Interesting thread. Which type of memory? Stuff you're conscious off, or the lowkey psychomotor stuff that comes along with skills and routines. I'll assume the first.

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

It's a bit of a trite answer, but that it seems in the past. Not that the seeming is distinct from the memory, more that past-ness is a property of having a given memory. Be that recalling a fact {"I remembered that..."} or an experience {"Remember that time in school..."}.

I have lots of visual impressions when I remember things, and lots of visual impression when I visualise or imagine. The visual impressions associated with the memories tend to be less detail rich - blurrier - than my visualisations or imaginings. Moreover, a visual memory of someone's face is far less detail rich than their face when I see it. If I imagine someone's I know well's face, the gestalt in the mental image I get is much more focussed on the locus of my attention than it would be in person - if I am trying to remember what their nose looks like, the visual impressions associated with the memory congregate around their nose and the other details blur.

So something like the resolution of the sensory aspects of the memory being lower than a corresponding perception or visualisation, along with creation of "pastness" in it. I imagine "pastness" comes along with what makes a memory autobiographical? Whatever process gets called in that flavour of recall is going to mark something as "past", even if it's flagged a representation as such wrongly.

How do we recognize a memory? — J

The answer is simple - we don't... necessarily. A couple of examples.

It's not unusual for me to realize I can't tell if I remember something that happened to me or something that happened in a dream.

I have a vivid memory of something that happened when my older son was 12 and my younger son was 7. We had left them home alone for an hour or so. My daughter, who is three years older than my older son, often babysat for them both when she was 12. I vividly remember that, when we came home, my younger son was chasing my older one around the dining room table with a butcher knife. It turns out I wasn't actually there, I just remember from being told after the fact.

So, the fuller answer is "context." There are clues in your thinking and your history, but they sometimes aren't enough.

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

It's a bit of a trite answer, but that it seems in the past. — fdrake

I imagine "pastness" comes along with what makes a memory autobiographical? — fdrake

Yes, this "pastness" may be the very thing I'm calling the "feature" of an alleged memory, by which we recognize it as such. But I'm asking further -- what is it? What is the experience of pastness? This may be one of those questions to which the only good answer is, "Oh shut up, it just is." Or maybe not. If I'm asked, what is it about a present sensual perception that allows me to recognize it as such, there are various things I can say in reply. Can similar things be said about "recognizing pastness"? Your idea about the different resolutions of visual impressions could be part of this.

This is good. In drafting the OP, I found myself backing off further and further from my original claim, which would have been that we can always tell an (alleged) memory from an imagining. I'm fine with saying, instead, that it's only usually the case, as you show.

So, what can we say about these usual cases? "Clues in your thinking and your history" would be the sort of answer I'm looking for, but I question whether such clues are enough. I appeal to my own experience here: When something comes to mind and I (instantly, as far as I can tell) recognize it to be a memory, it all seems too fast and too assured to be accounted for by a sifting of thoughts and history. That's why I'm wondering whether there really is some feature we recognize -- not infallibly, but usually.

Another possibility would be that the sifting occurs subconsciously, beneath our awareness (and very fast).

Lovely thread.

How are we able to do this? Is there a feature of the mental experience that we single out? — J

On my view memories are contextually situated, probably within a causal nexus, and this is what differentiates them from a mere mental image.

Granted, memories also have a depth that a mental image or imagining lacks. Memories are holistic in the sense that they often involve multiple senses, proprioceptive senses, as well as teleological states such as hopes, anticipations, and fears. This is probably why confabulation is usually derived from dreams or hypnosis rather than simple mental images. That depth can distinguish a memory from a mental image, but it cannot necessarily distinguish a normal memory from a dream memory, especially in the case of deeply intense or trippy dreams. Still, I think normal memories possess a contextual situatedness that dreams lack. This means that the longer and more complex the dream, the more confusing it will be upon waking (because the more a dream imitates reality in length and character, the harder it will be to dismiss as unreal).

Augustine is very fond of this topic.

(In a more general sense I think it is important to recognize that contextual situatedness can be intuited in a moment. One does not need to survey, analyze, and engage in induction in order to understand whether something tends to be contextually situated and integrated within increasingly large spheres of influence.)

Interesting topic. Drive-by quote from the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy (or one of the books maybe the second):

Ruler of the Universe: "How can I tell that the past isn't a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations, and my state of mind?"

Yes, this "pastness" may be the very thing I'm calling the "feature" of an alleged memory, by which we recognize it as such. But I'm asking further -- what is it? What is the experience of pastness? — J

I'm not convinced that it is a mark so much as a kind of intuitional inference.

Suppose you can see the future. A "thick image" comes to your mind. It could be a memory of the past, a foreseeing of the future, a memory from a dream, or a mere mental image. You know that it is not a present experience, in the sense of an experience of the actual world that will in turn form a memory.

If the thick image arrives unannounced you will basically decide which it is through a process of elimination (and determining when a memory is indexed requires the same sort of process). You might do this very quickly and automatically. But memories don't generally arrive unannounced. Usually we call them up on purpose or else they are elicited by an intelligible association or cue. Because memory access is not random, there is usually a reliable process to sort out the different categories of "thick image" (i.e. things involving the depth I noted earlier). The intentional stance with which we approach a memory may give it a "pastness" color that even dyes it either temporarily or indelibly. If this is right then a confabulation probably becomes more solid each time someone surveys it and (falsely) views it as a memory.

There are indeed a lot of different "types of memory," and perhaps "faculties" involved in different sorts. I figure episodic memory is what we're focused on here, although this same thing also applies to crystalized knowledge recall too (i.e. that we can tell facts we have made up, fictions, and lies, from facts that we think we genuinely know).



My favorite book on this sort of thing is Sokolowski's "The Phenomenology of the Human Person." He talks a lot about imagination. In imagining, we can either self-insert or imagine in a "third person" way. One does not have "third person" episodic memories, but this doesn't seem like the key differences.

Obviously, they are phenomenologicaly distinct, and it would be problematic if they weren't. Pace some of the much (over) hyped studies on prompting "false memories," these only really work in vague cases. You might be able to get someone to misremember being lost in the mall when they were three, but you're not going to prompt them into thinking they went to college when they didn't, etc.

I might instead look for the difference chiefly in them being physically/metaphysically distinct actually. When considering the formation of a memory, we are talking about the senses, memory, and intellect being informed by some external actuality. Whereas, with imagination, we are dividing and composing stored forms. The two processes look quite different from a purely physical standpoint (although the same areas of the brain get used for imagining, perception, and memory, but to different degrees).

It would make sense that an actual stimulus would tend to leave a deeper impression than a virtual/synthetic one, and that we would indeed have an anatomy that structures this sort of difference into our experience, since an inability to keep imaginings and memories straight would be very deleterious for human life. Although, if consciousness is purely an epiphenomenon, there actually wouldn't be any benefit to memory and imagination being phenomenologicaly distinct (another mystery of psycho-physical harmony).

If I were building an android for instance, I would "tag" real versus synthetic experiences so as to keep them distinct during recall to avoid accidents like looking for food that never existed, etc.

Maybe we could try to approach this from the negative: what's the difference between not being able to imagine something, and not being able to remember something?

For me, what I expect to be lacking with a memory is a good deal more specific than what I'm lacking when I'm trying to imagine something. A gap in the memory is usually surrounded by other memories: there's something very specific that's not there. Meanwhile not being able to imagine something indicates a lack of experience - it's more fuzzy. It feels like the difference between closing in on something, vs. casting out for something.

This is difficult to express. I have aphantasia; I don't get mental images at all. Yet, I can imagine, say, my mother's face. I can't imagine a face I only "know" from a description you give me at all (I can try to draw it and approach it from there). Maybe like this: a memory is something living in my mind, while something imagined is a lattice of details cohering through the act of active focus. The memory recedes into the background; the imagination disappears (but might leave traces as a memory of something I imagined).

I'm not happy with this. It doesn't seem quite plausible, but I can't figure out the exact flaw. I have this vague sense of a memory being bottom-up, while imagination being top-down. A memory starts off from a unique experience, while my imagination works more by getting rid of more and more options until something more or less unique comes out. The gaps in what I'm not paying attention to are literally blank when imagining something; they don't come with a sense of "forgetting" - they come with a sense of "filling in".

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

Cool question.

So a guy walks in the room. You recognize his face and recall you saw him in the cafe this morning. You heard his name, because someone else yelled it when his order was ready, but you cannot recall his name. You recall it was a strange name you never heard before, but also kind of familiar like “Johnup” or “Jimzy” or something.

So in your mind, the guy’s face is a memory but the sound of his name is being imagined.

What is the difference between them? And how are they kept distinct?

I agree there is a sort of third person feature to a memory that is attributed to it, as you recall a lived experience, but one that was lived. Like me now, with third-person me seeing the guy in the cafe earlier. So you are sort of treating yourself in the third person, placing yourself in a past setting that is in mind through recall.

And recalling the guy’s face from earlier, you remember for some reason he had a blue tee shirt on, but now he has a white button down on.

So I think another feature of a memory is that, as you seek to recall more and more details, the recall dictates the content of the mental image you are recalling. When you recall something, you are consciously trying NOT to imagine, but trying to find what was already the case. You purposely want to be stuck with what you recall and can’t change, just like when you sense something in the present, you have no desire to change the thing either. We inspect memories like we inspect with our senses. The guy walks in the room and you can see that his face looked like that in the cafe this morning (you recall his face this morning), and his shirt was a blue tee shirt earlier. Avoiding evil geniuses, and Kant’s things in themselves, these facts are not yours to alter. The form of the memory is treated as if third-party, sourcing to the mind-independent world once lived in the past and not subject to your control now as it wasn’t in your control then.

Maybe I can sum this up by saying there is nothing creative about a memory.

Whereas when we imagine, we manipulate mental images much like memories, but not by recalling but by some creative function.

Like the names I am trying to recall - I could be completely making them up. Maybe his name is Scott and I am confused with some other now blurred memory of a strange name.

All of the above, which may not be helpful, makes me think of what certain psychosis might involve. If an image appears in the mind (like a memory or an imagination does), but the function that distinguishes this between something creative versus something recalled, that person would sound psychotic, talking about imaginary things as if recalling the past, or talking about things from the past as if they never happened and are just being made up. Or the first-person / third-person feature, if distorted, could seem psychotic. An image appears in mind that is actually a memory, but you think it is happening now causing hallucinations almost, or you think what is happening now is really a dream-like imagination.

I think I basically gave you some puzzle pieces here.

I have a theory that we think and talk of memory wrongly, or mostly metaphorically. Everything is actually always and only in the present. Most of our language about time and the past and memory and recall is metaphor.

We don’t search the past. The past is gone. We are presently recalling. Once something is recalled, we haven’t resurrected it from the past; we have focused our attention on some impression sitting in mind right now all along.
The better metaphor for memory is this: turning our attention to what happened before, is like turning our head to look some other direction, or like closing one’s eyes to focus on the sounds in the room. Recall, is like a sense, and only functions in the present on things that are present to it, like senses.
Me when I was 4 years old living in another town is right here, right now, in mind once recalled (in the third person). There is me now, recalling third person me now in another town. This me recalled is here just like the chair in my office could be here if I walked to my office and looked at it. A memory, like an object of sense, is a matter of attention, brought before us by recalling, like seeing.

So, what can we say about these usual cases? "Clues in your thinking and your history" would be the sort of answer I'm looking for, but I question whether such clues are enough. I appeal to my own experience here: When something comes to mind and I (instantly, as far as I can tell) recognize it to be a memory, it all seems too fast and too assured to be accounted for by a sifting of thoughts and history. That's why I'm wondering whether there really is some feature we recognize -- not infallibly, but usually. — J

@Leontiskos talked about context and I think that is a better way of putting it than how I did. Everything in the mind is cross-connected. Memories are not stored in one place. They are connected with other memories of the same or similar events, places, and times. Those connections are non-linear - they're not organized in the same manner we might organize them if we did it rationally, chronologically, or functionally. In "Surfaces and Essences," Douglas Hofstadter suggests they, and all our thoughts, are connected by analogy, metaphor. That is consistent with how I experience the process.

Another possibility would be that the sifting occurs subconsciously, beneath our awareness (and very fast). — J

Yes. In my experience this is absolutely true. We don't remember things like we used to look for things in a file cabinet or card catalogue. We look for memories using a mental search engine.

Lively and interesting replies, thanks! A few general responses:

This is one of those questions -- as so often with phenomenology -- that sits on the borderline with psychology. Much of what everyone has written about the brain, about memory processing, about the quickness of interpretation, etc., is undoubtedly true. And where there are aspects we don't understand, that too may be a matter for scientific research, not philosophy.

I think we can still isolate the phenomenological question. I'm asking about the experience of having a memory come to mind. (To keep it manageable, let's say it's an unbidden mental performance that comes up at random, as I go through the day.) It appears to be the case that we can usually identify this mental item as a (purported) memory. My question is, how? By virtue of what aspect of the experience itself? I think my question rules out causal explanations of how memories are formed, though I'm not sure -- unless that causal explanation leaves some experiential imprint on the mental item (as some of you are suggesting?). It may also rule out contextual explanations, such as:

Memories are contextually situated, probably within a causal nexus, and this is what differentiates them from a mere mental image. — Leontiskos

This is probably true, but is the kind of differentiation such that it would be recognizable in experience? I'd like to see more discussion of this.

The gaps in what I'm not paying attention to are literally blank when imagining something; they don't come with a sense of "forgetting" - they come with a sense of "filling in". — Dawnstorm

This is particularly interesting, and seems to fit a phenomenological account of the difference between remembering and imagining. I'm fascinated, and rather appalled, by what it must be like to be an aphantasiac. Is it a bit like being asked to translate something into a language you don't speak?

Maybe I can sum this up by saying there is nothing creative about a memory.

Whereas when we imagine, we manipulate mental images much like memories, but not by recalling but by some creative function. — Fire Ologist

I'm going to think more about this, and the rest of your post. Lots there.

Leontiskos talked about context and I think that is a better way of putting it than how I did. Everything in the mind is cross-connected. Memories are not stored in one place. They are connected with other memories of the same or similar events, places, and times. Those connections are non-linear - they're not organized in the same manner we might organize them if we did it rationally, chronologically, or functionally. — T Clark

Yes, I think that's a good way of putting it. A memory has a kind of organic embeddedness, a bit like a single strand of a spider's web.

Maybe we could try to approach this from the negative: what's the difference between not being able to imagine something, and not being able to remember something?

For me, what I expect to be lacking with a memory is a good deal more specific than what I'm lacking when I'm trying to imagine something. A gap in the memory is usually surrounded by other memories: there's something very specific that's not there. Meanwhile not being able to imagine something indicates a lack of experience - it's more fuzzy. It feels like the difference between closing in on something, vs. casting out for something. — Dawnstorm

This seems like a fruitful way to approach the question. :up:

I'm asking about the experience of having a memory come to mind. (To keep it manageable, let's say it's an unbidden mental performance that comes up at random, as I go through the day.) — J

I think it's worth noting that this is a very specialized question, at least if what I say is correct (namely that "memories don't generally arrive unannounced" and unelicited).

This is probably true, but is the kind of differentiation such that it would be recognizable in experience? I'd like to see more discussion of this. — J

Well, to continue with the "strand in a spider's web" metaphor, I think it is recognizable. I think a strand-within-a-web is recognized as different from a strand-without-a-web.

You could think of this in terms of navigability. We can navigate from a strand in a web to other parts of the web, whereas we cannot navigate from a strand-without-a-web. Or at least it is much harder. And I don't need to go through a lot of discursive exercises in order to know the difference if I am standing on a strand.

I think modern (Cartesian) philosophy has a desire for clarity which obscures the capacity of the mind for recognizing this sort of contextual situatedness. The notion of navigability is not a binary, not a crystal-clear marker. That's why I said that certain kinds of dreams can be very discombobulating (because they possess their own contextual situatedness, navigability, integrity, duration, sovereignty, etc.). Or in other words, it is hard for the modern to say what they are looking for even after they admit that they are not looking for infallible certainty.

Consider a corollary. It is sometimes claimed that in the moments before death people can have extremely long, detailed, and coherent dreams. If someone had one of these dreams, and it managed to mimic the resolution and duration and complexity of an entire life, then how would the person discern which "experience-narrative" was their real life and which was the dream? On my theory, they couldn't (or else it would be very hard), because each experience-narrative possesses its own robust contextual situatedness. On the other hand, when waking up from a superficial dream we find that it is much harder to "inhabit" that space as real, given its arbitrary contextual boundaries.

I think it's worth noting that this is a very specialized question, at least if what I say ↪here is correct (namely that "memories don't generally arrive unannounced" and unelicited). — Leontiskos

Yes, it's hard to know what is typical here. Perhaps I'm given to daydreaming! For whatever reason, the "unannounced or contextless memory" phenomenon is common for me, which is probably why I got curious in the first place about how we recognize a memory.

Well, to continue with the "strand in a spider's web" metaphor, I think it is recognizable. I think a strand-within-a-web is recognized as different from a strand-without-a-web. — Leontiskos

Or another metaphor: Let's say a memory is situated within its causal nexus in the same way as a rock that has been thrown. There it sits, on the ground, having been thrown. Another rock, nearby, is so situated as a result of having been excavated around. So, different causal stories and contexts, but we couldn't tell which was the case just by looking at the rock, or at least not readily. That's the question I was raising -- would the memory (rock #1) still be recognized as a memory if the only thing that differentiated it from an image (rock #2) was its causal context?

Not sure which of these metaphors is more like how it is with memories, especially the unbidden variety . . .

Yes, it's hard to know what is typical here. Perhaps I'm given to daydreaming! For whatever reason, the "unannounced or contextless memory" phenomenon is common for me, which is probably why I got curious in the first place about how we recognize a memory. — J

Yes, fair enough.

Or another metaphor: Let's say a memory is situated within its causal nexus in the same way as a rock that has been thrown. There it sits, on the ground, having been thrown. Another rock, nearby, is so situated as a result of having been excavated around. So, different causal stories and contexts, but we couldn't tell which was the case just by looking at the rock, or at least not readily. That's the question I was raising -- would the memory (rock #1) still be recognized as a memory if the only thing that differentiated it from an image (rock #2) was its causal context? — J

When I used the term "causal nexus" I was careful to make it secondary, after the more primary sense of "contextually situated." After thinking about your conversation with Count Timothy and the way you view causality in a very specific sense, I somewhat regretted using the idea of causality at all.

So the first thing I would say is that a causal nexus is not merely a causal history, although it could include that. The second thing I would say is that for someone like yourself who has a very specific understanding of causality (i.e. efficient causality), it would probably be better to talk about contextual situatedness.

How is a memory contextually situated? Some ways come to mind: via chronology and via the associations noted (sensual, proprioceptive, intellectual, teleological...). Like a spider's web, if you pull on one thread the whole thing starts to move, because it is a part of an integrated whole. We know what it's like to pull on that sort of thing as opposed to pulling on the silk thread of a larvae. It's different.

Regarding your rocks, a static image or snapshot will tend to lack context. If you see two photographs of two different Christmas parties, and you are not allowed to survey anything other than the two photographs, then it will not be possible to determine whether you were at one of the parties. Only if you are allowed to contextually inform the photographs will you be able to recognize one or both. For example, if you are allowed to recognize a subset of pixels as the image of a person, and you are allowed to recognize the image of the person as the image of your mother, then you can begin to contextualize and make sense of the photograph. Then you will be able to contextually situate the scene from the photograph within your own memory and decide whether or not you were present at the party. But the possibility of remembering will be impossible insofar as we limit ourselves to a contextless datum, whether it be a set of pixels, or a static photograph, or a randomly presented image. A memory is a part of a whole, and parthood cannot exist without context.

When you recall something, you are consciously trying NOT to imagine, but trying to find what was already the case. You purposely want to be stuck with what you recall and can’t change, — Fire Ologist

This is a different aspect of the memory question, but worth dwelling on, because it suggests to me the "pastness" that @fdrake mentioned. What is past cannot be changed, at least not under the same description -- could this somehow be reflected or captured in the experience of a memory? When I identify X as a memory, am I identifying something about X that is necessarily past, in the sense of unchangeable? Whereas with an imagining or an image, I don't "see" the same intransigence. I dunno . . . I'm still concerned that I'm inventing "features" in a somewhat ad hoc manner.

Like a spider's web, if you pull on one thread the whole thing starts to move, because it is a part of an integrated whole. We know what it's like to pull on that sort of thing as opposed to pulling on the silk thread of a larvae. It's different. — Leontiskos

Yes. My only objection here would be to ask whether this happens fast enough to constitute the complete explanation of recognizing a memory. But as @T Clark and I were discussing, this stuff can happen very quickly beneath conscious awareness.

If you see two photographs of two different Christmas parties, and you are not allowed to survey anything other than the two photographs, then it will not be possible to determine whether you were at one of the parties. Only if you are allowed to contextually inform the photographs will you be able to recognize one or both. — Leontiskos

I think I agree with this, but let me clarify: "not allowed to survey anything [else]" means you could look at the photographs but, per impossibile, not allow any associations to form in your mind? And "contextually inform" means respond as we normally do, with a fully functioning mind? If so, then yes, this seems right.

Yes. My only objection here would be to ask whether this happens fast enough to constitute the complete explanation of recognizing a memory. But as T Clark and I were discussing, this stuff can happen very quickly beneath conscious awareness. — J

Sure, for example:

In a more general sense I think it is important to recognize that contextual situatedness can be intuited in a moment. One does not need to survey, analyze, and engage in induction in order to understand whether something tends to be contextually situated and integrated within increasingly large spheres of influence. — Leontiskos

You might do this very quickly and automatically. — Leontiskos

In general I would say that the mind is not as discursive and time-bound as our age tends to believe. I think this is probably a huge underlying issue on the forum, not unrelated to intuition and intellection.*

I think I agree with this, but let me clarify: "not allowed to survey anything [else]" means you could look at the photographs but, per impossibile, not allow any associations to form in your mind? And "contextually inform" means respond as we normally do, with a fully functioning mind? If so, then yes, this seems right. — J

Yes, that's right, such as the example I gave where you are not allowed to let the pixels coalesce into an image of your mother.

The thesis is that the photograph from the party you attended will possess a different "contextual situatedness" than the photograph from the party you did not attend, and that this is why you remember the one but not the other.

What is your own theory of memory recall or memory recognition?


* Edit: But if you want to think about the fallible "mark" of a memory, this is how I would approach that:

The intentional stance with which we approach a memory may give it a "pastness" color that even dyes it either temporarily or indelibly. If this is right then a confabulation probably becomes more solid each time someone surveys it and (falsely) views it as a memory. — Leontiskos

My only objection here would be to ask whether this happens fast enough to constitute the complete explanation of recognizing a memory. — J

A good way to approach this is through shape recognition. If I present you with a triangle or a square, will you be able to recognize the shape immediately, without discursive reasoning? Presumably you can. But a young child who is learning their shapes apparently cannot do this. They have to do things like take wooden blocks and see whether they fit in differently shaped empty spaces. They engage in empirical exercises and eventually come to better understand the notion of shape, which in turn grows into shape recognition.

We might ask, "Is the recognition of a shape a discursive or a non-discursive act?" The answer is both or neither. We actually have the ability to "automatize" complex processes into simple acts, and the fallibility of the act follows the fallibility of the process (i.e. we can also automatize false or invalid processes). Life is complex, and not everything is like this, but it seems to me that memory recognition probably is (yet in an inevitably more complex manner).

(It may be worth noting that this "automatization" is different than intellection.)

I am somewhat concerned more about forgetting than recognizing a memory as a memory. If I go by memory alone, there were long stretches of time when I didn't shop for groceries, did not do laundry, and never swept the floor. There were no servants doing the work, so I must have. From that same time periods I can vividly recall the smell of the Boston subway. From a different place and a slightly different time I do remember doing chores -- sometimes in detail.

"Memory" can be implanted, it seems. Do I remember an actual ice box on our back porch (circa 1950) or is this memory a plant from the recollection of older siblings? I can't tell which it is. It's a visual memory, no other sensations. My older siblings are pretty sure I wasn't there when the ice box was,

Can a memory even be implanted which is multi-sensual--there is a visual image, sound, smell, and maybe touch. There are all sorts of sensations making up memories of swimming when I was young. The smell of the water, it's chill or warmth, the water's color (brown in the crick, blue in the pool) and sounds.

At least sometimes we can fact-check a memory. Other times we just have to go by probability--like it is highly improbably that in 1970 I neither did laundry nor shopped for groceries. But I can't dredge up how these tasks got done. Where was the laundromat? Where was the supermarket?

Let me immediately clarify this: I’m not asking whether a memory is automatically verified as accurate. Let’s put “memory” in quotes, to mean an alleged or purported memory, and I can still pose the question I’m posing: When I identify something as a “memory,” how do I know? What’s the difference between a “memory” of, say, London Bridge, and a mental image of London Bridge? Why is it that confusion between the two is extremely rare? — J

Why not question whether there needs to be some process of recognition or identification at all. We humans have natural responses we call memories, dreams, and imaginations. This differentiation becomes evident in the stream of life, not by an introspective process of comparing and judging images an individual privately performs to achieve some sort of accuracy.

Norman Malcolm, in Memory and Mind, presents a thorough defense of such a view. Is his chapter called "Mental Mechanism of Memory", he summarizes such a view:

"I do not wish to claim that brute-fact explanations are never acceptable. Far from it. What is objectionable is a maneuver that, in seeking to avoid a brute-fact explanation of memory responses, invents a mythology of mental items belonging to "the present occurrence of remembering," and then accepts a brute-fact account of the relation between those fancied items and our memory responses. If the memory theorists permit an appeal, as they do and must, to what our nature is, to how we are constituted, then it would seem that they have no adequate rationale for generating their philosophies of memory in the first place. Why should they not be content with accepting at face value the connections between past experience and our memory responses, that are verified by daily experience? Why not admit that if a normal person is shown a green object and ordered to bring another of the same color from the next room, he is able to comply without the assistance of a mental mechanism? Why not accept, simply as a fact, that some people are gifted with memory of music and others not, without trying to explain this difference by holding the the former must be guided in their playing or singing by auditory imagery which the latter lack? Why not concede that the influence of past training and experience is frequently direct, in the sense that it does not work its effect producing in us an apparatus of images and feeling, which in turn control our responses? The philosophers have been unable to believe what is before their eyes--that, for example, a person who witnessed an event can later give an account of what he saw. "There must be more to it than that," they think. They cannot accept, as a brute fact, that a person who has witnessed an event is subsequently able to describe it. They feel that there must be a memory-process which explains this ability. But the memory-process, consisting of some complex of imagery and feeling, which they interpose the original perception and the memory response, does not make the ability any more intelligible than it was before. The memory theorist makes a useless movement. He invents a memory process to fill what he thinks is an explanatory gap; but his own explanation creates its own explanatory gap."

Why should they not be content with accepting at face value the connections between past experience and our memory responses, that are verified by daily experience? — Richard B

I would say that J’s question does not reject or question that memory is what it is, it is just looking at what something like “connections between past experience and our memory responses“ really means, or how that “brute fact” phenomenological moment of recalling a memory might be better understood.

They feel that there must be a memory-process which explains this ability. But the memory-process, consisting of some complex of imagery and feeling, which they interpose the original perception and the memory response, does not make the ability any more intelligible than it was before. — Richard B

So is this saying there is no way to intelligently talk about “memory-process”?

The memory theorist makes a useless movement. He invents a memory process to fill what he thinks is an explanatory gap; but his own explanation creates its own explanatory gap." — Richard B

I say go for it anyway. Create that explanatory gap by creating our own explanation in the first place.

Why not question whether there needs to be some process of recognition or identification at all. We humans have natural responses… — Richard B

I just realized, when it comes to pondering the phenomena of memory, are you basically saying we should forget about it? :razz:

I just realized, when it comes to pondering the phenomena of memory, are you basically saying we should forget about it? — Fire Ologist

Yes, welcome to Wittgenstein's therapy and watch your philosophical problems dissolve away.

Yes, welcome to Wittgenstein's therapy and watch your philosophical problems dissolve away. — Richard B

Sounds like the opposite of getting high, or drunk.

The warm Wittgensteinian chastisement, correcting the question before it is asked, until I admit, “I guess I wasn’t really wondering about that.”

I think everybody should learn Wittgenstein. He was certainly a genius and explored new worlds making interesting discoveries.

But when I threw the ladder away, nothing really went missing, because I don’t think he meant all the things he said (if you can follow my usage.) (I’m being ironic, right?)

This is a great citation. I'd been looking at another Malcolm piece, in fact, the one about sleeping and dreaming, to see if I could find his overall position on memory, so thank you.

Many of Malcolm's (rhetorical?) questions pertain to my own worry that trying to find a "feature" of a memory that identifies it as such, is multiplying items unnecessarily. Yet, as @Fire Ologist points out, my OP question comes in at a slightly different angle than Malcolm. I'm happy to agree with most of what Malcolm wants to say about the brute-factness of how memories allow us to do the things we do. But:

[J is] just looking at what something like “connections between past experience and our memory responses“ really means, or how that “brute fact” phenomenological moment of recalling a memory might be better understood. — Fire Ologist

I would amend that slightly to say "'brute fact' phenomenological moment of experiencing a mental event that I identify as a memory." I'm trying to slow down and re-examine my own experience of "having a memory" to see if there is some moment of perception or recognition that it is, purportedly, a memory. I think Malcolm would say that there is not, don't you?

So:

The memory theorist makes a useless movement. He invents a memory process to fill what he thinks is an explanatory gap; but his own explanation creates its own explanatory gap." — Richard B

My "gap" is a different one. Malcolm's analysis assumes that the remembering subject is already in a position to know the content of his mental experience -- that is, an allegedly veridical moment of past personal experience -- whereas I'm asking how this happens in the first place. If I could converse with Malcolm, I think I'd start by trying to see just what he conceived a memory to be, and whether I was using the word the same way. That might show why our "spades turn" at different points.

Yes, welcome to Wittgenstein's therapy and watch your philosophical problems dissolve away. — Richard B

Indeed! If only. And the therapy can work, on certain puzzles. I'm not yet sure this is one of them.

What is your own theory of memory recall or memory recognition? — Leontiskos

I don't think I have one. Certainly not a psychological one, as that's not my field. The phenomenological question I'm posing might lend itself to a theoretical underpinning, if given a convincing answer, but I can barely formulate the question sharply, much less answer it. Hence this helpful discussion.

If I go by memory alone, there were long stretches of time when I didn't shop for groceries, did not do laundry, and never swept the floor. There were no servants doing the work, so I must have. — BC

I'm fond of this conundrum too. Daniel Dennett, in "Are Dreams Experiences?", (tm70n6786.pdf) lays out the difference between four possible answers to the question "Do you remember whether X was there in the room?":

1. No.
2. I can't recall his being there.
3. I distinctly remember that he was not there.
4. I remember noticing at the time that he was not there.

I'm willing to say that the last two are memories, the first two are not. What do you think?

I have a vivid memory of something that happened when my older son was 12 and my younger son was 7. We had left them home alone for an hour or so. My daughter, who is three years older than my older son, often babysat for them both when she was 12. I vividly remember that, when we came home, my younger son was chasing my older one around the dining room table with a butcher knife. It turns out I wasn't actually there, I just remember from being told after the fact. — T Clark

This kind of thing is very interesting. How do you know you werent't there? Has it been proven to you beyond doubt?

This is a question in phenomenology. We’re able to categorize and discriminate something we (purport to) remember from something we (purport to) have only imagined. — J

I would guess part of the answer is detail. Memories are of experiences that come with much more detail than imaginings come with. Looking at my cell phone as I type this, my peripheral vision sees a lot, even if I'm not usually paying attention to it. I also hear backgrounds noises. Traffic, my wife typing, etc. Smells; my clothes touching me; my body's position on the couch, maybe in need of repositioning. On and on.

If I was imagining myself typing on my cell one, that's all it would be about. Yes, I could imagine a lot of extraneous details, but, unless I'm intentionally doing so, like if I'm experimenting for purposes of this topic, I rarely do.

So maybe we recognize memories of actual events because they have more "weight" than imaginings have.

Also, it's often said we remember things that have an emotional component. The tricks of this one very much applies to me. I was often told I worried about my children more than was "normal" or "healthy" when they were little. Nobody would say keeping a close eye on them in a store was wrong in any way. Child snatching does happen. But it could be argued that I imagined specific scenarios more often and in greater detail than I should have. :rofl: I would see something, imagine what could happen, and son have an elaborate story in my head. My heart would be racing, and it would take deliberate effort to get out of it. I had to remind myself that it was not happening, and I'd have to force myself to think of entirely other things. I remember one day in particular, about 25 years ago. I saw a young boy with blond hair in a van. I thought, "What if that was Dan? What if he had been kidnapped, and, months or years later, I happened to spot him in a van?" The emotion of it burned it into my memory.

Fortunately, the memory is of the imagining, not an actual kidnapping. Maybe for the first thing. I didn't imagine too much detail of a kidnapping before forcing my thoughts away.

1. No.
2. I can't recall his being there.
3. I distinctly remember that he was not there.
4. I remember noticing at the time that he was not there. — J

Right. Memory isn't a record we can replay to double check attendance. It's not quite reliable enough.

Way-finding is largely memory based. Some animals (and people) navigate by remembering landmarks of some sort. Some have a less overt memory of turns, distances, direction--memory based, but maybe less conscious. I rarely get lost -- my spatial navigation is fairly good. Some people I know get lost very quickly. Way-finding is so ancient a function it's classified as part of the reptile brain.

Gadgets like smart phones, gps map devices, and the like off-load memory tasks, with the result that really very useful memories of telephone numbers, addresses, way finding, and the like are degraded. Writing itself probably degrades memory, something people worried about around 3 or 4 thousand years ago.

One can improve memory using deliberate practices. People doing classic psychoanalysis learn to remember their dreams (by taking notes immediately upon waking). Gradually their dream-memory improves. Students learning history, German, music, or whatever, also improve memory skills using various systems.

The thing is, a lot of functions combine in our brains: sensation, imagination, dreaming, memory, emotion, proprioception, the installed knowledge base (whatever we have solidly learned), physical drives, physical and mental disorders, etc. But still, memory function can be teased out by various testing routines.

I'm an old man. I've been sorting out stuff, and trying to reduce the inventory of miscellaneous stuff. One of the thoughts I have: This object (say an old shirt) isn't technically useful to me now, but it triggers memories of a time and place. If I get rid of my deceased partner's old shirt, will the memory that goes with it still be readily recalled? On the one hand: Yes, the memory is independent of the prompt. But if I don't have the prompt, how will I access the memory?

Before I forget, for all the Americans, Happy Memorial Day!

Ok, back to whatever we were talking about. :grin: