I won't try to comment on Zinchenko's theories of remembering, but I do
think that Christoph points to some very interesting issues. The original
distinction he is commenting on seems very much to center on the notion of
Will, of a volitional effort at remembering vs. a spontaneous remembering.
To frame this in terms of different kinds of activities, we need perhaps to
look beyond the conscious individual ... consider some cases:
Someone can remind me of something ... we are in joint activity, and the
partner says or does something that triggers a remembering ... it does not
matter for now whether the partner aimed at this result or not. Frequently
the remembering continues and extends itself dynamically only insofar as
the joint activity continues and the interactions with the partner afford
and abet the ongoing, developing remembering ... in me, and perhaps likely
also, if somewhat differently in detail, in him/her.
Some thing can remind me of something ...a smell, a taste, a streetscape, a
tool-in-hand ... and the perhaps short-term activity, perhaps even the
action, that is the past or present accompaniment, the carrying-forward
phenomenologically of and with that something, the doing/happening with
that something.
Memory is dynamic; not a recall of some static image or bit of information,
but a recapitulation of a dynamic process, of a sequence or series (perhaps
so short it seems like a static thing) in which each step triggers or leads
on to the next. So remembering is an aspect of action itself, built at the
operational level, experienced at the action level. In every action there
is also a remembering ... a short-term remembering that gives continuity in
temporal experiencing and action to a sequence of operations ... the
remembering-what-we're-doing-as-we-do-it, the being-mindful of doing ...
Edelman discusses this in his _Remembered Present_ and takes it as
essential to consciousness itself.
Remembering-in-action can also be an irrealis remembering of a past similar
action-sequence layered on top of a present remembering/doing. The extreme
case is deja vu, where the overlay is so perfect we no longer distinguish
realis and irrealis, the remembered past and the remembered present ...
even when there was no similar past event. But more normally, they do have
different flavours ... different intensities or saliences, different
textures... and they do not have to run in perfect parallel, but more often
are separated segmentally or in some other way ... remembering the past
WHILE doing the present, a sort of parallel processing.
But we can also stop the present action while we re-live the memory of the
past action, or alternate focus between them.
In the case I am starting from, all this remembering-the-present is
automatic, and all the remembering-the-past is spontaneous. The past
memories flow, triggered by present events/operations/actions and our
interpretations of them (connotative associations), as afforded by the
larger activity and its context: other participants, situational context,
etc. Some memories flow as wholes; they reach a certain natural completion.
Others do not; they get stuck. That is when the non-spontaneous
effort-to-remember is felt. There is first the sense of
something-to-be-remembered which we are not remembering. I think this is
very likely the response to operations that are not carrying-forward as
actions. We have the feeling there is something we ought to be remembering
that we're not. It's most obvious when the memory gets off to a good start
but stalls in the middle or before the end. But I think it can also happen
right at the very beginning, before we are aware that we are remembering,
because the stall comes before operations-remembered can add up to anything
meaningful enough to be recognized (i.e. to any action).
I am also assuming here that an action or operation minimally "remembered"
is a sort of ghost-operation or ghost-action, like inner speech without
subvocalization, some of the neuronal patterns are firing, but not the
links to motor efference. Of course in many rememberings there _is_ a motor
component, too. Maybe we can feel incompleted actions or truncated
operations in memory as motor 'tickles' too.
In any event, we feel the need to try to remember (more). If the memory
comes immediately and effortlessly, we may even forget the 'effort' ... if
it does not come at all at first, we are aware only of the effort. That
sense of effort gives rise to our notion of willful remembering ...
perhaps, in the cases where it is instantly successful, the memory has
started spontaneously, stalled, and requires only an act of attention to
get rolling again, a sort of attentional compliance that is not so much an
effort as just a letting-happen. When it is not successful, we enter that
unpleasant and mysterious realm of 'forced remembering' where we try to
trick ourselves into remembering. Or we suspend the effort ... and then the
memory arises later "spontaneously". Why? because perhaps it was already
started, but blocked? because the conditions that triggered it continue to
be present in the activity? because those conditions are themselves now in
memory, along with the truncated initiation, and together they simply wait
for the right conditions of compliance to carry-forward?
I hope it's clear that what I am trying to do here is to articulate how
Christoph's inquiry might be formulated in a dynamical theory of
remembering that makes memory not so different in its nature from activity
itself. And at the same time to shift the key distinction a bit, away from
matters of volition, toward a sense of what volition itself is, and how it
arises in activity.
It would be nice to have a big discussion of these matters ... but I'm not
sure we have a critical mass of our list-partners with us yet. Keep
reminding us, Eva!
JAY.
---------------------------
JAY L. LEMKE
PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
<http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/index.htm>
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