What Is Memory?

A fly has no memory. It never learns. It simply reacts to the present stimulus.

Planaria can be trained to run efficiently through mazes. They solve a problem and remember the solution. But do they solve it for themselves? Do they assert, "this is my solution; this is my memory of it"?

Dennett, who promises a solution for everything, says even the most primitive organism has a concept of self: at least it must recognize what is not itself, and, when appropriate, assert "this thing, which is not myself, is food for me."

Planaria can transmit their memory to the next generation. The "me" in the solution disappears and becomes "our."

So memory is an invention, enabling evolution. It resuscitates the lived-through past. Since the lived-through past must have been survived, that memory is good, survivable.

But a world of stored, lived-through reactions is a world without light. Stored reactions, responses, problems "solved" -- to what end and for whom? Even a world of individual selves is not a world at all; it is many worlds unto themselves.

A dog dreams. Dreams events that never happened. A story unfolds. Memory of what was joins with what might have been. A self unfolds, discovering a new layer. Layer upon layer. What might be. What is. What was. Witnessed by a "self." A self as a subject in a layered story.

Aristotle defines memory as "an affectation of perception or conception conditioned by lapse of time" (On Memory and Reminiscence, 449b24).

Aristotle's memory is alive, a conscious state linguistically encoded with propositional knowledge: "Whenever one exercises the faculty of remembering, he must say within himself, 'I formerly heard (or otherwise perceived) this,' or 'I formerly had this thought.'" (On Memory and Reminiscence, 449b23).

And Aristotle might have added: '...and this memory conjoins with another in a logical way: it is part of my story.'

An image stored as positional information of shapes and colors, to be replayed in the quasi-visual field of memory/imagination, is not memory until enlivened by purposeful consciousness.

And it could be, according to all the known laws of physical change, that the world and the bodies moving, speaking, acting within it (except mine!) are all perfectly devoid of consciousness, devoid of narrative memory. This is precisely why Socrates said it did not matter which physical theory of the world was correct. None of them could tell us how to unfold a virtuous life, a virtuous narrative. And it is also why Aristotle found purposefulness interwoven into nature; without it, everything would be dark, inert, "memory" without a witness.

A world of light. A world with dreams. Possibilities. Our existence introduces confusion about images. Was that my dream, my imagination, did it really happen? Hume suggested that it was nothing more than the forcefulness of various images that allowed us to distinguish their kinds: visual impressions more forceful than memories. But forceful memories can dominate a life. Forceful imagination can even cause changes in the electrical currents in the retina. Surely it is the narrative content/connection of the image, and not its forceful visual quality that gives it meaning in a narrative of the past, in a vision of the possible, in a direction for the self as a subject in a story.

Wittgenstein said not even God could tell the meaning of an image. But God could understand a silent film. Indeed, he directed one for billions of years, only deciding lately to give his voice through man.

Created on ... February 17, 2004, Modified October 14, 2004.