Yesterday 01:55 AM
(This post was last modified: Yesterday 07:23 AM by Magical Realist.)
"If we assume from the start that everything mental must be reducible to something physical, then we close the possibility of understanding the mind on its own terms. We have consigned ourselves to translating the wealth of subjective experience into impoverished neural patterns, only to then realize that this has not helped us to “explain” memory in any meaningful sense of the word. A genuine science of memory would begin by questioning the storage metaphor itself. Perhaps memories are not stored “anywhere.” Perhaps the brain’s role is not to house the past, but to facilitate our engagement with it."--- https://iai.tv/articles/memory-is-not-st..._auid=2020
Where then, and in what sense, are memories when we are not remembering? Does not the very metaphor of "storing" memories in some container contradict the very nature of a memory being only a present and subjective experience--a moment of pure conscious recollection? A memory could therefore no more be stored in a physical form than a perception of our immediate environment could be. It is a state of first-hand experience of the past--roughly as we experienced it. This suggests to me a sort of fractal-like structure of the mind, retaining within its own non-physical depths of its structures all the events that occurred to us in the past. Think of memories as the mind's stitchwork interweaving together our sense of one present state of consciousness. I don't agree with the above author that memories are outside of space. I feel like they generate their own space or simultaneity in how they all seem to present themselves without any of their original sequence. Our past is just this randomly flashing montage of moments all seeming to be in the same location, wherever that may be. Perhaps some sort of cognitive hyperspace like cyberspace.
Where then, and in what sense, are memories when we are not remembering? Does not the very metaphor of "storing" memories in some container contradict the very nature of a memory being only a present and subjective experience--a moment of pure conscious recollection? A memory could therefore no more be stored in a physical form than a perception of our immediate environment could be. It is a state of first-hand experience of the past--roughly as we experienced it. This suggests to me a sort of fractal-like structure of the mind, retaining within its own non-physical depths of its structures all the events that occurred to us in the past. Think of memories as the mind's stitchwork interweaving together our sense of one present state of consciousness. I don't agree with the above author that memories are outside of space. I feel like they generate their own space or simultaneity in how they all seem to present themselves without any of their original sequence. Our past is just this randomly flashing montage of moments all seeming to be in the same location, wherever that may be. Perhaps some sort of cognitive hyperspace like cyberspace.
