Dear Jay,
in a way, I would actually take the point of saying that
memory (G) is the dynamic process of cumulating experiences,
generating patterns of perception, leading to synergies between
across time and space thus enabling meaning to emerge and
bringing about the AWARENESS of time.
remembering (E) would then be the experience of recognizing
contents of actual consciousness as being part of our past
experience (either triggerd unconsciously or voluntarily,
including artefacts that support this process, notes, knots in
the handkerchief, patient charts in medicine, ....)
Your hint at the issue of timing seems very crucial to me.
When do certain memories emerge to our consciousness?
When and why do we become aware of past experiences?
Questions that have not really been answered so far
(or rather being far from satisfying)
As you know, in research on memory very much attention has
been put on deliberate acts of remembering. Subjects are
given a clear task and the "dependent variable" becomes
their hits of "successful reproduction".
I feel very uncomfortable with this approach, as these
experimental settings are quite arbitrary in character.
Classical cognitivism was on the other hand very much
sceptical on the issue of the unconscious as the very
concept refuses overt access to these phenomena and
opens up the unbeloved issue of interpretation.
Very much in line with Zinchenkos proposal to look upon
unvoluntary memory (G) as the primary condition from an
evolutionary point of view, Reber (see reference below)
in his work on "implicit learning/ tacit knowledge" proposed
to turn around the "burden of proof".
"(..) rather than putting the burden of demonstration on those
who claim that a particual process was unconscious or that
a given knowledge base was tacit, the burden of proof should
go to those who argue that it was, in fact, conscious. (..)
We would do well to recognize that it is actually more surprising
that any function is conscious than unconscious."
But we cannot stop here, we actually have to try to explain
WHY some memories come across our consciousness. What kind of
dialectical relationship may be assumed?
Freud - from my reading - tried to do this by claiming that
our consciousness does not have any memory at all. In his famous
note on the "Wunderblock" he sketched the interrelatedness and
at the same time the semi-autonomous character of the conscious
and the unconscious. However, still "just" an analogy ...
Other writings? Well, in psychology focusing on the individual
psychoanalysis makes some reasonable proposals, however,
I would also like to open up the horizon to the social
dimension of remembering ... well ...
Bartlett for sure ...
Durkheim and Halbwachs in sociology.
v. Cranach - psychology of action
Lang - ecological psychology (knowledge in things and places)
Middleton, Edwards and others from a discoursive point of view.
Engeström from an activity theoretical position.
There is a lot of thoughts waiting to be travelled.
Best, Christoph
ps. oh yes, the reference ;-)
Reber, A.S. (1993). Implicit learning and tacit knowledge.
An essay on the cognitive unconscious. NY, Oxford UP.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 01 2001 - 01:02:00 PDT