Thought piece 9-16-07 --or, I finally figured out this blog thing!

William James has written a huge chapter that seems to have been quite a comprehensive study of memory research up to the time of his writing it, and he puts together a pretty clear framework through which to view memory. He first discusses primary memory, which is a sort of short-term memory of something we have just experienced, and it has not yet left our consciousness. James, with his term primary memory, seems to be describing the human experience of the present—the eternally transient moment of perception, the “eternal now,” the collection of just-passed experiences still held in consciousness. The things we are aware of in our primary memory make up our current conception of the immediate present.

After something leaves our primary memory, it must be recalled by our secondary memory to be experienced again; and according to James, “substantive... states of mind” are far more likely to be able to be recalled. That is, those states of mind attended to for longer periods of time, in which the rememberer thinks more about his experiences and associates with it more already-retained memories and schemata, will be easier to be remembered. James, very interestingly introduces the idea of consciousness into the process of remembering: if an event is to be truly remembered, the rememberer must wholeheartedly believe that this event happened to him, to his self, in his own past. Schacter's very human approach to discussing memory latches on firmly to this conscious and active placement of one's self (or one's past self, depending on one's metaphysical beliefs) in the past situation from which the memory was made. I have some personal reservations about jumping onto the bandwagon of saying true memories must necessarily contain an element of conscious recollection; but I will decline to further comment until I understand further theories connected to implicit memory. I also wish to much explore sorts of seemingly unconscious muscle memory—“just like riding a bike!”

James also spends a good deal of time on forgetting, much more than some of the other authors we've read for today who mention it. I like his idea of selection and how an overload of memories—such as the ability to remember everything all the time—would be just as difficult to deal with as remembering nothing at all. This phenomenon, I believe, is mirrored in the way we perceive exterior stimuli, as Aldous Huxley explores in his “The Doors of Perception.” Evolutionarily, we have had to train ourselves to select the most important things to perceive and to remember.

Neisser spoke about this phenomenon, “the superiority of meaningful material,” in his damning article, calling it an easy empirical generalization, which is obvious to most kindergarteners. He goes through many of James' findings and dismisses them in this way. He accuses most memory research of having too little to do with “what happens in the real world.” I noticed this Lab vs. Life problem in most of the studies cited in this weeks readings and was very happy when Neisser pointed out this glaring catch. I assume much of our semester in this class will be focused on finding ways around the problem of gathering reliable data that pertains to our everyday lives. He poses many questions which will keep us plenty busy until Christmas.

I feel that Schacter begins to deal with some of these in creative ways. Both on the page before the table of contents and on the second page of the introduction, we find the quote, “Memory is life.” His first two chapters are filled with memory's connection to the sense of self, personal identity, and self-empowering notions such as “mental time travel.” While laying his framework through which to discuss memory, he uses works of art, I believe, to try to bridge the gap between scientific data and quotidian experience. If nothing else, his discussions of art can be useful, like a metaphor or simile, to help create another image or association, or another perspective to access the data and theories he brings to the table.

I'd also like to say that I side with those cognitive scientists who believe that computers have the potential to mimic human minds and memories. We simply don't have enough information about human behavior; and the computer that can do this may very well take up the space of several continents. But we're working on mapping the human genome, so how can one say it's impossible to map out human memory patterns. And let's face it, that Ridley Scott film is really convincing!

So: How well do Schactel and Bourtchouladze do at answering Neisser's questions? Do we really have no more to say about memory than the ancient Greeks? Does James' framework hold up against modern memory research findings? How can we find worthwhile research results that pertain to our everyday lives?