.

Maybe the analogy is to understand that there is a time lag between when something touches your hand and when the feeling thereby created is felt by you. There is a split second lag between when you are touched, and when you feel it, and that lag starts to lengthen if you were listening to music and didn’t notice the touching at first. Recollection is noticing what was just first present an instant ago. And “just first present” can be a relative term.

Still a curious phenomenon this memory thing…

A memory has to have some sort of independent presence/existence/ontological status/process of verification [IPEOSPoV] to it. — Fire Ologist

That's what I want to say too, intuitively. And what this thread is showing is that this idea encounters (at least) two major problems:

1. Whatever the IPEOSPoV is, it can't depend on the memory's being accurate. What we verify is that the memory purports to be one; it presents itself as one; not that it's accurate.

2. The IPEOSPoV is a lot to ask, unless it happens very much below the surface.

are you denying that there is any mental representation at all? Or only that inspecting such a representation couldn't result in recognizing "the memory that P"? — J

I'm approaching this problem from a direct realist stance that coheres with disjunctivism in epistemology and in the philosophy of perception. On that view, actualizations of a capacity to know, or to remember, can indeed be construed as acts of representing the known or remembered object (or proposition). What is denied is that there is something common to the successful actualization of such a capacity and to its defective actualization (e.g. in the case of illusion, false memory, etc.)—a common representation—that is the direct object being apprehended in the mental act.

By the way, as I was preparing my previous response to this thread, I stumbled upon the entry Reid on Memory and Personal Identity in the SEP, written by Rebecca Copenhaver, the first two sections of which appear to be very relevant but that I'll try to find the time to read in full before responding further.

Actualizations of a capacity to know, or to remember, can indeed be construed as acts of representing the known or remembered object (or proposition). — Pierre-Normand

I'm going to stay with my simple-minded question, because I genuinely don't understand what this means. When an image of my bedroom as a 5-year-old comes to mind, is this a representation? It certainly fits the criteria most of us would use for "mental image". Is this what you're calling "an actualization of a capacity . . . to remember"? If it is that, does that mean it isn't a mental image? If it's only "construed" as an act of representing the remembered object, what would be another way of construing such an image?

These aren't meant to be objections, really. I'm just trying to get clear on your terminology, and how it compares with our more common language.

If I suddenly get an image of my grandfather walking beside me in Manhattan, I know it's a purported memory. And if I get an image of a snark, I'm quite sure it isn't. At the risk of repeating myself, I ask again: How do I know these things? (And see below for some explication about what I mean by "how".) — J

I've let this settle for a while, because I wasn't sure how to answer this. I don't think you've addressed the more important part of my post: and that's what is "a memory" vs. "memory".

"A sudden flash of your grandfather walking beside you in Manhatten," can be identified as a memory, sure, but even if it is: is this what the memory amounts to? Is that all of it? What about it is memory, and what about it is imagination, and what about the broader topical memory isn't actuallised in the flash?

Do you remember, generally, walking beside your Grandfather in Manhatten, even if it's not actualised in your consciousness? Isn't that "flash" an outgrowth of a greater structure that's your internal sense of autobiography? The flash is the mushroom to your fungal memory?

Do you see what I mean?

Given this, if you get an image of a snark, that would also be some kind of memory, given that you're not making up snarks on the spot. But it's not located in your biography, as it would have been if you'd gotten flash of reading Lewis Carrol. You remember stuff that doesn't manifest as "a memory". If you didn't, no "memory" could manifest.

Do you see what I mean? — Dawnstorm

I do. When we interrogate "memory" in this way, all the questions you raise are important. Are they phenomenological questions, though? I think the actual experience is cruder and less thoughtful than this -- and therefore puzzling to me.

I get the mental image and along with it, some kind of identification. You're quite right that we need to remember many things in order to make up a snark, that every image is almost certainly composed of a palette of remembered colors, shapes, contexts, et al. Yet none of this seems to matter in identifying the kind of memory under discussion, namely the kind that purports to be a) true and b) autobiographical. In other words, it's fine to extend what memory does to include the palette-concept, which makes nearly all mental images partially formed by memories. But I'm asking about something much less general -- that certain type of remembering that's typified by my getting an image of my grandfather on the street. We distinguish that from a snark, even if we agree that we need the concept of "memory" for other purposes as well, and that this is by no means the only correct way to use the term. So . . . can we identify anything in the experience that allows us to make this distinction?

You remember stuff that doesn't manifest as "a memory". If you didn't, no "memory" could manifest. — Dawnstorm

I understand the first part -- it's what I was just discussing, hopefully. But could you say more about why "no 'memory' could manifest"? Do you mean we require the palette-style of remembering in order to have the other, more specific type that satisfies a) and b)?

Are they phenomenological questions, though? — J

Think of it in terms of intentionality, then. When you get the flash, what you focus on is influenced by relevance horizon. You don't just focus decontexualiedly on your grandfather's face, for example, which you could, even if the specific look you'd flash in were compatible with that scene. You place yourself into a context with your grandfather, etc.

Meanwhile, imagining a snark has a different sense of focus. As I said, you could flash in a significant moment that involves a snark, and would be memory, but you didn't.

The intentionality of the "perceiving" act is different. The difference between "a memory" and "an imagination" (viewed wholistically as an act) is in the detials: what you focus on, whether or not you place yourself in the memory, and perhaps other things I'm not thinking of now.

The context of this thread abstracts from both in some way, and I think that causes problems, because the difference doesn't necessarily lie in the intentionality of the content; it might lie in the intentionality of the act of "remembering" or "imagining". The reason "imagining a snark" is an "imagination" and not a "memory" is because the act of imagining excludes from your relevance horizon things that would make it a memory. The reason I'd "diving down" is that most of the relevance horizon is pre-consciously given in your day-to-day praxis and only surfaces if problematic.

But could you say more about why "no 'memory' could manifest"? Do you mean we require the palette-style of remembering in order to have the other, more specific type that satisfies a) and b)? — J

I'm not sure what you mean by pallette-style. As you live your life, you select details to comit to memory and you do that by integrating them into your memory flow. If we focus on the flash, for it to be - in that moment - a memory of you walking with your grandfather, you obviously need to remember your grandfather. But that's not what I'm talking about. For example, you could forget you ever had a grandfather but still remember the scene. The memory would manifest differently (walking with someone else - substitution; who was I walking with - puzzle...). But for the flash to surface at all something needs to be there to trigger this under the intentionality of a remembering act. Some impetus. And you can remember you remembered that scene and try to remember it again. It's complicated. But if you remember you remembered something you reinforce the memory as memory in the ongoing praxis of your life. It needn't be coherent, and it certainly needn't be conscious. But it needs to be there.

A memory being (a) true and (b) autobiographical is part of the intentionality of the act of remembering, but not of the actual memory - neither the flash, nor its more substantial substratus. It's more of a success-condition, which you can check with other sources (such as photographs, or even other memories), or - probably in the vast majority of cases - just assume.

And memories aren't static. Under certain circumstances you can "remember" having hunted a snark - and it would be a memory, even if it never happened or couldn't ever have happened. The circumstances have a rather high barrier, is all.

I'm not sure what you mean by pallette-style. — Dawnstorm

I'm using that term to describe an image that doesn't come to me as a memory -- the snark would be a good example -- but which, as you point out, still has to be composed of discrete memories from a palette of colors, shapes, etc. It's an imagined composite image comprising elements I do remember.

A memory being (a) true and (b) autobiographical is part of the intentionality of the act of remembering, but not of the actual memory - neither the flash, nor its more substantial substratus. — Dawnstorm

Good, this would be a fresh approach to my problem. If I understand you, you're agreeing with me when I can't seem to find any "marker" or "feature" that would allow me to recognize a purported memory. And when I ask, "Yet how can it be that I nonetheless do make that identification?" the reply is, "Because what makes it this kind of memory -- the kind that's purportedly true and autobiographical, not merely images composed from the mental palette -- is a type of intentionality."

I'll give that more thought, to see if I can fit it into my personal phenomenology. The only part I'm leery about is "just assume," which seems to throw it back again onto something brute.

How does this happen? What is this “presentation”? What occurs, when an alleged memory comes to mind, that allows me to identify it as an alleged memory? — J

There are diverse philosophical, literary, and psychological approaches that reject the notion of memory as a passive faculty of involuntary recollection or a smooth, automatic flow embedded within routine conscious experience. Instead, they consider memory as a powerful and active force. Marcel Proust’s ‘In Search of Lost Time’ becomes a paradigmatic example of such an endeavour. He explains his method as “The truths that intelligence grasps directly in the open light of day have something less profound, less necessary about them than those that life has communicated to us despite ourselves in an impression because it has reached us through our senses, but whose spirit we can extract... I would have to interpret the sensations as the signs of so many laws and ideas, by attempting to think, that is, to bring out of the darkness what I had felt and to convert memory, still too material, into its spiritual equivalent.” (Proust, ‘In search of lost time,’ V.1, pg. 49) Here, memory is a creative force that involves interpreting and translating sensory experiences, ‘impressions,’ into their ‘spiritual equivalent.’ For Proust, the past does not exist in a fixed or pre-emptive form waiting to be retrieved. Instead, it must be produced and created anew. Thus, recollection involves a process of deciphering, interpreting, and transforming raw sensations into coherent and meaningful narratives. Therefore, memory functions as a complex interplay between sensation, interpretation, and consciousness, where the past is continually reimagined and reconstituted through the present act of remembering. Within this framework, memory can be clearly distinguished from related mental faculties such as imagination and recognition. Memory functions to maintain the continuity of the present self-awareness. It synthesizes recurring sensory impressions and emotional experiences, retaining repetitive and affectively charged patterns. Simultaneously, memory grounds coherent and intelligible narratives that contribute to the ongoing formation and reinforcement of one’s sense of self.

I'm going to stay with my simple-minded question, because I genuinely don't understand what this means. When an image of my bedroom as a 5-year-old comes to mind, is this a representation? It certainly fits the criteria most of us would use for "mental image". Is this what you're calling "an actualization of a capacity . . . to remember"? If it is that, does that mean it isn't a mental image? If it's only "construed" as an act of representing the remembered object, what would be another way of construing such an image? — J

You are remembering your childhood bedroom to be this or that size, to have this or that location in the house, to be furnished thus and so, etc. All of those mental acts refer to your childhood bedroom (or, better, are acts of you referring to it in imagination) and, maybe, chiefly refer to visual aspects of it. But there is no image that you are contemplating. That's why I prefer talking of representing (the object remembered) rather than speaking of you entertaining a representation, as if there were an intermediate object (the "mental image") that purports to represent the actual bedroom.

I think Wittgenstein somewhere was discussing (and drew a little picture) of a stick figure standing on an incline. The image may (somewhat conventionally) suggest that the pictured character is climbing up the slope. But the image also is consistent with the character attempting to remain still and sliding back down the slippery slope. The image can be seen as the former or seen as the latter. If you look at the actual image (as drawn on a piece of paper, say,) both of those are possible ways for you to represent what it is that you see. Actual pictorial representations, just like the perceptible or knowable objects that they represent, admit of various interpretations (you can see a chair as an object to sit on or as firewood). When you interpret it thus and so, this is an act of representation.

Mental images, so called, aren't like that. You can't represent to yourself in imagination a man appearing to stand on a slope and wonder whether he is climbing up or sliding back down. That's because mental images, like visual memories (or any other kind of memories) always already are acts of representation (and hence already interpreted) rather than mental objects standing in need of representation(sic) [On edit: I meant to say "standing in need of interpretation]. And, in the case of memories, they are acts or representing the remembered object, episode, event, or situation.

Thanks for this thoughtful answer. I understand better what you mean now. But I'm going to take issue with it.

You are remembering your childhood bedroom to be this or that size, to have this or that location in the house, to be furnished thus and so, etc. All of those mental acts refer to your childhood bedroom (or, better, are acts of you referring to it in imagination) and, maybe, chiefly refer to visual aspects of it. But there is no image that you are contemplating. — Pierre-Normand

It's possible that I haven't succeeded in describing the phenomenon I'm asking about. (I've noticed that several other people on this thread find it rare or at least unusual.) It's this: I'm going about my daily business when all at once, for no discernible reason, a visual/mental image flashes into my mind. Let's say it's the childhood bedroom, as seen from the bed. Now, everything you say would be true, if I were describing how the image is formed. I do indeed remember, or claim to remember, the shape, the furnishings, etc. And yes, these acts refer to the bedroom, or perhaps are imagined acts of reference.

But none of this is what occurs, what happens. All I'm trying to do is to give a phenomenological description, and I don't find any of that. It's almost as if you're giving a transcendental argument for what has to have happened, what must be the case, in order for me to have the experience I do have. And you may well be right. But the actual experience is one of a visual mental image which I claim to recognize as a memory. In fact, let's leave out the "memory" part entirely. When you say, "There is no image that you are contemplating," this would presumably apply to any alleged mental image, memory or not. And this is what I have to deny, based on my own experience.

Now there is one possible sense in which you may be correct. If all our talk about mental images is mistaken, that may be because we misunderstand what they are, or mean, rather like an illusion. But I want to say that the phenomenology doesn't allow us to make this discrimination. If we ask for a phenomenological description of a thirsty person in the desert who believes they see water ahead, we aren't going to be making any reference to whether there is water. All we can do is tell, faithfully, how it seems, how it presents to experience. And so it is with mental images. If you mean by "But there is no image that you are contemplating" the possible fact that this experience fools us in some way, rather as a mirage does, I have no quarrel. But I am using "mental image" to mean what I seem to be contemplating. For this usage I claim general linguistic agreement. And for the fact that I do indeed contemplate such a seeming image, I must insist on my privileged access.

Does any of this make sense to you?

That's what I want to say too, intuitively. And what this thread is showing is that this idea encounters (at least) two major problems: — J

What occurs, when an alleged memory comes to mind, that allows me to identify it as an alleged memory? — J

I find that with every question, such as this thread is one question, we immediately stir up ten questions that must be first answered, before we can start to investigate the single question.

Such is the life we’ve chosen.

Talking about the phenomenal experience of a memory, or of recalling, I brought up:

independent presence/existence/ontological status/process of verification to it. — Fire Ologist

I don’t mean to be asking whether a memory is some independent “thing-in-itself”… somehow apprehended when recalled - no. That’s another question. I also see that we are not asking about the content of the memory, the specifics, as if we need to know if they could be true or accurate, or not.

But let’s briefly compare a memory to a sensation and to an imagination.

Memories, like sensations, have something of an independence to them. We don’t get to purely construct on our own the shape of a memory or the shape of a sensation. We construct these, for sure, but we don’t call them a memory if the construction is more like an imagination, and we don’t get to call them a sensation if the construction is more like an imagination.

Taking sensation for granted, a hallucination is more like an imagination than it is like a sensation (although a hallucination is also like a sensation.)

Taking a memory for granted, a sensation is more like a memory than it is like an imagination (although remembering requires conjuring up images like imaginations).

So I still haven’t pinpointed something, but I raise the independent existence of some other thing as a similar feature to what helps distinguish a memory and a sensation from an imagination.

two major problems:

1. Whatever the IPEOSPoV is, it can't depend on the memory's being accurate. What we verify is that the memory purports to be one; it presents itself as one; not that it's accurate.

2. The IPEOSPoV is a lot to ask, unless it happens very much below the surface. — J

1. Certainly it can’t depend on accuracy. We are not concerned about accuracy, or having someone perform an IPEOSPoV test on a memory, or on anything.

1b. “that the memory purports to be one”. Yes. That is what I am trying to focus on. Remembering, or just, memory. What makes it, something I am remembering, and not sensing or imagining? I am saying part of what allows one to see that a certain mental image is a memory is the image’s ability to be subjected to some sort of IPEOSPoV test, regardless of whether that test is ever conducted or is the concern here in this thread.

If it’s a memory, it involves something other than the one who is remembering it.

All of the pieces of this experience of recalling a memory that connect directly to the one who is recalling, blur and distort and deconstruct the memory - but those pieces of the memory experience that connect the memory to something else besides the the mere act of recalling are the parts that distinguish the memory from an imagination.

Recalling something is more like sensing the thing “from the past” right now in the present again. The mental experience of recalling is more like re-sensation, than it is like imagining a unicorn could be said to be sensing something.

Independent existence is one feature of the phenomenon we find (or ascribe, maybe) in a purported memory.

It doesn’t matter if I recall it is blue and then someone corrects me about it being white. It doesn’t matter whether either of us are correct or could be corrected. My point is that, what shows we are talking about a memory, is that we are both pointing to “it” as something other than what we might only imagine.

Maybe every memory is just an imagination based on a false sensation having nothing to do with any mind independent reality - but we don’t think so or act that way towards a memory. We don’t distinguish the memory from imagination if we don’t assert and assume something purporting to be independently verifiable about the memory.

memories … always already are acts of representation (and hence already interpreted) rather than mental objects standing in need of representation. And, in the case of memories, they are acts or representing the remembered object, episode, event, or situation. — Pierre-Normand

This may be something like I am getting at above in my comparison of remembering, to sensing, and to imagining. (It’s not at all exactly what I’m saying, but it seems to be circling a similar observation, or vantage point.)

There is something “already” in a memory, that is not there in an imagination-representation.

I am saying there is a similar something “already” in what purports to be a sensation.

And I’m saying that whatever this is “already” in a memory or a sensation, it is not there when imagining a unicorn flying through space on an orange peel.

This is difficult to talk about, without sounding like a naive empiricist/realist, or sounding like an insane person apparently.

Yes, this highlights an important fact about memory, which is its peculiar status as both present and past. We can bracket "a memory" or we can bracket "the experience of remembering". They are not the same. The latter must emphasize my conscious role, now, in what is occurring. I, the remembering self, am a player in the drama, so to speak -- as Proust was. Of course, many on this thread have rightly inquired whether "a memory," taken on its own, is really so innocent of the self's involvement.

What makes it, something I am remembering, and not sensing or imagining? — Fire Ologist

Right, and we need to keep discriminating the "what makes it" or "how does it happen" question between two possible meanings. We might give a psychological, semi-causal reading to this question, and try to answer it by describing how memories are formed -- what literally makes a memory. Or we can interpret the question, as I've been doing, to be about how the purported memory presents itself to us, quite apart from its psychological origins. So "what makes it something I am remembering?" here means "how can I tell it's something I'm remembering?"

There is something “already” in a memory, that is not there in an imagination-representation.

I am saying there is a similar something “already” in what purports to be a sensation. — Fire Ologist

Additionally, a sensual perception seems to include the same kind of near-instantaneous identification as does a memory; we're not aware of doing a quick mental check to make sure it's really a perception. What you're calling the "already" does seem to be part of this.

whatever this is “already” in a memory or a sensation, it is not there when imagining a unicorn flying through space on an orange peel.

This is difficult to talk about, without . . . sounding like an insane person apparently. — Fire Ologist

Oh, that doesn't stop anyone around here. Say more about the unicorn on the orange peel! :smile:

more about the unicorn on the orange peel! — J

I just remembered everyone knows unicorns can fly, so she wouldn’t need the orange peel, but she might need some sort of oxygen supply, if we are seeking accuracy regarding unicorns. Sorry for any confusion…

But I am using "mental image" to mean what I seem to be contemplating. For this usage I claim general linguistic agreement. And for the fact that I do indeed contemplate such a seeming image, I must insist on my privileged access. — J

I am happy to grant you that we have a privileged access to the contents and intentional purports of our own cognitive states, and this includes memories (that may have a visual character or not), including false memories. Indeed, my suggestion (following Wittgenstein) that the contents being entertained by you as the contents of putative memories "don't stand in need of interpretation" stresses this privileged access. But this claim also coheres with the thesis what what you are entertaining isn't a representation of your childhood bedroom but rather is an act by yourself of representing it (and taking yourself to remember it) to be thus and so. And it is because, in some cases, you are representing it to yourself as looking, or visually appearing, thus and so that we speak of "images."

This anti-representationnalist account provides, I would suggest, an immediate response to you initial question regarding what it is that tags the remembered "image" that comes to mind as a (putative) memory rather than something merely imagined. The "image" only is a putative memory when it is an act by yourself of thinking about what you putatively knew, and haven't forgotten, about the visual features of your childhood bedroom. (Else, when you idly daydream about things that you don't clearly are remembering, you can wonder if the things you imagine have an etiology in older perceptual acts. But even when they do, that doesn't make them memories, or acts of remembering.)

This anti-representationnalist account, by the way, isn't non-phenomenological although it may clash with some internalist construals of Husserlian phenomenology. It is more in line with the embodied/situated/externalist phenomenology of thinkers like Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Hubert Dreyfus, John Haugeland, Gregory McCulloch; and it also coheres well with J. J. Gibson's equally anti-representationnalist ecological approach to visual perception.

This may be something like I am getting at above in my comparison of remembering, to sensing, and to imagining. (It’s not at all exactly what I’m saying, but it seems to be circling a similar observation, or vantage point.) — Fire Ologist

Yes, we are making similar arguments. I've read your excellent contributions and I apologise for not having replied to you yet due to time constraints. I'll likely comment later on.

But this claim also coheres with the thesis what what you are entertaining isn't a representation of your childhood bedroom but rather is an act by yourself of representing it (and taking yourself to remember it) to be thus and so. And it is because, in some cases, you are representing it to yourself as looking, or visually appearing, thus and so that we speak of "images." — Pierre-Normand

This is fine. I don't think we're disagreeing. That's what I was trying to get at by talking about a "seeming image." All we can do is report what it seems like. Where does the representation come from? Is it somehow formed directly from a memory? Or is it constructed by myself and presented as an act of remembering? All good questions, but not, strictly speaking, questions we could answer based upon the experience itself. Unless . . .

The "image" only is a putative memory when it is an act by yourself of thinking about what you putatively knew, and haven't forgotten, about the visual features of your childhood bedroom. — Pierre-Normand

Here you're suggesting a way we might answer those questions about the origin of the representation, based only on how it presents to us. You're saying, I believe, that we should regard the identification of a putative or purported memory (which was my OP question) as a necessary outcome of the previous process of construction by myself. That previous process is required, on this view, in order for the purported memory to present as such. That is, if I hadn't "thought about what I putatively knew, and hadn't forgotten" etc., then the experience would not present as a purported memory. It would be more like the idle daydream, which lacks that clear ID as "memory."

That is quite ingenious and plausible. But it still leaves unanswered the question: By what feature or fact, if any, do I make this identification? Am I recognizing something about the process of constructing a representation? Or am I merely inferring it from the fact that the representation has presented as a purported memory?

I have to emphasize again how simple-minded my question really is! I just want to know how we're able to do it, in the moment. "How" as in "how am I able," not "how" as in "how (or why) does it happen."

This is fine. I don't think we're disagreeing. That's what I was trying to get at by talking about a "seeming image." All we can do is report what it seems like. Where does the representation come from? Is it somehow formed directly from a memory? Or is it constructed by myself and presented as an act of remembering? All good questions, but not, strictly speaking, questions we could answer based upon the experience itself. Unless . . . — J

In keeping with my view that remembering things just is the manifestation of our persisting in knowing them (that I owe to P. M. S. Hacker) I understand those cognitive states rather in line with Gareth Evans' notion of a dynamic thought. You can entertain the thought that tomorrow will be a sunny day, the next day think that the current day is a sunny day, and the next day think that "yesterday" was a sunny day. Your thinking thoughts expressible with various time indexicals ("tomorrow", "today" and "yesterday") as time passes enables you to keep track of a particular day and hence repeatedly entertain the same thought content about it as time passes. So, what makes a memory a memory is that the thought that you entertain (and that expresses of a state of knowledge, when it isn't a false memory) refers to a past event or state of affairs and that you haven't lost track of its temporal relation to yourself in the present. However, the obtaining of those conditions entails that what marks a memory as such (and distinguishes it from other forms of the same dynamic thought) is a constitutive part of its content since your ability to locate the thing remembered in time (even just roughly, as something past) is essential for identifying what it is that you are thinking about (i.e. for securing its reference).

OK. So this harks back to the idea that there might be something constitutive of the experience itself which allows us to ID it as a purported memory. The indexical is a feature, a marker, if I can put it that way. Let me walk through this.

what marks a memory as such . . . is a constitutive part of its content — Pierre-Normand

That is, the "past" indexical ("yesterday", etc.) presents with any purported memory. It is not only constitutive, but can be recognized to be so.

since your ability to locate the thing remembered in time (even just roughly, as something past) . . . — Pierre-Normand

Again, this refers to the indexical -- that is what gives me the ability.

. . is essential for identifying what it is that you are thinking about (i.e. for securing its reference). — Pierre-Normand

The interesting move here is making "securing its reference" a synonym for "identifying what it is that you are thinking about." Consider two interpretations of "what it is": 1. my childhood bedroom; 2. a memory of my childhood bedroom. #2 requires the past indexical. But does #1? Under that description, perhaps so, but if I were in my childhood and merely looking at the bedroom, it gets a different indexical. Once again we're faced with a possible representation that is abstracted from any feature that marks it as a purported memory. The bedroom is atemporal -- it could even, granted precognition, be a vision of the future.

So . . . on this construal, the past indexical is essential for identifying "what it is that you are thinking about" if we interpret that as #2. I think you're saying that we can't fix the reference at all -- we can't represent "childhood bedroom" -- without the indexical. That would make the indexical essential for #1 as well.

I'm still mulling this over, but before I go further I should ask: Have I more or less understood you?