If I see a face, I don't compare it to a stored memory and (consciously or unconsciously) to the memory of the face I have. — GraveItty

Is there a good reason to claim this? Cognitive neuroscience would tell us that the ability to recognise - the ability to make a qualitative judgement of familiar~novel, or match~mismatch - is pretty central to everything the brain does.

So a sense of things being known or unknown is built into the process of perception as a critical contrast.

If I see a face, I don't compare it to a stored memory and (consciously or unconsciously) to the memory of the face I have. How could it be like this? If I compare them, and see that they are the same then, well, how can I remember I have seen the face before? — GraveItty

I don't think understanding how the brain or consciousness works is a matter for logic or seems-to-me philosophy. It's a matter of psychology, cognitive science.

I'm not looking for a scientific explanation. I already have one. I'm looking for a philosophical one. What makes a face famiar? What does it mean that you know a face? I must have been more specific. I explained though that it's not computer memory-like. So you can't say: I have seen you yesterday because you are stored in my memory. It's still a pity that poem subject is gone. Can't understand it still. Took the poetic universe over?

I'm not looking for a scientific explanation. I already have one. — GraveItty

No one has anything but a preliminary understanding of how memory and consciousness work. Trying to do the philosophy without adequate understanding of the mechanics won't work.

No one has anything but a preliminary understanding of how memory and consciousness work. Trying to do the philosophy without adequate understanding of the mechanics won't work. — T Clark

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_Lost_Time

I'd say Proust is more than preliminary, but some may disagree.

No one has anything but a preliminary understanding of how memory and consciousness work. Trying to do the philosophy without adequate understanding of the mechanics won't work. — T Clark

That's what you say. Of course there is. Introspection for example is non-scientific. Even philosophical. Besides, why should science not be included in philosophy? They were a whole once. I can't help it that you have no understanding of it... No offense... :smile:

That's what you say. Of course there is. Introspection for example is non-scientific. Even philosophical. Besides, why should science not be included in philosophy? They were a whole once. I can't help it that you have no understanding of it... No offense... — GraveItty

You are discussing the details of how memory must work without knowing what science already knows about how it does work.

For many if not most of us its not a photographic process. I was a rock climber for many years and frequently had the following experience: I would work on a climbing problem for awhile, the come back a couple of days later to work on it again, and the section of rock would be familiar with the holds about where I remember them. But if I stayed away from the challenge for some time, thinking about it from time to time, when I returned the section of rock was "familiar", but the hand and footholds were sometimes where I didn't remember them.

I've had the same experience with faces. Again, the familiarity but the features not quite how I remember them (assuming physical changes haven't occurred in the time span).

You are discussing the details of how memory must work without knowing what science already knows about how it does work.
8m — T Clark

Where did I say that? Again, you put the words into my thread.

You are discussing the details of how memory must work without knowing what science already knows about how it does work.
8m
— T Clark

Where did I say that? Again, you put the words into my thread. — GraveItty

You said this:

Our memory doesn't make use of comparison. — GraveItty

I explained though that it's not computer memory-like. — GraveItty

You mean not like a Turing Machine, or not like any kind of machine architecture, including neural networks that try to mimic the brain?

I'm not looking for a scientific explanation. I already have one. I'm looking for a philosophical one. — GraveItty

It is unclear what you seek. But neuroscience would aim for a more sophisticated account than a Cartesian strawman such as comparing a memory of a face with an experience of a face.

So philosophically speaking, we would want to leave behind a representationalist framing of the issue and move towards an enactive or semiotic one.

I'm not looking for a scientific explanation. I already have one. I'm looking for a philosophical one. — GraveItty

Thomas Fuchs incorporates the phenomenological philosophy of Merleau Ponty in his model of memory and the bodily unconscious:

“In body memory, the situations and actions experienced in the past are, as it were, all fused together without any of them standing out individually. Through the repetition and superimposition of experiences, a habit structure has been formed: well-practiced motion sequences, repeatedly perceived gestalten, forms of actions and interactions have become an implicit bodily knowledge and skill.” (Fuchs 2011)

“From the point of view of a phenomenology of the lived body, the unconscious is not an intrapsychic reality residing in the depths "below consciousness". Rather, it surrounds and permeates conscious life, just as in picture puzzles the figure hidden in the background surrounds the foreground, and just as the lived body conceals itself while functioning.”

“Unconscious fixations are like certain restrictions in a person's space of potentialities produced by an implicit but ever-present past which declines to take part in the continuing progress of life.”

So? Why shouldn't I say that? And why shouldn't science, from physics to neuro-biology, and math be included on this forum? Math is the ultimate abstract formal system, originating in old Greece. I believe Plato loved it. So did the natural phenomena. Philosophy was the whole package, so to speak. Is it because there are separate forums for this? If so, then it's no real philosophy here. As it included it all. Why exclude real science, when the awe for it is so many times mentioned. The philosophy of science is included, so why not science itself? A fear of crackpots who can't find a way on the "official" ones?

Is there a good reason to claim this? Cognitive neuroscience would tell us that the ability to recognise — apokrisis

It's a fact that the memory doesn't function like storing data on a computer. It's nonsense to claim the memory contains a zillion bytes of information. So there is no comparison. And even if there was, how does a comparison constitute a memory. I can say that two faces are the same, but that's no memory.

Why shouldn't I say that? — GraveItty

Because you don't know if it's true, you just think it must be true. You haven't indicated you have any specific scientific knowledge about whether memory includes comparison. I infer that you don't.

Because you don't know if it's true, you just think it must be true. — T Clark

If I don't know if it's true, then why shouldn't I say it? Kinda funny attitude. But scientifically sound, no doubt. Oh, the memory doesn't compare insofar memory is involved. You have to recognize what you compare with too.

If I don't know if it's true, then why shouldn't I say it? — GraveItty

I have no response to this.

A pity. You had some constructive critique, so beloved in philosophy (though philosophy is more than the invention of abstract formal systems).

In body memory, the situations and actions experienced in the past are, as it were, all fused together without any of them standing out individually. Through the repetition and superimposition of experiences, a habit structure has been formed: well-practiced motion sequences, repeatedly perceived gestalten, forms of actions and interactions have become an implicit bodily knowledge and skill.” — Joshs

That's something I mean exactly! I'll contemplate it.

It's a fact that the memory doesn't function like storing data on a computer. It's nonsense to claim the memory contains a zillion bytes of information. So there is no comparison. — GraveItty

No comparison to what? I agree, no comparison of any merit to a Turing Machine. But why not of some comparison to a neural network?

And even if there was, how does a comparison constitute a memory. I can say that two faces are the same, but that's no memory. — GraveItty

If your argument is about rejecting the term "memory", then I would tend to agree.

A first clarification would be that brains work not on stored memories but active anticipations. They are designed not to remember the past but predict the future. So the comparison is between what is expected to be the case, and what turns out to be the case.

When we recognise people, things and places, it is in the context of some forward looking expectation. If I see you in the street, I am mildly surprised to see someone I know. I was mostly expecting to see people I don't know. So your presence pops out as emotionally significant, attentionally salient. A fact promoted to focal consciousness.

That focus then brings with it a fresh "computation" of my expectations. I am now flush with all the likely and unlikely possibilities that may characterise my interaction with this "you". The forward prediction of "my" world is maintained.

So the story is not about knitting together the present and the past, but about updating my general orientation to my immediate future.

The second clarification is that humans have language and so can do more than just do simple recognitiion. We can linguistically construct states of recollection. We can learn the habit of seeing our selves as selves that exist in the past and so imagine ourselves reacting to situations at other moments of time. We can construct autobiographical narratives - such as remembering you when I last saw you as some sort of episodic memory.

Eyewitness research and other psychology tells us how unreliable and constructed such narratives are. But still, this gives a whole other level to any discussion of what memory is.

As we layer the social skill of recollection on top of the animal skill of recognition, we move further away from any simplistic and mechanical notion of the comparison of active states of experience with passive stores of data.

It's nice the body is involved here. If I see a face there is a neuronal process. Say I look steadily at the face. There are pathways strengenth. A path of least resistance forms (in fact a bunch of parallel ones). Then later on, I look at the same face. Is the falling in the same path the recognition. The memory?

No comparison to what — apokrisis

To the impression one had before. There are no two different images of a face I see. Though the face leaves a trace in the brain. A pattern of least resistance. If I see the face of my wife, there is a kind of falling in this trace, so to speak. Is this trace the memory? If so there can be zillions of traces, due to the complexity of the network. One neuron can be involved in multiple memories. So there is a kind of comparison made, as I see now. The face is drawn to the trace, so to speak. But there is no litteral comparison.

So there is a kind of comparison made, as I see now. The face is drawn to the trace, so to speak. But there is no litteral comparison. — GraveItty

So simulated annealing? Hebbian gradients?

Do you want pointers to scientific models of recognition? What you seem to want to say is just the usual way of understanding the associative structure of the brain's neural networks.

Is the falling in the same path the recognition. The memory? — GraveItty

The memory as we experience it is always a reconstruction , a reinterpretation of what was. It is a cobbling together of what is new in our situational comportment with channels of interaction with the world already carved in our bodies out by habits of behaving.

Check out this article:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ke-Kaehler/publication/226320095_Body_Memory_and_the_Unconscious/links/00b7d52de303902b6d000000/Body-Memory-and-the-Unconscious.pdf?_sg%5B0%5D=-vtNULO_M3o6Zx9sUSjbcyfbi8-GlW6jzJ3E2-02gHFGMo8_VOea9-ValkxIVdn_wDcJ_dMfb-h77FFQyChp9A.oM_YRUKFqpoHtZd0n054eONWcUutPPUXt3Rz42idLm4ikfcu7rki-CKH0oKaHG7c6wzsgpcQdmJ3QoZ3ELMfHQ.-_uh8OHaZ-pI3tb_JZETCTiZBBPrEmo6WSNCKLUy0Q6N6lxLHKUL4is8kxwZhPJ2bRlFWWdMCvqEet_r_p0Zvw&_sg%5B1%5D=bbOZK7ElMthHLlbxM9hLqmnFGwFcdMfO9vYrxL8ZsupDjXAS5IFFAwKi-YfPK5emYDCoGp-BKmkTFTx2FDx5t4e9GZDLk_eVVnY0LM1AeqQR.oM_YRUKFqpoHtZd0n054eONWcUutPPUXt3Rz42idLm4ikfcu7rki-CKH0oKaHG7c6wzsgpcQdmJ3QoZ3ELMfHQ.-_uh8OHaZ-pI3tb_JZETCTiZBBPrEmo6WSNCKLUy0Q6N6lxLHKUL4is8kxwZhPJ2bRlFWWdMCvqEet_r_p0Zvw&_iepl=

Do you want pointers to scientific models of recognition? What you seem to want to say is just the usual way of understanding the associative structure of the brain's neural networks. — apokrisis

I want to understand memory. I understand it, of course. But I don't understand why it is said that it's an unknown phenomenon, scientifically. What happens when I remember a sight? How can one say the memory has a number of bits information, while in reality I can remember many more that number? More than a number of one's and zeros? What does it even mean to say my brain contains 2000 Gbytes of information? The brain is no digital computer. Most things leave traces in the brain. There are more possible traces in the brain than there are elementary particles in the universe.

The memory as we experience it is always a reconstruction — Joshs

I wanted to write exactly the same!

The memory as we experience it is always a reconstruction , a reinterpretation of what was. It is a cobbling together of what is new in our situational comportment with channels of interaction with the world already carved in our bodies out by habits of behaving. — Joshs

I think this is the answer!

Interesting articles! Seems they fit my bill. Thanks! :smile:

I'm not sure I understand the bodily memory. Do you think the very recognizing is a kind of relapsing into an earlier state?

The brain is no digital computer. Most things leave traces in the brain. There are more possible traces in the brain than there are elementary particles in the universe. — GraveItty

Yep. And unlike the conventional notion of a computer – the representational understanding - meaning arises semiotically. What is significant is the brain's ability to eliminate that all that "information".

To recognise is to whittle a near infinity of possibilities down to some useful act of identification. In a split second, any number of less well fitting states of interpretation are discarded.

So computers place high value on storing information. Brains place high value on how much can instead be ignored.

Recognition is something forced on our attention by our inability to otherwise look past some aspect of our environment.