Self-Improvising Memory: A Perspective on Memories as Agential, Dynamically Reinterpreting Cognitive Glue
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Self-Improvising Memory: A Perspective on Memories as Agential, Dynamically Reinterpreting Cognitive Glue
We reinterpret or reconstruct our memory in light of what our mental set is in the present. In this sense, it is more accurate to say the present causes the meaning of the past, than it is to say that the past causes the meaning of the present . . . Our memories are not “stored” and “objective” entities but living parts of ourselves in the present.
... See moreBenjamin P. Hardy • Be Your Future Self Now
if everyone remembered everything, would our differences get shaved away? What would happen to our sense of self? It seemed to me that a perfect memory couldn’t be a narrative any more than unedited security-cam footage could be a feature film.
Ted Chiang • Exhalation: Stories
“Memory, I know, is a non-unitary concept. There are memories that are explicit, that can be produced and formulated, verbally expressed, set down neatly in ink in a honeycomb of black-and-white squares. This we call declarative memory. There is the body’s memory, instinct, the intuitive flash which enables us to perch atop a bicycle, skitter acros... See more