The problem with philosophy
one-hand-clapping
thought. When thought is taken as a way of reaching "the truth"
(whatever we imagine that to be), life becomes a problem - emotionally,
morally, philosophically.
Thoughts are merely labels, conceptual overlays on a reality that IS. I
look at that "thing" over there and the thought bubbles up "it's a
tree, and a tree is....". But without the label, what is that "thing"
over there? It's a divine mystery. Thought - knowledge - destroys the
mystery. And the mystery cannot be denied - science and philosophy
evolved as a way of "working out" the mystery. No divine mystery, no
sense of awe - no human knowledge quest in the first place!!! (All
"objective" sciences are founded on that very subjective feeling of
"Wow, I want to understand this"..... )
Humans live in thought - which is to say we live in labels. But we all
know that those moments in which we are most joyous, most peaceful,
most alive are those moments when all labels fall away, that is to say
the "I" falls away, and there is just THIS, unspeakable, unknowable
THIS in all its glory, all its immediacy, all its mystery.
With all our wonderful philosophies human still manage to kill each
other in record numbers (100 million dead through wars in the last
century alone). Doesn't this show that there is an inherent problem
with philosophy, with human thought?
Philosophy has its place - but its just a fun little game. Too many
people take it way too seriously, and get very angry with people who
say what I say. No doubt, that is what will happen with this
post.....;)
alan jones
Great post.
Now tell me, is philosophy merely knowledge, or understanding? It
seems to me you argue for the guest of understanding, whilst
making this case for the way definitions, simply hold us on the
surface of that understanding.
Perhaps all there is, or all we are capable of, is an understanding
of these relationships [of definitions]. The quests for understanding
calls for us to see what is there, and not just accept as knowledge,
a claim for what is.
It seems to me philosophy is about this quest to see the common
place, the near invisible, the habits, traditions and manners,
which exist as such a big part of our daily lives. To see the
common place with fresh eyes.
one-hand-clapping
>place, the near invisible, the habits, traditions and manners,
>which exist as such a big part of our daily lives. To see the
>common place with fresh eyes.
Yes - but so often it descends into the violence of "I'm right, you're
wrong!" - as demonstrated nearly every day in this newsgroup!
one-hand-clapping
>managed to invent super computers and blast off rockets?
Yes, but at what price? Look at what we're doing to the environment.
I'm no liberal greenie but anyone with a shred of sense has to admit
we're being pretty closed minded.
And I'd rather have peace than digital watches, reality TV and faster
computers.
We can't even live in peace with our neighbours, with our families...
and yet we can send people to the moon. We invent genocides and conduct
wars in the name of "spreading democracy" and yet our prison
populations are becoming overwhelming and more people suffer from
mental illness than ever.
Sir Frederick
Thanks for your post.
Unfortunately, we are not gods.
Most everything we do is "half assed",
even "philosophy".
<clip>
>
>With all our wonderful philosophies human still manage to kill each
>other in record numbers (100 million dead through wars in the last
>century alone). Doesn't this show that there is an inherent problem
>with philosophy, with human thought?
On your problem with killing :
-------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_12.html
DAVID BUSS
Psychologist, University of Texas, Austin; Author, The Murderer Next Door: Why the Mind is Designed to Kill
The Evolution of Evil
When most people think of torturers, stalkers, robbers, rapists, and murderers, they imagine crazed drooling monsters with maniacal
Charles Manson-like eyes. The calm normal-looking image starring back at you from the bathroom mirror reflects a truer
representation. The dangerous idea is that all of us contain within our large brains adaptations whose functions are to commit
despicable atrocities against our fellow humans — atrocities most would label evil.
The unfortunate fact is that killing has proved to be an effective solution to an array of adaptive problems in the ruthless
evolutionary games of survival and reproductive competition: Preventing injury, rape, or death; protecting one's children;
eliminating a crucial antagonist; acquiring a rival's resources; securing sexual access to a competitor's mate; preventing an
interloper from appropriating one's own mate; and protecting vital resources needed for reproduction.
The idea that evil has evolved is dangerous on several counts. If our brains contain psychological circuits that can trigger murder,
genocide, and other forms of malevolence, then perhaps we can't hold those who commit carnage responsible: "It's not my client's
fault, your honor, his evolved homicide adaptations made him do it." Understanding causality, however, does not exonerate murderers,
whether the tributaries trace back to human evolution history or to modern exposure to alcoholic mothers, violent fathers, or the
ills of bullying, poverty, drugs, or computer games. It would be dangerous if the theory of the evolved murderous mind were misused
to let killers free.
The evolution of evil is dangerous for a more disconcerting reason. We like to believe that evil can be objectively located in a
particular set of evil deeds, or within the subset people who perpetrate horrors on others, regardless of the perspective of the
perpetrator or victim. That is not the case. The perspective of the perpetrator and victim differ profoundly. Many view killing a
member of one's in-group, for example, to be evil, but take a different view of killing those in the out-group. Some people point to
the biblical commandment "thou shalt not kill" as an absolute. Closer biblical inspection reveals that this injunction applied only
to murder within one's group.
Conflict with terrorists provides a modern example. Osama bin Laden declared: "The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies —
civilians and military — is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it." What
is evil from the perspective of an American who is a potential victim is an act of responsibility and higher moral good from the
terrorist's perspective. Similarly, when President Bush identified an "axis of evil," he rendered it moral for Americans to kill
those falling under that axis — a judgment undoubtedly considered evil by those whose lives have become imperiled.
At a rough approximation, we view as evil people who inflict massive evolutionary fitness costs on us, our families, or our allies.
No one summarized these fitness costs better than the feared conqueror Genghis Khan (1167-1227): "The greatest pleasure is to
vanquish your enemies, to chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth, to see their near and dear bathed in tears, to ride
their horses and sleep on the bellies of their wives and daughters."
We can be sure that the families of the victims of Genghis Khan saw him as evil. We can be just as sure that his many sons, whose
harems he filled with women of the conquered groups, saw him as a venerated benefactor. In modern times, we react with horror at Mr.
Khan describing the deep psychological satisfaction he gained from inflicting fitness costs on victims while purloining fitness
fruits for himself. But it is sobering to realize that perhaps half a percent of the world's population today are descendants of
Genghis Khan.
On reflection, the dangerous idea may not be that murder historically has been advantageous to the reproductive success of killers;
nor that we all house homicidal circuits within our brains; nor even that all of us are lineal descendants of ancestors who
murdered. The danger comes from people who refuse to recognize that there are dark sides of human nature that cannot be wished away
by attributing them to the modern ills of culture, poverty, pathology, or exposure to media violence. The danger comes from failing
to gaze into the mirror and come to grips the capacity for evil in all of us.
one-hand-clapping
>to gaze into the mirror and come to grips the capacity for evil in all of us.
My sentiments entirely. Explaining the problem of evil away by
attributing it to faulty brain chemistry, genetics, "animal instinct"
(none of which has ever, EVER been proved) is a refusal to take
responsiblity for it when it arises in us. "Oh, it's my genes, I can't
help it! My brain chemistry is out of whack today, I can't help it!...
It's just the way I am, I can't help it!" That very lack of
responsibility IS evil. All the sophistry in the world can't excuse it.
"I can't help it" - That, if anything, is evil. Let us take
responsiblity for the evil in US. Can we do that?
one-hand-clapping
I think that's the problem. We created gods, as an "ideal", and we
always fail to live up to that ideal. Why create the ideal if we can
never live up to it? Can't we be honest with ourselves?
Let's stop striving for an ideal and deal with what is the case NOW.
And NOW, there is violence in us. So let's take responsibity for THAT
and quit praying to our invented gods to save us. We can only save
ourselves. Our invented gods will not do it for us.
And I think once we do that, once the "gods" leave our system - then,
perhaps, we are gods at last, for we have taken full responsiblity for
what we do. Maybe then we will be the gods we have always strived to
be. Or maybe not. I fancy a beer.
andy-k
>
> When thought is taken as a way of reaching "the truth"
> (whatever we imagine that to be), life becomes a problem
'Truth' *is* a thought, and nothing more.
Immortalist
"one-hand-clapping" <onehandc...@fastmail.fm> wrote in message
news:1137081405.8...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> Philosophy in its entirety is a linguistic problem, a problem of human
> thought. When thought is taken as a way of reaching "the truth"
> (whatever we imagine that to be), life becomes a problem - emotionally,
> morally, philosophically.
>
What in human culture and communication is not a linguistic problem?
Its like your saying we should get rid of all English teachers because
grammarians only make us pay attention to how we compose things into
sentences and essays. But how is grammar their fault? We are probably
grammatical creatures, who did what to whom or what did what to what as most
mammals are capable of reasoning, so this seem more like a shoot the
messenger thing. But then we would go on, after all philosophers have been
killed, using the very same principles. Hypocrite yea are if yea believe
that philosophy is above regular human inferential apperatus function.
one-hand-clapping
>grammarians only make us pay attention to how we compose things into
>sentences and essays. But how is grammar their fault?
That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm not blaming philosophers for
anything. Philosophy is a good way of making a living, and making a
name for yourself. But I feel that most philosophers are chasing
ghosts. They produce huge volumes full of words. Complex philosophical
systems are just a bunch of words. Words about what is behind the words
- that is still words. Words about the futility of words - that is more
words. Nobody can be a philosopher without using words. And yet what
are words? Labels, signs, pointers.
One day philosophy will find that silence is the only honest option.
The moment you speak you are trying to prove something to someone - you
are trying to say "this is true". That moment when you open your mouth
to speak a philosophical truth - the moment when non-being flips into
being - the moment that is not a moment at all - what is THAT?
Philosophy can't even touch it. But they think they can. Or they will
be able to, one day. That is the delusion.
one-hand-clapping
Exactamento.
one-hand-clapping
guy who "got it" responded with a simple smile. The mind will go "what
does that MEAN?". Therein lies the problem of philosophy. Just the
flower - that is it. And no, it is not a philosophy of "just accepting
things" or "not questioning" or "not pursuing the truth". That is just
the mind going "what does it mean?". You see, philosophy is useful but
ultimately pointless.
Immortalist
> >Its like your saying we should get rid of all English teachers because
>>grammarians only make us pay attention to how we compose things into
>>sentences and essays. But how is grammar their fault?
>
> That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm not blaming philosophers for
> anything. Philosophy is a good way of making a living, and making a
> name for yourself.
Philosophers, scientists or religious people are all doing the same thing
with basic inferential instincts born into us. Why point out philosophy on
the premis that it uses a different set of inferential instincts than in the
other endeavours. Instead compare phillosophical analysis to other kinds of
analysis. Its hard to cut down analysis with just analysis.
> But I feel that most philosophers are chasing
> ghosts. They produce huge volumes full of words. Complex philosophical
> systems are just a bunch of words. Words about what is behind the words
> - that is still words. Words about the futility of words - that is more
> words. Nobody can be a philosopher without using words. And yet what
> are words? Labels, signs, pointers.
>
> One day philosophy will find that silence is the only honest option.
> The moment you speak you are trying to prove something to someone - you
> are trying to say "this is true". That moment when you open your mouth
> to speak a philosophical truth - the moment when non-being flips into
> being - the moment that is not a moment at all - what is THAT?
>
> Philosophy can't even touch it. But they think they can. Or they will
> be able to, one day. That is the delusion.
>
You could replace philosophy in the above with anything like science or
common sense or religion and it continues to say the same thing. You have
not pointed out anything but our instinctual proclivity to mediate
inferences to conclusions loc.
Immortalist
If you didn't pass that story on, how would it pass on? Are you saying that
we are born with inferencial instincts that will mediate the results of this
flower thing so we see Budha fat instead of deFlower?
one-hand-clapping
>not pointed out anything but our instinctual proclivity to mediate
>inferences to conclusions loc.
To say something is "instinctual" is to refuse to explain it at all ...
is to refuse to take responsiblity for it; to refuse to disengage it
from ones sense of self, to refuse to watch it as it arises and see
into the nature of it, to refuse to admit that you have reduced human
experience to a concept - "instinct" ... to refuse to admit that it is
only the human mind with its capacity for abstract thought that could
know "instinct" as "instinct" ... to refuse to realise that thinking
about instinct is not instinct.. to refuse to admit that we could never
really know if something was instinctual.
You could say breathing is instinctual. That may be obvious. But
contained in that little phrase is the problem on which your argument
falls down. To whom is it instinctual? To the body? To the mind? So you
are assuming the mind-body split. Are you the body? Have you solved the
problem that has plagued thinkers since time began? ;) Before we can
say anything is instictual we must look at the central problem- to whom
is it instinctual?
Oh, fuck this. It's impossible to put into words....
one-hand-clapping
Through words. The realisation that it points to is not reached through
understanding the words, and it's nothing mystical or religious in
nature. It's the realisation that Sartre pointed to when he said "The
consciousness that says "I think" is not the consciousness that
thinks". This is the duality on which most western philosophy falls
down.
>Are you saying that
>we are born with inferencial instincts that will mediate the results of this
>flower thing so we see Budha fat instead of deFlower?
Why do we talk of "instincts" as though they are seperate from us? This
false assumption of duality is inherent in language. Can you not see
that?
one-hand-clapping
Immortalist
> >You have
>>not pointed out anything but our instinctual proclivity to mediate
>>inferences to conclusions loc.
>
> To say something is "instinctual" is to refuse to explain it at all ...
> is to refuse to take responsiblity for it; to refuse to disengage it
> from ones sense of self, to refuse to watch it as it arises and see
> into the nature of it, to refuse to admit that you have reduced human
> experience to a concept - "instinct" ... to refuse to admit that it is
> only the human mind with its capacity for abstract thought that could
> know "instinct" as "instinct" ... to refuse to realise that thinking
> about instinct is not instinct.. to refuse to admit that we could never
> really know if something was instinctual.
>
If the genes direct the assembly of the nerves that when active in
particular ways is identical to mammilian inferencialism, it wouldn't be
hard to place them in the category of instinct.
But we have not agreed to a definition of instinct. What is your definition?
I like the definition that includes two hundred or more instincts in human
nature, each somewhat adjustable at critical stages usually adjsted before
puberty and permanantly set from there on but influenced by secondary areas
of the brain. But I am open to any theory that is stronger and explains
more.
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.philosophy.misc/msg/138841eac85e261d
> You could say breathing is instinctual. That may be obvious. But
> contained in that little phrase is the problem on which your argument
> falls down. To whom is it instinctual? To the body? To the mind? So you
> are assuming the mind-body split. Are you the body? Have you solved the
> problem that has plagued thinkers since time began? ;) Before we can
> say anything is instictual we must look at the central problem- to whom
> is it instinctual?
>
You and I are likely a long series of clones that merely, through the brains
production of subjective experiences, believe they are you or I and they
would be decieved in that sense if true.
Or this subjective experience I have of being me, whatever it is, and the
breathing is instinctual to this.ongoing.subjectivity.
Immortalist
>> If you didn't pass that story on, how would it pass on?
>
> Through words. The realisation that it points to is not reached through
> understanding the words, and it's nothing mystical or religious in
> nature. It's the realisation that Sartre pointed to when he said "The
> consciousness that says "I think" is not the consciousness that
> thinks". This is the duality on which most western philosophy falls
> down.
>
Is it possible to live a long, happy life, with many offspring without
knowing about this flower power?
If not, its a cool theory but who needs it to leave behind offspring?
>
>>Are you saying that
>>we are born with inferencial instincts that will mediate the results of
>>this
>>flower thing so we see Budha fat instead of deFlower?
>
> Why do we talk of "instincts" as though they are seperate from us? This
> false assumption of duality is inherent in language. Can you not see
> that?
>
I have instincts related to particlar parts of the hypothalomus that drive
me to drink water and other areas that represent instincts for sex etc...
Why should we try and look at the different function of the hypothalomus as
if they were the same as each other when that would be dishonest. The flower
power wants us to be dishonest?
http://images.google.com/images?q=hypothalamus
Immortalist
> Lol ---- cool, thanks! ;)
>
http://images.google.com/images?q=flower+bee try to find the picture of the
flower that mimics the bee female's sexual organs so a real bee will fuck it
and rub pollen around on them...
mikeg...@xtra.co.nz
one-hand-clapping wrote:
> With all our wonderful philosophies human still manage to kill each
> other in record numbers (100 million dead through wars in the last
> century alone). Doesn't this show that there is an inherent problem
> with philosophy, with human thought?
Yes, the problem is called contradiction, the failure to recognise and
reject the contradictions from the human thinking and acting process.
People murder, but the murderers know how to beg for their own life
when placed on death row. Even a robber knows when he has been stollen
from.
You'll note, it wasn't Marx or Hitler who wanted to be treated the way
they claimed humans should be treated. You will note that the trainers
of suicide bombers dont blow themselves up. Prime Ministers and
Presidents order their troups to war, but dont go themselves.
>
> Philosophy has its place - but its just a fun little game.
You wish it was a game, the reality is, not even you could have
survived without your philosophy. Unless you want your life to be a
matter or daily chance, excluding unnatural, unforseeable and unplanned
events, called accidents, then you have no choice but to have at least
some grasp on philosophy.
Everyone has a philosophy, but not everyone recognises it and not all
people are consistant in their own, eg Marx Hitler and suicide bomber
trainers.
> Too many
> people take it way too seriously,
On the contrary too many people do not take philosophy seriously
enough.
> and get very angry with people who
> say what I say. No doubt, that is what will happen with this
> post.....;)
Anger arrises when people do not recognise the contradictions in their
own thinking and acting.
Michael Gordge
Edgar Svendsen
I'd like to speak up in favor of words! Especially if you include math as
words.
It's words that let us make indoor plumbing and countless other stuff that I
value highly. It's words that make me watch TV shows about astronomy, that
show me things I cannot see with my unaided eyes.
Below you tell the story of the Buddha holding up the flower, there's a lot
that that approach doesn't work for. I'd be afraid to drive over a
suspension bridge built because a guru pointed to a rainbow and no furthere
words were used. It may well be true in some sense that the guru pointing at
the rainbow is closer to one kind of truth, but the engineer calculating the
size of the bridge elements based on weight and wind loading is closer to
another kind of truth. Even at less plebian levels the same knd of thing
applies. Quantum Mechanics is a bunch of words, but I think it captures
some truth. A truth that couldn't be expressed or apprehended by any other
method. An elegant and rich truth.
Ed
one-hand-clapping
human
>nature, each somewhat adjustable at critical stages usually adjsted before
>puberty and permanantly set from there on but influenced by secondary areas
>of the brain. But I am open to any theory that is stronger and explains
>more
Instincts can only reasonably apply to behaviour. I am talking about
human experience. You are falling into the reductionism trap. You
cannot reduce human experience to human behaviour. Instincts - as I
assume we are taking them - only have limited explanatory power in the
field of observable behaviour of the organism. In the psychological
realm - in the field of experience, in subjective feeling, we cannot
reasonably talk of instincts. You're going down the behaviourist route
here.
Brian Fletcher
> >Isn't it amazing that even without those 100 million peoples we still
>>managed to invent super computers and blast off rockets?
>
> Yes, but at what price? Look at what we're doing to the environment.
> I'm no liberal greenie but anyone with a shred of sense has to admit
> we're being pretty closed minded.
"We" always are. Part of the mystery...wheras "I"....
It is not the "I" that falls away, just the judgments of "I".
>
> And I'd rather have peace than digital watches, reality TV and faster
> computers.
Then sell all your worldy goods, and follow me (but don't forget your
begging bowl)...;-)
>
> We can't even live in peace with our neighbours, with our families...
I can, and do. (in spite of, not because of them).
> and yet we can send people to the moon. We invent genocides and conduct
> wars in the name of "spreading democracy" and yet our prison
> populations are becoming overwhelming and more people suffer from
> mental illness than ever.
Nothing's changed. Just better diagnostic skills.
BOfL
>
Kane
Brian Fletcher
Wonderful idea. Now how do "we" go about it. (in ten million words or
less)....
BOfL
>
Brian Fletcher
> >Unfortunately, we are not gods.
>
> I think that's the problem. We created gods, as an "ideal", and we
> always fail to live up to that ideal. Why create the ideal if we can
> never live up to it? Can't we be honest with ourselves?
Yes. Thats '1' solved.
>
> Let's stop striving for an ideal and deal with what is the case NOW.
Done. That's '2'.
> And NOW, there is violence in us. So let's take responsibity for THAT
> and quit praying to our invented gods to save us.
Wow, this is so easy. Why hasnt any one else made such suggestions?
Of course, they are usually executed (unless they drink the hemlock
willingly....and may I add, symbolically)
>We can only save
> ourselves.
I just did. Feels sooooooo enlightening.
>Our invented gods will not do it for us.
Thats what Abraham said, so invented just one....resulting in Christianity,
Judahism and Islam......Bugger...back to the drawing board.
>
> And I think once we do that, once the "gods" leave our system - then,
> perhaps, we are gods at last, for we have taken full responsiblity for
> what we do.
Yes, it works brilliantly. Now how do I knock sense into everyone??? Jihad
anyone.....:-)
>Maybe then we will be the gods we have always strived to
> be. Or maybe not. I fancy a beer.
Stop knocking the God apprenticeship course, and pour me one :-).
BOfL
Brian Fletcher
>>>'Truth' *is* a thought, and nothing more.
>
> Exactamento.
>
I think you are wrong.......but I know you are right.
BOfL
Brian Fletcher
"Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:zoxxf.44637$Mi5.8448@dukeread07...
>
> "one-hand-clapping" <onehandc...@fastmail.fm> wrote in message
> news:1137081405.8...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>> Philosophy in its entirety is a linguistic problem, a problem of human
>> thought. When thought is taken as a way of reaching "the truth"
>> (whatever we imagine that to be), life becomes a problem - emotionally,
>> morally, philosophically.
>>
>
> What in human culture and communication is not a linguistic problem?
Sounds like a variation on "What did the Romans ever do for us , Reg".
Ask Marcel Marceau. Then there is the fragrence of the roses, the sound of
the ocean, the feel of a cool breeze on a hot summers day (just what I'm
feeling now ), and the deep understanding that comes with knowing the tax
man's demands are just linguistic problems.
BOfL
Brian Fletcher
bridge, so I can get to my rose gardens easier.
BOfL
"one-hand-clapping" <onehandc...@fastmail.fm> wrote in message
news:1137092365.6...@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
one-hand-clapping
mechanics.
But in terms of capturing experience? Never.
one-hand-clapping
>the ocean, the feel of a cool breeze on a hot summers day (just what I'm
>feeling now ), and the deep understanding that comes with knowing the tax
>man's demands are just linguistic problems.
Beautiful.
It's this "deep understanding" that will never be reached with words
and concepts.
And you can't "convince" anyone that it "exists".
Bummer.
Edgar Svendsen
> Yes - words can be useful for plumbing and writing books on quantum
> mechanics.
>
> But in terms of capturing experience? Never.
>
Quantum Mechanics are written from experience and they communicate some of
that experience to the readers.
Experience, as a non-thinking feeling that you surrender to and wallow in,
is not easily communicated or captured using words; experience as something
you learn from and draw new ideas from *can* indeed be captured and
communicated with words, at least partially.
Ed
one-hand-clapping
>you learn from and draw new ideas from *can* indeed be captured and
>communicated with words, at least partially.
Partially? Hmm....
one-hand-clapping
have emotional resonance. But those images and that resonance happens
now. Those images are based on memory and experience. They arise now,
and there is some sort of emotional reaction. However, the word is not
the thing. A memory of something (eg a first kiss) is not the
experience of the first kiss. It is images in the mind, arising NOW.
So to say "I remember my first kiss" is misleading--- it is more true
to say "the image of my first kiss, and the emotional reaction, arises
now." The image is not the experience. That is obvious. I can remember
my first kiss but I cannot interact with that live girl who I kissed.
It all appears as images in the mind. It should be obvious that these
image, these memories, point to that experience, but do not at all
capture it. I cannot FEEL that kiss, I cannot HEAR the ocean, I cannot
COMMUNICATE with that girl anymore, in the immediacy of the
experience... it has all been reduced to memory, which arises now.
So, I am remembering that first kiss. Suddenly my dog barks and I am
back in this moment (which I never left...), and the girl is
obliterated. The dog takes up my attention now. Which could not happen
if I was really kissing that girl at that moment!
So yes, I agree that poetry can "evoke" images and feelings..... but
they are pale, pale, pale imitations of the real thing, which has gone
for ever. And they are not even of the same "dimension". The experience
was total - multidimensional, multisensory. The recollection - the
image, is a dull, unclear, mess of images in my mind right now. I
cannot interact with it. I cannot change the past. That is what I'm
getting at.
Words can never "capture" experience. That much must be clear. Words
can only evoke images and associations in the mind right now. That is
what Im pointing at. Perhaps what im saying is obvious but the
implications go very deep....
one-hand-clapping
Immortalist
> l>ike the definition that includes two hundred or more instincts in
> human
>>nature, each somewhat adjustable at critical stages usually adjsted before
>>puberty and permanantly set from there on but influenced by secondary
>>areas
>>of the brain. But I am open to any theory that is stronger and explains
>>more
>
> Instincts can only reasonably apply to behaviour.
You havn't given a good reason yet for limiting the definition to everything
but behavior. And we need to now agree to a definition of behavior and this
definition necessarily distinguishes itself from experience.
> I am talking about
> human experience. You are falling into the reductionism trap.
So are you by reducing what I say and losing the emergent qualities of what
I am trying to say. Reduction and composition are normal cognitive
functions. This political correctness and censorship will not do, you must
show why we can't look at how things and relationships are composed or
reduced. By your method you cannot claim that the smoothness of whater has
somthing to do with the grainy nature of combined atoms interacting in
relationships with other conglomerations. You appear to lack knowledge of
chaos they by you hanging on one side of the reduction.composure dynamic.
> You
> cannot reduce human experience to human behaviour. Instincts - as I
> assume we are taking them - only have limited explanatory power in the
> field of observable behaviour of the organism.
Why can't I? I can't do that only if I accept your definition of behavior
and instinct proposed in some 1960s laboratory.
> In the psychological
> realm - in the field of experience, in subjective feeling, we cannot
> reasonably talk of instincts. You're going down the behaviourist route
> here.
>
In logic there are usually three alternatives that exhaust ALL possibilities
here with an issue like this;
Either human experience (undefined) shares no qualities with behavior or
human experience is behavior or experience and behavior share some
qualities. Your trying to say that expereince shares no qualities with
behavior but havn't explained why. Why do we choose NONE/SOME/ALL.
An instinct seems to be a genetically influenced universal, like human
subjectivity. Why must I change this terminology? Maybe replace instinct
with drive? I have an experience or drive to eat some food, for instance.
Immortalist
"Brian Fletcher" <bria...@bigpond.net.au> wrote in message
news:ViCxf.214788$V7.1...@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
>
> "Immortalist" <Reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:zoxxf.44637$Mi5.8448@dukeread07...
>>
>> "one-hand-clapping" <onehandc...@fastmail.fm> wrote in message
>> news:1137081405.8...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>>> Philosophy in its entirety is a linguistic problem, a problem of human
>>> thought. When thought is taken as a way of reaching "the truth"
>>> (whatever we imagine that to be), life becomes a problem - emotionally,
>>> morally, philosophically.
>>>
>>
>> What in human culture and communication is not a linguistic problem?
>
> Sounds like a variation on "What did the Romans ever do for us , Reg".
>
> Ask Marcel Marceau. Then there is the fragrence of the roses, the sound of
> the ocean, the feel of a cool breeze on a hot summers day (just what I'm
> feeling now ), and the deep understanding that comes with knowing the tax
> man's demands are just linguistic problems.
>
The act of noticing the fragrence is subject/verb/object in the sense that
subject; rose
verb; fragrence
onject; change of awareness of the presence of fragrence
Your describing things and relashionships changing or staying the same over
time.
Your doing grammer when you compare this deep understanding thing about
linguistic degrees of the problem.
If animals do grammar when they consider who di what to whom or what did
what to what, as when the try to decide which way to go next, there probably
isn't any human language artifacts going on, which would mean that language
doesn't completely describe grammar.
Now the question move too stillness vs activity.
In tai chi alpha waves can be produced just like alpha waves can be produced
in a still meditator. We can reach alpha when we a gramatically moving our
bodies and hence thinking.
delta and thata wave are produced while thinking stressfully and alpha waves
are produced when relaxed or meditating. This is with the EEG.
Immortalist
Is this like a sports fan who likes one team and gets up and cheers when
someone else cheers for the team, or is there something important your
saying that I am missing?
> Bummer.
>
one-hand-clapping
yes.....
before there are words there is the experience behind the words.
we often neglect experience and live in the words and theories
however, the experience is what gives rise to the words and theories.
if we deny experience we deny our humanity
seeing the "other" as a living, breathing, experiencing being is the
key to ending violence.
if we reduce the "other" to words, if we "put him in a box", there all
the trouble begins....
one-hand-clapping
>saying that I am missing?
Have you ever felt the cool breeze on a hot summers day?
Is your description of it the experience of it?
Is your memory the experience of it?
We tend to deny experience and then deny we're denying it. Ah well.
one-hand-clapping
Yes, that may be the exterior physical correlate.
But you are denying experience. There is also the experience of
thinking, which cannot be reduced to the physcal correlate.
Surely you cannot deny your present experience?
If you deny your present experience, I will come up to you and check
your brainwaves, and your experience of denying experience will still
have physical correlates on my ECG machine.
You cannot deny experience. Experience has physical correlate in the
organism : behaviour.
If you try to reduce experience to behaviour you end up contradicting
yourself over and over. And then you'd probably deny that experience
too......
Ah well.
one-hand-clapping
I misunderstood ;)
Immortalist
> >or is there something important your
>>saying that I am missing?
>
> Have you ever felt the cool breeze on a hot summers day?
>
Yes and I believe that it was a grammatical event but with no language terms
besides the awareness of events doing things to other things or
relationships interacting with other relationships grammatically.
> Is your description of it the experience of it?
My act describing is an experience but only rarely can we find an example
where the describing experience is about the describing experience. This
confuses some like you.
> Is your memory the experience of it?
>
If in a sparse distributed network - memory is a type of perception.....The
act of remembering and the act of perceiving both detect a pattern in a vary
large choice of possible patterns....When we remember we recreate the act of
the original perception - that is we relocate the pattern by a process
similar to the one we used to perceive the pattern originally, then the
memory is the experiencing of it.
Kevin Kelly......oUt Of cOnTrOl......page 18---
http://www.kk.org/
> We tend to deny experience and then deny we're denying it. Ah well.
>
I didn't deny experience. Do you need the opponent to deny experience for
your thesis to sound appealing?
one-hand-clapping
Sounds like you did. You reduced feeling the breeze on a cool summers
day to a "grammatical event". Funny, I just enjoyed feeling the breeze
on my face. Felt like heaven.
Philosophers are funny creatures.
"I'm eating a sandwich!"
"No you're not! It's a grammatical event but with no language terms
besides the awareness of events doing things to other things or
relationships interacting with other relationships
grammatically.!!!!!!!"
"Er.... well, it tastes nice! CHOMP!"
>Do you need the opponent to deny experience for
>your thesis to sound appealing?
Er.. no. I said I felt the cool breeze on a summers day. I experienced
that. When I think about it, I don't time travel back to that time and
re-experience it. It just appears as thought, now. In this moment. I'm
sitting at my computer and images arise in my mind. Then my cat miaows
and I turn my attention to that and forget the cool breeze. That is not
the same as re-experiencing the cool breeze.
Here's the problem:
When I felt the cool breeze you could have asked me "what is the
license plate on the car over there" and I could have looked and told
you.
When I remember the cool breeze now, and you ask me now "what was the
license plate on the car near you?" I have to say "I don't remember".
That is the difference between experience and memory of the experience.
A pretty damn HUGE difference I'd say. Different worlds.
Still, it was a nice breeze. ;)
Immortalist
> >delta and thata wave are produced while thinking stressfully
>
> Yes, that may be the exterior physical correlate.
>
Yes the idea that that may be the exterior physical correlate doesn't
magically make the proposition about it not an experior correlate. So how
can you use your exterior physical correlate to explain the internal?
It is more reliable to trust the results of decades of EEG experiments and
similar results in 100s of research institutes around the globe than to
believe you mumble about exterior correlates. It is probably reliable
information that the yogis themselves wired up and they themselves agree
that the EEG does reflect their differing states of mind when meditating.
> But you are denying experience. There is also the experience of
> thinking, which cannot be reduced to the physcal correlate.
>
Are you claiming that thinking requires no brain activities? Brain
activities would be physical correlates.
Experience is probably not the brain but just the activities of the brain.
Experience=activities.
> Surely you cannot deny your present experience?
>
Did I claim to deny my present experience?
> If you deny your present experience, I will come up to you and check
> your brainwaves, and your experience of denying experience will still
> have physical correlates on my ECG machine.
>
Good thing we don't deny our present experience.
If experience is the activities of the nerve cells then experience should
always be detectable from EEG if it detects the activities.
> You cannot deny experience. Experience has physical correlate in the
> organism : behaviour.
>
I didn't deny experience and I can still claim that behavior and experience
are both physical correlates of neural activities. You have not eliminated
the possibility that experience and behavior are neural and bodily
activities.
> If you try to reduce experience to behaviour you end up contradicting
> yourself over and over. And then you'd probably deny that experience
> too......
>
How do I contradict myself when I believe that experience and behavior are
both simply the activities of the body and you have not explained your
strange definition of reductionism. By your own logic your not allowed to
reduce the meaning of anything I say and you can't focus on one part like
comparing experience and behavior. You are the criminal by your definition
of criminal.
You look at each word I typed, guilty, you must only see the entire
paragraph and then look away, no reductionism allowed.
> Ah well.
>
Immortalist
> Actually Im not sure if you are denying experience. Are you? Sorry if
> I misunderstood ;)
>
Your problem is that you are assuming that everyone agrees to the
definitions for the terms your using. You should be prepared to define these
terms, your in the realm of Western skepticism which eats Eastern skepticism
for lunch and then asks, am I hungry still.
Immortalist
> >I didn't deny experience.
>
> Sounds like you did. You reduced feeling the breeze on a cool summers
> day to a "grammatical event". Funny, I just enjoyed feeling the breeze
> on my face. Felt like heaven.
>
Show me how I reduced. I am saying it sounds more likely that feeling the
breeze of a cool summer is a mammilian grammatical event of what did what to
whom.
It sounds more like if you can't answer something then you believe it must
be reductionism. Good one, a method to deny everything you don't agree with,
just call it a name, reductionism. What if an imperfect reductionist
accidently does the opposite by mistake and composes?
> Philosophers are funny creatures.
>
> "I'm eating a sandwich!"
> "No you're not! It's a grammatical event but with no language terms
> besides the awareness of events doing things to other things or
> relationships interacting with other relationships
> grammatically.!!!!!!!"
> "Er.... well, it tastes nice! CHOMP!"
>
You describing a grammatic event with grammer. All problems don't require
reductionism. That was an explaination, unless now your going to claim that
all explainations are reductionisms. In that case when you explain the
experience eating a sandwitch as not a grammatical event is a reductionism
and shall not be allowed by your own rules, you diqulify yourself.
>>Do you need the opponent to deny experience for
>>your thesis to sound appealing?
>
> Er.. no. I said I felt the cool breeze on a summers day. I experienced
> that. When I think about it, I don't time travel back to that time and
> re-experience it. It just appears as thought, now. In this moment. I'm
> sitting at my computer and images arise in my mind. Then my cat miaows
> and I turn my attention to that and forget the cool breeze. That is not
> the same as re-experiencing the cool breeze.
>
Your description of those experiences didn't seem to qualify or disqualify
the possibility that they proceeded in a grammatical style.
> Here's the problem:
>
> When I felt the cool breeze you could have asked me "what is the
> license plate on the car over there" and I could have looked and told
> you.
>
> When I remember the cool breeze now, and you ask me now "what was the
> license plate on the car near you?" I have to say "I don't remember".
>
> That is the difference between experience and memory of the experience.
> A pretty damn HUGE difference I'd say. Different worlds.
>
> Still, it was a nice breeze. ;)
>
Many researchers think that the actual experience and the memory of the
experience are the same. The same parts of the brain that are active during
the experience are active during the memory, try again.
Kevin Kelly......oUt Of cOnTrOl......page 18---
......In a sparse distributed network - memory is a type of
perception.....The
act of remembering and the act of perceiving both detect a pattern in a vary
large choice of possible patterns....When we remember we recreate the act of
the
original perception - that is we relocate the pattern by a process similar
to the
one we used to perceive the pattern originally
one-hand-clapping
>both simply the activities of the body and you have not explained your
>strange definition of reductionism
You haven't addressed the basic problem.
I think about my wedding day. I feel good. That is my interior,
subjective, private experience. Nobody else can "see into" that
experience. I can relate it to others using words, but only I can
experience that experience. Just like only you are experiencing what
you are experiencing now (looking at a computer).
That is you viewed from the inside.
Viewed from the outside (the exterior correlate) - i.e. looking at the
physical organism - you can see flashes of electricity in the brain.
You are saying that the flashes in my brain -- and my experience - are
the same thing?
Wow. You have solved the mind/body problem in a flash. You should get
the nobel prize or something.
Experience cannot be reduced to behaviour, and behaviour cannot be
reduced to experience. They are correlates in that sense - two "views"
of reality, one is the subjective experience of the organism "looking
out" at the world .. and the other is that organism viewed from
outside.
You do not deny your own consciousness. But you cannot see
consciousness down a microscope.
You do not deny that you experience states of joy, of love, of wonder.
Can you see love, joy, wonder with an EEG machine? You can see flashes
in the brain, but can you see love, joy, wonder?
That is the reductionism I'm talking about. It's a denial of
experience.
"All experience is just flashes of electricity". Nice theory....
Kane
to disagree presumes an error on the part of the speaker, the listener
or the medium.
A curious thread, as much as it has wandered the core of the initial
question is intact. It is self-evident that philosophy as a course of
study can be discussed and debated. At the very least philosophy can
be treated much as literature with an associated litany of recitable
facts, influences and intentions.
Nevertheless when that which is considered turns entirely upon itself
and the essense of philosophy, that evanescenct 'it' which makes one
subject science and another the true love of wisdom becomes the target
of analysis the carefully constructed tools of academia fail us. The
facts are unknown, the influences irrelivent and the intentions
meaningless.
We run in circles of labels with definitions and carefully honed
distinctions in the hope that the understanding reached by the reader
is the understanding placed by the author. But the universe explains
nothing, defines nothing and makes no distinctions. It exists.
This does not make philosophy a game of words. Rather it is a struggle
doomed to failure. But that does not invalidate the value of strides
along that road. From barbarism and chaos we have risen. Great world
religions and governments have taught/trained us to live with one
another in some approximation of peace and harmony. Without the
struggle to understand all things which is philosophy we may have never
left the cave(s).
Yes, there is much that must still be done. There remains a great
burden of superstition, generations of hatred and an unrevokable sense
of entitlement to possess the things of this world. Our tools in this
great war are weak and flimsy words, oft misused and misunderstood. It
may be ultimately pointless, but that is part of what we are.
Even the Buddha had to kill a flower just to make a point.
zinnic
I agree. Therefore, a great post :).
One point--do you imply that science lacks a "true love of wisdom"?.
Zinnic
Immortalist
> >experience and behavior are
>>both simply the activities of the body and you have not explained your
>>strange definition of reductionism
>
> You haven't addressed the basic problem.
>
> I think about my wedding day. I feel good. That is my interior,
> subjective, private experience. Nobody else can "see into" that
> experience. I can relate it to others using words, but only I can
> experience that experience. Just like only you are experiencing what
> you are experiencing now (looking at a computer).
>
Your continuing to put words into my mouth. Where did I claim that it is not
the case that we currently have only private access to the experience of
this self? I am beginning to think that you have beaten weak debaters with
the straw man argument. You seem to put up these straw men everywhere when
the opponent had not been shown to believe such things.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=straw+man+fallacy
> That is you viewed from the inside.
>
So far so good, I agree and didn't disagree with this at any point in the
argument, whats your point? Are you changing your own view of veiws or what?
> Viewed from the outside (the exterior correlate) - i.e. looking at the
> physical organism - you can see flashes of electricity in the brain.
>
> You are saying that the flashes in my brain -- and my experience - are
> the same thing?
>
No. I am saying that the available evidence makes that a very good theory. A
theory that seems to explain more about the world than your strange
unsubstantiated theory.
Your theory has not challenged my belief in my theory. My theory has much
evidence about nerve cells and biology. Only an idiot thought process would
cast all of science aside. My theories are not your real problem if your
trying to say that science has no persuasive evidence for its theories.
> Wow. You have solved the mind/body problem in a flash. You should get
> the nobel prize or something.
>
No not really, its just a varient of the identity theory. I just skip the
part where we start from two things and make them the same things. When we
start from research and experimentation the initial evidence indicates that
the self is just the activities of the body. Do you have a reason why there
should be more than this or why couldn't the activities of the body be the
self and its experiences?
> Experience cannot be reduced to behaviour, and behaviour cannot be
> reduced to experience.
There you go again. You have not shown how behavior does not reflect or
indicate neural activities. You have a very hard time ahead of you to
because there are other evidences about nerve cell activities that also
support this thesis.
The theory that behavior reflects experience is a good one. Like all
theories it could be mistaken but with all the evidences and experiements
supporting this theory your theory about dualism has alot more to come
against that you seem to realize.
You should just express your opinion that no science is possibly true except
the science theories you get to make up or are persuaded to believe.
> They are correlates in that sense - two "views"
> of reality, one is the subjective experience of the organism "looking
> out" at the world .. and the other is that organism viewed from
> outside.
>
No, they may or may not be such and such because you have not shown how all
times are times when correlates are two views.
Are you saying that you cannot be mistaken and there is no chance for error
in your veiw that all science is mistaken?
> You do not deny your own consciousness. But you cannot see
> consciousness down a microscope.
>
The available good evidence from science indicates that consciousness is
more likely to be simply the activities of the brain and body. We observe
that activities of nerve cells with microscopes and perform similar
inferences as you do when you theorize about the correctness of correlates.
> You do not deny that you experience states of joy, of love, of wonder.
> Can you see love, joy, wonder with an EEG machine? You can see flashes
> in the brain, but can you see love, joy, wonder?
>
In the past we saw less, now we see more tommorow we might see yet more.
You seem to be asking if it is possible or not possible whether we can or
will ever be able to see or experience anothers love joy or wonder but then
you chose one alternative, that we cannot, and you provide no evidence, let
alone the necessary evidence for refuting EEG MRIs fMRIs etc... state of the
medical technology.
> That is the reductionism I'm talking about. It's a denial of
> experience.
>
If I say that experience is probably just the activities of the brain and
the body, how is that a denial of experience? It seem more like a
confirmation of experience.
Try again and pleas define this usage of yours of reductionism.
Immortalist
"sam ende" <s...@sende.co.uk> wrote in message
news:42qunkF...@individual.net...
> Immortalist wrote:
>
>
>> Many researchers think that the actual experience and the memory of
>> the experience are the same. The same parts of the brain that are
>> active during the experience are active during the memory,
>
> about and/or replaying the event mentally, during that process other
> events are in the backgroud but still registerd. attention shifts to
> new events by cessation of the thinking about whatever it was --which
> can be considered a switching of attention voluntary, or, because of
> interruption/disruption of the thought process (because of external
> factors (ie noise)) or because of neurological problems which affect
> perception, attention, and memory. i am not so certain that cogntion
> plays a role in the process as cognition seems to imply concious
> storing off everything we experience, or ?
>
This does not deny the possibility that those parts of the memory that are
like the actual events and origional experience are merely that activities
of the same parts of the brain but initiated from different sources,
sensation or internal processes.
Reconstructive memory confirms what you say, we are constantly revising our
memories probably to fit into the band and tribe better. We make the world
work for our group;
1. Human memory does not operate as if it were a videotape camera. We do
not simply record some event in our memory and then later retreive an
unblemished recollection of what happened.
2. Human memory is much more fragile, suggestible, and prone to
distortion and decay than we typically realize. As a result, mistaken
eyewitness testimony rarely involves outright lies; instead, it usually
corresponds to commonly occurring distortions in memory functioning.
3. Memory consists of three stages: (1) storage, (2) retention, and (3)
recall. Storage factors can impede memory accuracy when we find ourselves
unable to recall information from our memory because it was never stored
there. For instance, can you recall which way Lincoln faces on a penny, and
where the letter identifying the mint of the penny is located?
4. The penny example demonstrates that when we experience some event, our
brain makes an instaneous decision whether to store information related to
that event - or simply disregard it. The decision to store or disregard
corresponds to how we evaluate the event - something worth remembering or
merely a trivial circumstance?
5. The influences of the retention stage can corrode memory via three
factors: (1) passage of time, (2) frequency and length of exposure, and (3)
new information. Surprisingly enough, memory not only fades away with the
passage of time - it also grows and expands.
6. What fades from memory over time is the actual experience of an event.
Consequently, each time we recall some event we must reconstruct it - asking
ourselves what happened and how it transpired - and with each reconstruction
our memory can change. Therefore memory recall, or the reconstruction of
some event, responds primarily to our sense of what is plausible. We
actually recall bits and pieces of information and fill in the gaps with
inferences or "educated guesses."
7. Our memory for faces can persist for years. For example, we might
return to our high school reunion and recognize numerous faces and remember
many names. Nevertheless, we must consider how we were repeatedly exposed to
those faces for as long as four years. Under conditions of brief, one-time
exposure, our memory for faces rapidly declines. The question of how
accurately we can remember a face ultimately involves how many associative
links exist with that face? Very few links exist after a brief, one-time
exposure; but many links develop over a period of four years. When exposed
only briefly to some event an accurate recall of that event after three to
four weeks is unlikely.
8. After witnessing an event, we are sometimes exposed to new information
that can actually change our memory. What is known as the "post-event
information effect" often transpires as a result of our dialogues with other
people. For example, an eye-witness to some event frequently discusses with
others what they saw. In the aftermath of some event, the eyewitness and
others may speculate as to exactly what happened, the sequence in which it
occured, and the degree to which various participants were involved. Rather
than facilitate reproductive memory - the accurate reproduction of some past
event, an eyewitness' dialogues with other people create reconstructive
memory - a reconstruction of the past which may be quite inaccurate because
it responds more to considerations of plausibility than fact. Therefore,
people can reconstruct inaccurate memories after witnessing some event as a
result of discussing that event with other people.
9. Because of how fragile and suggestible memory is, line-up procedures
can result in tragic errors. In particular, simultaneous line-ups - a
witness views the suspect along 3-5 other individuals at the same time - are
inappropriate. Simultaneous line-ups lead witnesses into making relative
identifications - relative to each other, which of these individuals most
looks like the suspect?
10. Sequential line-ups - the witness views each person in the line-up one
individual at a time - are the appropriate procedure. Sequential line-ups
lead witnesses into making more absolute identifications - does this person
look like the suspect? As a result, sequential line-ups significantly reduce
the number of false positive identifications compared to simultaneous
line-ups.
http://www.campsych.com/eyewitness.htm
----------------------------------------------
Re-constructive Memory
Our memory plays an important role in all our social interactions. Because
of this, it is vital to grasp this one thing about memory: Human memory is
re-constructive in nature. By this I mean that we cannot tap into a literal
translation of past events. It is not like playing back a tape recorder or a
VCR; instead, we re-create our memories from bits and pieces of actual
events filtered through and modified by our notions of what might have been
and what should have been. Our memories are also profoundly influenced by
what people might have told us about the specific events- long after they
occurred. As Anthony Greenwald has noted, if historians revised and
distorted history to the same extent that we do in trying to recall events
from our own lives, they'd lose their jobs! Of course, most of us would like
to believe that our memories contain only the truth about the past. To most
people, the idea that their memory is fallible is somewhat frightening. But
consider how frightening it was to Timothy Hennis, who almost lost his life
because the members of his jury believed that memory is infallible.
Let me explain. On July 4,1986, Hennis was convicted of the triple murder of
Kathryn, Kara, and Erin Eastburn and the rape of Kathryn Eastburn. The crime
was a particularly grisly one. Apparently, an intruder had broken into the
Eastburn home, held a knife to Kathryn Eastburn, raped her, and then slit
her throat and stabbed her 15 times. Three-year-old Erin and 5-year-old Kara
were each stabbed almost a dozen times. The police followed a quick lead.
Earlier in the week, Timothy Hennis had answered the Eastburns' newspaper ad
requesting someone to adopt their black Labrador retriever. Hennis had taken
the dog on a trial basis.
During the trial, two eyewitnesses placed Hennis at the scene of the crime.
Chuck Barrett testified that he had seen Timothy Hennis walking in the area
at 3:30 A.M. on the morning of the murders. Sandra Barnes testified that she
had seen a man who looked like Hennis using a bank card that police had
identified earlier as one stolen from the Eastburn residence. But Hennis had
an airtight alibi for his whereabouts on the night of the murder. Moreover,
there was no physical evidence (fingerprints, clothing fibers, footprints,
bloodstains, hair) to link him to the scene. Nevertheless, the jury found
the eyewitness testimony convincing and convicted Hennis-sentencing him to
death by lethal injection.
Hennis spent 845 days awaiting his execution on death row before a judge
from the court of appeals ordered a new trial on the basis of a procedural
technicality unrelated to the eyewitness testimony. Hennis's lawyers knew
that if Hennis had any chance of overturning his conviction, they would need
to attack the eyewitness testimony placing him at the scene of the crime. On
close scrutiny, it turned out to be very weak evidence. Chuck Barrett had
originally told police 2 days after the murders that the man he saw had
brown hair (Hennis is blond) and was 6 feet tall (Hennis is much taller).
Furthermore, when asked to identify Hennis in a photo lineup, Barrett was
uncertain of his judgment. When Sandra Barnes was first contacted by police
a few weeks after the crime, she told them firmly and emphatically that she
had not seen anyone at the bank machine that day. Why then at the trial had
both of these witnesses so confidently placed Hennis at the scene of the
crime? Were they both liars? No, they were just ordinary people like you and
I; their memory of the events had been leveled and sharpened-constructed,
shaped, and re-constructed-by over a year of questioning by police and
lawyers.
Elizabeth Loftus, a gifted cognitive psychologist, served as an expert
witness at the second Hennis trial. Loftus had previously conducted a
fascinating program of research on re-constructive memory-investigating how
such "suggestive" questioning can influence memory and subsequent eyewitness
testimony. In one of her experiments, Loftus showed subjects a film
depicting a multiple-car accident. After the film, some of the subjects were
asked, "About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each
other?" Other subjects were asked the same question, but the word smashed
was replaced by the word hit. Subjects who were asked about smashing cars,
as opposed to hitting cars, estimated that the cars were going significantly
faster; moreover, a week after seeing the film, they were more likely to
state (erroneously) that there was broken glass at the accident scene.
Leading questions can not only influence the judgment of facts (as in the
case above), but also can affect the memory of what has happened. In one of
her early studies, Loftus showed subjects a series of slides depicting an
auto-pedestrian accident. In a critical slide, a green car drove past the
accident. Immediately after viewing the slides, half of the subjects were
asked, "Did the blue car that drove past the accident have a ski rack on the
roof ?" The remaining subjects were asked this same question but with the
word blue deleted. Those subjects who were asked about the "blue" car were
more likely to claim incorrectly that they had seen a blue car. A simple
question had changed their memory.
In her testimony at Hennis's second trial, Loftus discussed the nature of
re-constructive memory and the way that an interrogation can lead an
observer to construct an imaginary scenario and then believe that it really
happened. Consider the earlier testimony of Sandra Barnes. At first, she
could not recall the presence of anyone at the bank teller machine. However,
after listening to months of television coverage and reading a year's worth
of newspaper stories about the crime, coupled with the pressure stemming
from the fact that she was the only one who might have seen the real
murderer, Barnes re-constructed a memory of her visit to the bank machine
that included someone who looked like Hennis-in a manner similar to the way
the students recalled a blue rather than a green car in the Loftus
experiment. By rehearsing this new construction repeatedly for lawyers and
judges, Barnes came to accept it as fact. It is important to note that
Sandra Barnes was not intentionally lying. She was simply re-constructing
the event. She came to believe what she was saying. Chuck Barrett's
testimony was tainted in much the same way. Subsequently, the man he saw the
morning of the murder was conclusively identified as another man on his way
to work-not Hennis.
Fortunately for Hennis, his story did not end on death row. On April
20,1989, a second jury declared Timothy Hennis to be innocent of the crimes,
noting that there was no physical evidence linking him to the scene and that
the eyewitness testimony was weak. In the first trial, Hennis had been
victimized by mistaken identification coupled with the jury's implicit
assumption that memory is perfectly accurate.
Although the case remains unsolved, off the record, the local police have
indicated that they now have good reason to believe that the crimes were
actually committed by another person: A strikingly similar rape and murder
were committed in a neighboring town while Hennis was on death row. Shortly
after these crimes, both Hennis and the police received a convincing series
of anonymous letters thanking Hennis for taking the rap for the East-burn
murders.
Autobiographical Memory
It is clear that memory can be re-constructive when it involves quick,
snapshot-like events such as trying to recall the details of an automobile
accident. But what about something more enduring, such as the recall of our
own personal history? Here again, it's important to realize that we don't
remember our past as accurately as we would like to believe. It is simply
not possible to remember everything that has ever happened in our lives.
Serious revisions and important distortions occur over time. As you might
imagine, these revisions of autobiographical memory are not random. Rather,
we have a strong tendency to organize our personal history in terms of what
Hazel Markus referred to as self-schemas-coherent memories, feelings, and
beliefs about ourselves that hang together and form an integrated whole.
Thus, our memories get distorted in such a way that they fit the general
picture we have of ourselves. For example, if we have a general picture of
our childhood as having been unhappy, and our parents as having been cold
and distant, any events from our childhood that violate that general picture
will be more difficult to recall than events that support it. Thus, over the
years, our memories become increasingly coherent and less accurate. In this
manner, to a certain extent, we rewrite our personal histories. It isn't
that we are lying about our past; it is that we are not remembering
accurately. In that sense, we are shaping our memories.
A simple little experiment by Michael Ross, Cathy McFarland, and Garth
Fletcher sheds considerable light on how this might come about. In their
experiment, college students received a persuasive message arguing the
importance of frequent tooth brushing. After receiving the message, they
changed their attitudes toward tooth brushing. Needless to say, this is not
surprising. But here's what was surprising: That same day, the students were
asked, "How many times have you brushed your teeth in the past 2
weeks?"Those who received the message recalled that they brushed their teeth
far more frequently than did students in the control condition. The students
were not attempting to deceive the researcher; there was no reason for them
to lie. They were simply using their new attitudes as a guide to
re-construct their past history. In a sense, they needed to believe that
they had always behaved in a sensible and reasonable manner-even though they
had just now discovered what that sensible behavior might be.
Elizabeth Loftus has carried this line of research a step further. She has
succeeded in planting false memories of childhood experiences in the minds
of young adults by simply instructing a close relative to talk about these
events as fact. For example, if a young man's older sister said to him,
"Remember the time when you were five years old and you got lost for several
hours at the University City shopping mall? And you went into a panic-and an
oldish man tried to help you? When we discovered you, you were holding the
old man's hand and were crying."
Within a few days of hearing such a story, most people will have
incorporated that planted memory into their own history, will have
embroidered it with details ("oh, yeah, the old man who helped me was
wearing a flannel shirt"), and will be absolutely certain that it really
happened-when, in fact, it didn't. This has been called the false memory
syndrome.
The Recovered Memory Phenomenon. Loftus's research on the planting of false
childhood memories has led her and many other cognitive scientists to take a
close and skeptical look at a recent societal phenomenon: the recovered
memory phenomenon. During the 1980s and 1990s, thousands of adults seemed to
remember horrifying childhood events that had been previously unavailable to
them. Many of these memories were about having been sexually molested, over
a period of months or years, by their father or some other family member.
Some memories even included (as part of the abuse) vivid 'accounts of having
been forced to participate in elaborate satanic rituals involving such
bizarre and gruesome activities as the killing and devouring of infants.
These memories were usually recovered during intensive
psychotherapy-frequently under hypnosis-or after reading a vivid and highly
suggestive self-help book.
Needless to say, sexual abuse does occur within families-and the
consequences of such abuse are tragic. Accordingly, all such revelations
should be taken extremely seriously. At the same time, most cognitive
scientists who have made a systematic study of human memory are convinced
that the majority of these reported memories do not reflect reality. They
argue that just as Sandra Barnes and Chuck Barrett, with the help and
encouragement of police and lawyers, "remembered" incidents that never
happened, and just as participants in Elizabeth Loftus's experiments
"remembered" the trauma of having been lost for several hours at the
University City shopping mall, it appears to be the case that many people
can be led to "remember"such terrible things as childhood sexual abuse, or
even detailed satanic rituals that didn't really occur.
According to the scientists who have done systematic research on the nature
of memory, repeated instances of traumatic events occurring over a long
stretch of time are not usually forgotten; they assert that, while this kind
of thing might happen on rare occasions, it simply is not the way memory
typically works. Rather, they suggest that, in a manner parallel to the
Loftus experiments, many of these memories of abuse may have been
unintentionally planted by the therapists themselves-not with any malevolent
motive, of course, but in a sincere attempt to help the client. Here's how
it might come about: Suppose a therapist holds the theory that certain fears
or personality characteristics (e.g., low self-esteem, fear of being alone
in the dark, fear of losing control) are symptomatic of having been sexually
abused. Into his or her office comes a person with some of these
characteristics. Over the course of the therapy, with the best of
intentions, the therapist might subtly suggest that these events might have
taken place. The therapist might then invite the client to try to remember
such instances and might unwittingly show increased interest-even
excitement-when the client begins to explore these possibilities. Under
these conditions, the client may begin to construct a coherent set of
memories that may nonetheless be totally false.
Similarly, memory researchers have criticized self-help books-books that
attempt to guide people toward the uncovering of dark secrets from their
early childhood-on the grounds that the authors grossly underestimate the
power of suggestion and unwittingly lead people to recover "memories" of
events that never have taken place. For example, one best-selling self-help
book actually encourages people to spend time trying to reconstruct their
childhood story and goes on to list a variety of possibilities that
allegedly are related to abuse. Here is a partial list; it is introduced in
the following manner:
There are common characteristics that exist in families where abuse takes
place. You may not have experienced all of them, but you probably
experienced several.
. "I felt ashamed of my family."
. "There were things I couldn't talk about."
. "There were always a lot of secrets in my family."
. "Along with the bad things, there was a lot of good in my family."
. "At least one of my parents took drugs or drank a lot."
. "I was often humiliated and put down."
. "A lot of my basic needs weren't taken care of."
. "Things were chaotic and unpredictable in my household."
. "There were a lot of broken promises."
. "I'm not sure if I was abused, but when I hear about sexual abuse and its
effects, it all sounds creepy and familiar."
As you can see, some of the items on this list would apply to most of
us-whether or not we experienced anything resembling sexual abuse.
Furthermore, as John Kihlstom has recently pointed out, there is no
scientific evidence of a specific link between child sexual abuse and any of
these kinds of checklist items. What are we to make of a'situation where
thousands of adults assert that they were sexually abused as children,
repressed the memory of abuse, and now, after reading this book, seem to
remember the abuse? On the one hand, we have a desire to take each of these
incidents seriously. If such a thing did take place, it is indeed tragic,
and our hearts go out to the people who had such traumatic experiences. But
what if the memory is false? In the absence of any corroborating evidence,
should the person confront and prosecute the accused family member?
Thousands of people have done just that-and many families have been torn
apart by these accusations. As you might imagine, when people are accused of
such actions some 30 years after the alleged fact, it is usually impossible
for them to prove their innocence.
It goes without saying that this has been a highly controversial issue in
contemporary psychology. Some professional psychologists have been willing
to take these accounts at face value. But most cognitive scientists, based
on their research on memory, believe that, in the absence of any
corroborating evidence to suggest abuse, it would be wrong to accuse the
suspected family member of having committed this serious crime. In addition
to the scientific research we have mentioned, researchers point to evidence
from everyday life indicating that many of these recovered "memories" of
abuse, when carefully examined, turn out to be either flat-out wrong or
extremely unlikely. For example, in some instances, several siblings
sleeping in the same room where the events allegedly occurred swore that
they never took place; occasionally, the accused perpetrator was hundreds of
miles away (e.g., serving in the military) when the series of events
allegedly occurred; in many instances, people who acquire such memories in
therapy have come to realize on their own, years later, that the events
never actually occurred- and retract their accusations. Sometimes, where
there should be clear evidence, it is conspicuous by its absence. For
example, as mentioned above, some people have recovered the vivid "memory"
of having been forced to participate in a series of satanic rituals in which
they killed and ate babies and buried their remains. Some of these memories
are precise about where the bodies were buried. But thorough, systematic
searches by law enforcement officers have never succeeded in turning up a
single skeleton-and no coinciding kidnappings were reported that would have
supported the veracity of these accounts.
Many questions remain unanswered. For me, the most interesting one is,
what's in it for the victim? It's one thing to falsely remember something
relatively trivial, like having been lost in a shopping mall as a child, but
recovering a memory of having been sexually abused would entail a lot of
pain. If these events didn't, in fact, take place, why would anyone be
willing to believe they did? I do not have a definitive answer to that
question. I do have one case history that may or may not be typical. This
involves a close friend of mine, a very bright, highly sophisticated
middle-aged woman I will call "Madelaine." Here is what she wrote:
I was at a very low point in life. I was feeling terribly unhappy and
insecure. My marriage had recently fallen apart. I was having a lot of
trouble relating to men. My professional life had taken a few terrible hits.
My self-esteem was at an all-time low. I had the strong feeling that my life
was out of control-and not what it should be. When I picked up a self-help
book and began to read about dysfunctional families-and, more specifically,
about characteristics of people who have been sexually abused as
children-and characteristics of families where sexual abuse takes place-it
was as if a flash bulb went off. In some strange way, I actually felt a
sense of relief-it was a feeling of, "Oh, so that explains why I am so
miserable!" The book told me that, if I didn't remember specifics, it
probably meant I was repressing horrible memories. I felt like a detective.
The more I began to think about my childhood, the more things began to fall
into place. For several weeks, I vacillated between all kinds of emotions. I
was feeling anger at my father, humiliation, hurt-and also a sense of
relief. I now see that the relief came from the fact that, if I could blame
my unhappiness on something terrible that was done to me when I was little,
then I wouldn't have to take responsibility for my own failures as an adult.
Luckily, I didn't ever confront my parents, because I came to realize that
the memories probably weren't reliable-I started to have new "memories" in
which the details of events were different. Both sets of memories couldn't
have been correct. Also, I came to realize the events I'd "remembered"
couldn't possibly have happened, for a whole host of reasons. It was
incredibly hard giving up the idea that there was a clear, identifiable
reason for my daily sadness and hurt. I was very vulnerable and messed up
when I read that book. I could have done untold damage to my family-and to
myself-if I had ever made public my "memories." I still feel very angry-but
not at my parents-at that damn book!
The Social Animal - Elliot Aronson - 8th Edition 1999
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0716733129/
--------------------------------
Remembering Dangerously
Like the witch-hunt trials of old, people today are being accused and even
imprisoned on 'evidence' provided by memories from dreams and flashbacks --
memories that didn't exist before therapy. What is going on here?
http://www.csicop.org/si/9503/memory.html
http://pages.slc.edu/~ebj/IM_97/Lecture7/L7.html
> sammi
Immortalist
> Immortalist wrote:
>
> <snipped what looked like half chapter of memory in a cognitive science
> 101 book>
>
> hi, i would much rather have your thoughts :)
>
Cool. I like a proper mixture of quoting sources and personal paraphrasing.
Now what would you to know?
> sammi
Immortalist
> Immortalist wrote:
>
>
>> Cool. I like a proper mixture of quoting sources and personal
>> paraphrasing.
>>
>> Now what would you to know?
>
> that ?
>
The Lost Arts of Memory
From The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin
Pages 480-488
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679743758/
BEFORE the printed book, Memory ruled daily life and the occult learning,
and fully deserved the name later applied to printing, the "art preservative
of all arts" (Ars artium omnium conservatrix). The Memory of individuals and
of communities carried knowledge through time and space. For millennia
personal Memory reigned over entertainment and information, over the
perpetuation and perfection of crafts, the practice of commerce, the conduct
of professions. By Memory and in Memory the fruits of education were
garnered, preserved, and stored. Memory was an awesome faculty which
everyone had to cultivate, in ways and for reasons we have long since
forgotten. In these last five hundred years we see only pitiful relics of
the empire and the power of Memory.
The ancient Greeks gave mythic form to this fact that ruled their lives. The
Goddess of Memory (Mnemosyne) was a Titan, daughter of Uranus (Heaven) and
Gaea (Earth), and mother of all the nine Muses. In legend these were Epic
Poetry (Calliope), History (Clio), Flute playing (Euterpe), Tragedy
(Melpomene), Dancing (Terpischore), the Lyre (Erato), Sacred Song
(Polyhymnia), Astronomy (Urania), and Comedy (Thalia). When the nine
daughters of King Pierus challenged them in song, the King's daughters were
punished by being changed into magpies, who could only sound monotonous
repetition.
Everyone needed the arts of Memory, which, like other arts, could be
cultivated. The skills of Memory could be perfected, and virtuosi were
admired. Only recently has "memory training" become a butt of ridicule and a
refuge of charlatans. The traditional arts of Memory, delightfully
chronicled by historian Frances A. Yates, flourished in Europe over the
centuries.
The inventor of the mnemonic art was said to be the versatile Greek lyric
poet Simonides of Ceos (c. 556-46878.0.). He was reputed also to be the
first to accept payment for his poems. The origins were described in the
work on oratory by Cicero, who was himself noted for his mnemonic skill.
Once at a banquet in the house of Scopas in Thessaly, Simonides was hired to
chant a lyric in honor of his host. But only half of Simonides' poem was in
praise of Scopas, as he devoted the other half to the divine twins Castor
and Pollux. The angry Scopas therefore would pay only half the agreed sum.
While the many guests were still at the banquet table a message was brought
to Simonides that there were two young men at the door who wanted him to
come outside. When he went out he could see no one. The mysterious callers
were, of course, Castor and Pollux, who had found their own way to pay
Simonides for their share of the panegyric. For at the very moment when
Simonides had left the banquet hall the roof fell in, burying all the other
guests in the ruins. When relatives came to take away the corpses for the
burial honors, the mangled bodies could not be identified. Simonides then
exercised his remarkable memory to show the grieving relatives which bodies
belonged to whom. He did this by thinking back to where each of the guests
had been seated. Then he was able to identify by place each of the bodies.
It was this experience that suggested to Simonides the classic form of the
art of Memory of which he was reputed to be the inventor. Cicero, who made
Memory one of the five principal parts of rhetoric, explained what Simonides
had done.
He inferred that persons desiring to train this faculty must select places
and form mental images of the things they wish to remember and store those
images in the places, so that the order of the places will preserve the
order of the things, and the images of the things will denote the things
themselves, and we shall employ the places and images respectively as a wax
writing-tablet and the letters written on it.
Simonides' art, which dominated European thinking in the Middle Ages, was
based on the two simple concepts of places (loci) and images (imagines).
These provided the lasting elements of Memory techniques for European
rhetors, philosophers, and scientists.
A treatise (c. 86-82 B.C.) by a Roman teacher of rhetoric known as Ad
Herrenium, after the name of the person to whom his work was dedicated,
became the standard text, the more highly esteemed because some thought it
had been written by Cicero. Quintilian (A.D. c. 35-c. 95), the other great
Roman authority on rhetoric, made the classic rules memorable. He described
the "architectural" technique for imprinting the memory with a series of
places. Think of a large building, Quintilian said, and walk through its
numerous rooms remembering all the ornaments and furnishings in your
imagination. Then give each idea to be remembered an image, and as you go
through the building again deposit each image in this order in your
imagination. For example, if you mentally deposit a spear in the living
room, an anchor in the dining room, you will later recall that you are to
speak first of the war, then of the navy, etc. This system still works.
In the Middle Ages a technical jargon was elaborated on the basic
distinction between the "natural" memory, with which we were all born and
which we exercise without training, and the "artificial" memory, which we
can develop. There were different techniques for memorizing things or words.
And differing views about where the student should be when he worked at his
memory exercises and what were the best kinds of places to serve as
imaginary storage houses for the loci and images of memory. Some teachers
advised the student to find a quiet place, where his imagined impressions of
the loci of memory would not be weakened by surrounding noises and passing
people. And, of course, an observant and well-traveled person was better
equipped to provide, himself with many varied Memory-places. In those days
one could see some student of rhetoric walking tensely through a deserted
building, noting the shape and furnishing of each room to equip his
imagination with places to serve as a warehouse for his memory.
The elder Seneca (c. 55 B.C.-A.D. 37), a famous teacher of rhetoric, was
said to be able to repeat long passages of speeches he had heard only once
many years before. He would impress his students by asking each member of a
class of two hundred to recite a line of poetry, and then he would recite
all the lines they had quoted-in reverse order, from last to first. Saint
Augustine, who also had begun life as a teacher of rhetoric, reported his
admiration of a friend who could recite the whole text of Virgil-backwards!
The feats and especially the acrobatics of "artificial" memory were in high
repute. "Memory," said Aeschylus, "is the mother of all wisdom." "Memory,"
agreed Cicero, "is the treasury and guardian of all things." In the heyday
of Memory, before the spread of printing, a highly developed Memory was
needed by the entertainer, the poet, the singer, the physician, the lawyer,
and the priest.
The first great epics in Europe were produced by an oral tradition, which is
another way of saying they were preserved and performed by the arts of
Memory. The Iliad and the Odyssey were perpetuated by word of mouth, without
the use of writing. Homer's word for poet is "singer" (aoidos). And the
singer before Homer seems to have been one who chanted a single poem, short
enough to be sung to a single audience on one occasion. The surviving
practice in Muslim Serbia, which is described by the brilliant American
scholar-explorer Milman Parry, is probably close to the custom of Homeric
antiquity. He shows us how in the beginning the length of a poem was limited
by the patience of an audience and a singer's remembered repertoire. Then
the achievement of a Homer (whether a he, she, or they) was to combine
hour-long songs into a connected epic with a grander purpose, a larger
theme, and a complicated structure.
The first manuscript books in the ancient Mediterranean were written on
papyrus sheets glued together and then rolled up. It was inconvenient to
unroll the book, and frequent unrolling wore away the written words. Since
there were no separate numbered "pages," it was such a nuisance to verify a
quotation that people were inclined to rely on their memory.
Laws were preserved by Memory before they were preserved in documents. The
collective memory of the community was the first legal archive. The English
common law was "immemorial" custom which ran to a "time whereof the memory
of man runneth not to the contrary." "In the profound ignorance of letters
which formerly overspread the whole western world," Sir William Blackstone
noted in 1765, "letters were intirely traditional, for this plain reason,
that the nations among which they prevailed had but little idea of writing.
Thus the British as well as the Gallic druids committed all their laws as
well as learning to memory; and it is said of the primitive Saxons here, as
well as their brethren on the continent, that leges sola memoria et usu
retinebant."
Ritual and liturgy, too, were preserved by memory, of which priests were the
special custodians. Religious services, often repeated, were ways of
imprinting prayers and rites on the youth of the congregation. The
prevalence of verse and music as mnemonic devices attests the special
importance of memory in the days before printed textbooks. For centuries the
standard work on Latin grammar was the twelfth-century Doctrinale, by
Alexander of Villedieu, in two thousand lines of doggerel. Versified rules
were easier to remember, though their crudity appalled Aldus Manutius when
he reprinted this work in 1501.
Medieval scholastic philosophers were not satisfied that Memory should be
merely a practical skill. So they transformed Memory from a skill into a
virtue, an aspect of the virtue of Prudence. After the twelfth century, when
the classic treatise Ad Herennium reappeared in manuscripts, the scholastics
seemed less concerned with the technology than with the Morality of Memory.
How could Memory promote the Christian life?
Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), his biographers boasted, memorized
everything his teachers ever told him in school. In Cologne, Albertus Magnus
helped him train his memory. The sayings of the Church Fathers that Aquinas
collected for Pope Urban IV after his trips to many monasteries were
recorded not from what he had copied out but from what he had merely seen.
Of course he remembered perfectly anything he had ever read. In his Summa
Theologiae (1267-73) ne expounded Cicero's definition of Memory as a part of
Prudence, making it one of the four cardinal virtues, and then he provided
his own four rules for perfecting the Memory. Until the triumph of the
printed book, these Thomist rules of memory prevailed.
Copied again and again, they became the scheme of textbooks. Paintings by
Lorenzetti and Giotto, as Frances A. Yates explains, depicted virtues and
vices to help viewers apply the Thomist rules of artificial Memory. The
fresco of the Chapter House of Santa Maria Novella in Florence provides
memorable images for each of Aquinas' four cardinal virtues and their
several parts. "We must assiduously remember the invisible joys of paradise
and the eternal torments of hell," urged Boncompagno's standard medieval
treatise. For him, lists of virtues and vices were simply "memorial notes"
to help the pious frequent "the paths of remembrance."
Dante's Divine Comedy, with his plan of Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso,
made vivid both places and images (following the precepts of Simonides and
Aquinas) in an easily remembered order. And there were humbler examples,
too. The manuscripts of English friars in the fourteenth century described
pictures-for example, of Idolatry in the role of a prostitute-not meant to
be seen with the eye, but rather to provide invisible images for the memory.
Petrarch (1304-1374) also had a great reputation as an authority on the
artificial memory and how to cultivate it. He offered his own helpful rules
for choosing the "places" where remembered images were to be stored for
retrieval. The imagined architecture of Memory, he said, must provide
storage places of medium size, not too large or too small for the particular
image.
By the time the printing press appeared the arts of Memory had been
elaborated into countless systems. At the beginning of the sixteenth century
the best-known work was a practical text, Phoenix, sive Artificiosa Memoria
(Venice, 1491), which went through many editions and was widely translated.
In that popular handbook, Peter of Ravenna advised that the best memory loci
were in a deserted church. When you have found your church, you should go
around in it three or four times, fixing in your mind all the places where
you would later put your memory-images. Each locus should be five or six
feet from the one before. Peter boasted that even as a young man he had
fixed in his mind 100,000 memory loci, and by his later travels he had added
thousands more. The effectiveness of his system, he said, was shown by the
fact that he could repeat verbatim the whole canon law, two hundred speeches
of Cicero, and twenty thousand points of law.
After Gutenberg, realms of everyday life once ruled and served by Memory
would be governed by the printed page. In the late Middle Ages, for the
small literate class, manuscript books had provided an aid, and sometimes a
substitute, for Memory. But the printed book was far more portable, more
accurate, more convenient to refer to, and, of course, more public. Whatever
was in print, after being written by an author, was also known to
printers, proofreaders, and anyone reached by the printed page. A man could
now refer to the rules of grammar, the speeches of Cicero, and the texts of
theology, canon law, and morality without storing them in himself.
The printed book would be a new warehouse of Memory, superior in countless
ways to the internal invisible warehouse in each person. When the codex of
bound manuscript pages supplanted the long manuscript roll, it was much
easier to refer to a written source. After the twelfth century some
manuscript books carried tables, running heads, and even rudimentary
indexes, which showed that Memory was already beginning to lose some of its
ancient role. But retrieval became still easier when printed books had title
pages and their pages were numbered. When they were equipped with indexes,
as they sometimes were by the sixteenth century, then the only essential
feat of Memory was to remember the order of the alphabet. Before the end of
the eighteenth century the alphabetic index at the back of a book had become
standard. The technology of Memory retrieval, though of course never
entirely dispensable, played a much smaller role in the higher realms of
religion, thought, and knowledge. Spectacular feats of Memory became mere
stunts.
Some of the consequences had been predicted two millennia earlier when
Socrates lamented the effects of writing itself on the Memory and the soul
of the learner. In his dialogue with Phaedrus reported by Plato, Socrates
recounts how Thoth, the Egyptian god who invented letters, had misjudged the
effect of his invention. Thoth was thus reproached by the God Thamus, then
King of Egypt:
This discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls,
because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external
written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you
have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give
your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be
hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be
omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company,
having the show of wisdom without the reality.
The perils that Socrates noted in the written word would be multiplied a
thousandfold when words went into print.
The effect was beautifully suggested by Victor Hugo in a familiar passage in
Notre-Dame de Paris (1831) when the scholar holding his first printed book
turns away from his manuscripts, looks at the cathedral, and says "This will
kill that" (Ceci tuera cela). Print also destroyed "the invisible cathedrals
of memory." For the printed book made it less necessary to shape ideas and
things into vivid images and then store them in Memory-places.
The same era that saw the decline of the everyday empire of Memory would see
the rise of Neoplatonism-a mysterious new empire of the hidden, the secret,
the occult. This revival of Platonic ideas in the Renaissance gave a new
life and a new realm to Memory. Plato had made much of the soul and its
"memory" of ideal forms. Now a galaxy of talented mystics developed a new
technology of Memory. No longer the servant of oratory, only an aspect of
rhetoric, Memory became an arcane art, a realm of ineffable entities. The
Hermetic art opened secret recesses of the soul. The bizarre Memory Theater
of Giulio Camillo, exhibited in Venice and Paris, provided Memory-places not
just for convenience but as a way of representing "the eternal nature of all
things" in their "eternal places." The Neo-platonists of Cosimo de' Medici's
Platonic Academy in Florence-Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) and Pico della
Mirandola (1463-1494)-built an occult art of Memory into their elusive
philosophies.
The most remarkable explorer of the Dark Continent of Memory was the
inspired vagrant Giordano Bruno (1548-1600). As a young friar in Naples, he
had been inducted into the famous Dominican art of Memory, and when he
abandoned the Dominican order, laymen hoped he would reveal the Dominican
secrets. He did not disappoint them. For his work On the Shadows of Ideas,
Circe (1582) explained that Memory-skill was neither natural nor magical but
was the product of a special science. Introducing his Memory-science with an
incantation by Circe herself, he showed the peculiar potency of images of
the decans of the zodiac. The star images, Shadows of Ideas, representing
celestial objects, are nearer to the enduring reality than are images of
this transient world below. Bruno's system for "remembering" these "shadows
of ideas contracted for inner writing" from the celestial images brought his
disciples to a higher reality.
This is to form the inform chaos. ... It is necessary for the control of
memory that the numbers and elements should be disposed in order . . .
through certain memorable forms (the images of the zodiac). ... I tell you
that if you contemplate this attentively you will be able to reach such a
figurative art that it will help not only the memory but also all the powers
of the soul in a wonderful manner.
A guaranteed way to the Unity behind everything, the Divine Unity!
But the everyday needs for Memory were never as important as they had been
in the days before paper and printed books. The kudos of Memory declined. In
1580 Montaigne declared that "a good memory is generally joined to a weak
judgment." And pundits quipped, "Nothing is more common than a fool with a
strong memory."
In the centuries after printing, interest has shifted from the technology of
Memory to its pathology. By the late twentieth century, interest in Memory
was being displaced by interest in aphasia, amnesia, hysteria, hypnosis,
and, of course, psychoanalysis. Pedagogic interest in the arts of Memory
came to be displaced by interest in the arts of learning, which were
increasingly described as a social process.
And with this came a renewed interest in the arts of forgetting. When
Simonides offered to teach the Athenian statesman Themistocles the art of
Memory, Cicero reports that he refused. "Teach me not the art of
remembering," he said, "but the art of forgetting, for I remember things I
do not wish to remember, but I cannot forget things I wish to forget."
The study of forgetting became a frontier of modern psychology, where mental
processes were first examined experimentally and subjected to measurement.
"Psychology has a long past," Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909) observed, "yet
its real history is short." His beautifully simple experiments, which
William James called "heroic," were described in Memory: A Contribution to
Experimental Psychology (1885) and laid the foundation for modern
experimental psychology.
Ebbinghaus invented meaningless raw materials for his experiments. Nonsense
syllables. By taking any two consonants and putting a vowel in between, he
devised some twenty-three hundred rememberable (and forgettable) items, and
he put them in series. For his experiments the syllables had the advantage
of lacking associations. For two years he used himself as the subject to
test the powers of retaining and reproducing these syllables. He kept
scrupulous records of all his trials, of the times required for
recollection, and of the intervals between his efforts. He also experimented
in "relearning." His efforts might have been of little use without his
passion for statistics.
Now, Ebbinghaus hoped, not mere sense perceptions (which Gustav Fechner
[1801-1887] had already begun to study and to whom he dedicated his work)
but mental phenomena themselves could be submitted to "an experimental and
quantitative treatment." Ebbinghaus' "forgetting-curve" related forgetting
to the passage of time. His results, still significant, showed that most
forgetting takes place soon after "learning."
In this unexpected way the inward world of thought began to be charted with
the instruments of modern mathematics. But other explorers, in the
Neoplatonist tradition, kept alive an interest in the mysteries of memory.
Ebbinghaus himself said that he had studied "the non-voluntary re-emergence
of mental images out of the darkness of memory into the light of
consciousness." A few other psychologists rashly plunged into that
"darkness" of the unconscious, but even as they did so they claimed to have
invented a whole new "science."
The founders of modern psychology were increasingly interested in forgetting
as a process in everyday life. The incomparable William James (1842-1910)
observed:
In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important a function
as remembering. ... If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions
be as ill off as if we remembered nothing. It would take as long for us to
recall a space of time as it took the original time to elapse, and we should
never get ahead with our thinking. All recollected times undergo . . .
foreshortening; and this foreshortening is due to the omission of an
enormous number of facts which filled them. "We thus reach the paradoxical
result," says M. Ribot, "that one condition of remembering is that we should
forget. Without totally forgetting a prodigious number of states of
consciousness, and momentarily forgetting a large number, we could not
remember at all. . . ."
In a century when the stock of human knowledge and of collective memories
would be multiplied, recorded, and diffused as never before, forgetting
would become more than ever a prerequisite for sanity.
But what happened to "forgotten" memories? "Where are the snows of
yester-year?" In the twentieth century the realm of memory was once again
transformed, to be rediscovered as a vast region of the unconscious. In his
Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1904) Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) started
from simple examples, such as the forgetting of proper names, of foreign
words, and of the order of words. The new arts of Memory for which Freud
became famous had both the scientific pretensions of Simonides and his
followers and the occult charm of the Neoplatonists. Of course, people had
always wondered at the mystery of dreams. Now Freud found the dream world
also to be a copious secret treasury of Memories. Freud's Interpretation of
Dreams (1900) showed how psychoanalysis could serve as an art and a science
of Memories.
Others, stirred by Freud, would find still more new meanings in Memory.
Latent Memory, or the unconscious, became a new resource of therapy,
anthropology, and sociology. Might not the tale of Oedipus record everyone's
experience? Freud's own mythic metaphors hinted at our inner inheritance of
ancient, communal experience. Carl Jung (1875-1961), more in the Hermetic
tradition, popularized the "collective unconscious." Now Freud, his
disciples and dissidents, as we will see, had again rediscovered, or perhaps
after their fashion reconstructed, the Cathedrals of Memory.
The Discoverers by Daniel J. Boorstin
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0394402294/
> sammi
one-hand-clapping
>in your veiw that all science is mistaken?
Eh? When did I ever deny the validity of science? I am saying that
science is valid but only in its realm - the realm of observables, of
appearances, of things you can look at with the senses or their
extensions. Since nobody has ever seen consciousness down a microscope
or EEG machine, let me begin there....
There seem to be two "worlds" which you reduce to the world of science,
the world of observables, a world gutted of experience. The two
"worlds" are :
- "My" view out - experience - subjective - "consciousness" - e.g. I
feel a sense of wonder and awe at seeing my baby being born. The
"world of subjective experience". The "mental". Do you deny your
current experience?
- A view of this organism from the outside - behaviour / observable
physical world- objective - flashes of electricity, neurons firing etc.
The "material". Do you deny that in your experience there are
observables?
These two "views of reality" happen at the same time, so I call them
interior and exterior correlates. They seem to be undeniable aspects of
reality. Experience is confirmed right now - you "look out" at the
world. That "world" that we see is the observable world.
Science was undeniably invented by people (conscious beings) looking
out (experience) at the observable world, and taking readings, of that
observable world.....
So back to my feeling of awe at seeing my baby being born:
When you look at the neurons firing in my brain (and I am not denying
those at all) you do not see my experience. My experience is invisible
to you, and yours to me. However, you CAN see my behaviour, including
the firing of neurons in the brain, and I could see yours. My
experience is private to me, and yours to you. My brain is open for all
to see, and so is yours.
However detailed your knowledge of which neurons fire when, you will
not experience MY wonder at the baby being born.
Consciousness does not seem to be reducibe to observables. You say "it
might be one day" but that is always the get out clause.....
You can't deny human experience. By deny I mean reduce it to the firing
of neurons.
Your very denial of experience is proof that experience exists. You do
not deny your experience, and yet you maintain that it's just some sort
of biochemical process that will be "understood" in time.
Please show me consciousness down a microscope or in a brain scan, and
I will come over to your view that experience can be reduced to
observables in the physical world. Until then, it is pure reductionism
to say "consciousness" (experience) can be reduced to acitivities of
the brain.
You are reducing the undeniable two "worlds" to one world of surfaces,
appearances, gutted of human emotion, of joy, of wonder, of values or
meaning. However, science REQUIRES a world of meaning, of values, of
consciousness, of human emotions in order to exist at all.
You cannot see "meaning" down a microscope. I, like many others, refuse
to reduce meaning and values and experience down to the firing of
neurons.
You say we're denying science. Not at all. I say science has its place,
but you take it way too far. This is scientism, bad science. Good
science does not deny experience, or the wonder of it all, the wonder
of life itself. The undeniable mystery that we're here at all..... as
all the greatest of scientists have noted anyway.....
"Consciousness is part of our universe, so any physical theory which
makes no proper place for it falls fundamentally short of providing a
genuine description of the world. A scientific world-view which does
not profoundly come to terms with the problem of conscious minds can
have no serious pretensions of completeness." Roger Penrose, Shadows
of the Mind
"The mental and material and are TWO SIDES of one overall process"
David Bohm
one-hand-clapping
i.e. know the realm in which it's valid. And it should not make claims
outside of that realm. .......... Read AN INTEGRAL THEORY OF
CONSCIOUSNESS... which says it all much better than i can ...
http://www.imprint.co.uk/Wilber.htm
one-hand-clapping
mentioned?.....
3) Neuropsychology views consciousness as anchored in neural systems,
neurotransmitters, and organic brain mechanisms. Unlike cognitive
science, which is often based on computer science and is consequently
vague about how consciousness is actually related to organic brain
structures, neuropsychology is a more biologically based approach.
Anchored in neuroscience more than computer science, it views
consciousness as intrinsically residing in organic neural systems of
sufficient complexity.