"I like to be in America!!" I'm hoping your memory traces now are structured with much better music:>). Seriously though, I thought the idea of memory traces had been abandoned by now, particularly since neuroscientists are rapidly abandoning their phrenological obsession with parts and structures of the brain (hippocampus = memory center; amygdala = fear center, etc) - replacing it with neural networks which involve distributed information throughout the brain. And if Dan Siegel is to be believed, throughout the entire body, and beyond to the entire universe!
In any case, I suppose these primitive ways of thinking still persist. Your pie example reminds me of some comments from Robert Kegan, a developmental psychologist. He used this story to illustrate the cognitive differences between a 4 year old and a 7 year old. Perhaps it may shed some light on the old memory trace theory.
One day a woman was serving some pie to her two sons, one 4, one 7. Since the older boy was quite a bit larger, she felt it appropriate to give him a larger piece of pie. Well, naturally the 4 year old didn't like this at all and started crying for an equally large piece. The mother didn't want to spoil him, but wasn't quite sure how to console him at the moment. Then suddenly, without any forethought, she grabbed the pie cutter and cut the 4 year old's slice into two.
Sae saller piece of pie, but now TWO pieces instead of only one. To her amazement, this utterly delighted him, and now - feeling he had received fair treatent (having "more" pie than his brother) he was completely happy.
Neural networks! Information distributed throughout the brain if not the entire body if not the entire universe! Good Heavens! That's not deep nonsense, but the shallowest kind of nonsense imaginable.
Analytical philosophy is doing a good job of distancing theories of consciousness from physicalism and mechanism, another good example being the work of Galen Strawson. But does the relativistic subjectivism that makes all thought and understanding dependent on context, conditioning, "needs and interests" provide an adequate explanation of either the "nature of things" or the "nature of knowledge"? Continental philosophy might be able to add more and better insights into both theory of "memory" and the idea of "trace" - but Mnemosyne might be a better guide to understanding than either school of philosophy.
Hi Rod, in the Synthesis of Yoga (chapter "The Planes of Our Existence"), Sri Aurobindo writes:
"We find that in the various systems the facts dealt with are always the same, but there are considerable differences of theoretic and practical arrangement, as is natural and inevitable in dealing with a subject so large and difficult. Certain things are here omitted, there made all-important, here understressed, there over-emphasised; certain fields of experience which are in one system held to be merely subordinate provinces, are in others treated as separate kingdoms. But I shall follow here consistently the Vedic and Vedantic arrangement of which we find the great lines in the Upanishads, first because it seems to me at once the simplest and most philosophical and more especially because it was from the beginning envisaged from the point of view of the utility of these various planes to the supreme object of our liberation."
Thus Sri Aurobindo, too, adopts what Putnam calls Ontological Pluralism — see the second part of my previous post (on Nature’s things/the nature of things). Among the many possible parsings of the situation, he selects the one that “was from the beginning envisaged from the point of view of the utility of these various planes to the supreme object of our liberation.” That is, selected according to needs and interests. The only difference between his Pluralism and that of Putnam or Braude is that the philosophical system he constructs is based on a far wider range of experiences. But experiences always need parsing before they can be formulated and communicated, and the vaster the range of experiences accessible, the greater will be the number of possible parsings. It is not a question here of a “relativistic subjectivism,” except in the uncontroversial sense that all mental constructs are based on the experiences of subjects, and that there will always be many possible parsings. Nor is it a question of “an adequate explanation of either the ‘nature of things’ or the ‘nature of knowledge’” in the sense of an absolutist (as against pluralist) ontology or epistemology. Let’s keep in mind these famous lines from Savitri:
But thought nor word can seize eternal Truth:
The whole world lives in a lonely ray of her sun.
In our thinking’s close and narrow lamp-lit house
The vanity of our shut mortal mind
Dreams that the chains of thought have made her ours;
But only we play with our own brilliant bonds;
Tying her down, it is ourselves we tie.
In our hypnosis by one luminous point
We see not what small figure of her we hold...
For Truth is wider, greater than her forms.
A thousand icons they have made of her
And find her in the idols they adore;
But she remains herself and infinite.
I also doubt that Mnemosyne is of much help. She belongs to a former consciousness structure (to use Gebser’s term), not to the one which is presently trying to manifest itself (Gebser’s integral structure, Sri Aurobindo’s supramental one).
In my understanding of these things, 1) Mnemosyne doesn't belong to an age of symbolic representation but, like Aletheia and Savitri, is an eternal emanation that makes "memory" a fundamental and necessary aspect of "consciousness" in the world of manifestation, as explained adequately by Bergson; 2) the phrase adopted from Braude, "selected according to needs and interests" can conveniently be applied to the statement of Sri Aurobindo and his intention, but the phrase "it was from the beginning envisaged..." exceeds such a reductive interpretation to an extent that dissolves completely the validity of such an application. From the point of view of a critique of the limitations of language, ontological pluralism makes sense, but from the point of view of the "being of truth" and the greater possibilities of consciousness, this idea of the trace, and the nature of things, as expressed by Braude and favored by you, I find altogether inadequate and inappropriate with respect to any endeavor to grasp the truth of existence.
I don't quite grasp how "this idea of the trace" as criticized by Braude is favored by me, nor what you mean by "the nature of things" (which has so many possible meanings).
Besides, I fully endorse that the Vedic/Vedantic arrangement “was from the beginning envisaged from the point of view of the utility of these various planes to the supreme object of our liberation.” You don’t imagine that those guys were interested in our metaphysical speculations?
It seems to me that when you write: Nature has no intrinsic structure which it presents to us. Reality is not “a perspective-free warehouse of ontological furniture” [LOI6 243]. Rather it is we who “parse slices of history in different ways for different purposes” [ESP 204], you are taking the point of view of Braude in a favorable way. It seems to me that when Braude writes of our mental parsing of history and experience that there is "no content or meaning independently of context and perspective and no perspective is intrinsically preferable to another...there is no manifest structure" he, and you, are adopting a form of eliminativism which would deny the idea of swabhava in Sri Aurobindo's philosophy of the "nature of things" and also the point of view which, he says, is from the planes (of matter, life, mind, overmind gods, supermind), which are structured for the sake of our liberation, which is to say our identification with the all-creative omniscient Origin. Sri Aurobindo is a metaphysical realist, and the position you are taking in these articles is a negation of that philosophy. While ontological pluralism can be applied to the characteristic activity of our practical and physical minds, it does not apply to that higher mental function often referred to by Sri Aurobindo as Hermetic Ideation, which "sees" the Origin of things in themselves, their Nature, or what Heidegger refers to as the "Truth of Being", rather than the relative statements we commonly make about "beings" according to our personal perspectives. That is a different understanding of reality from the one arrived at finally by analytical philosophy in the form of Braude's point of view, and it definitely has a different meaning, perspective, and purpose.
Rod, here is the text whence you quote the snippets which I have put in square brackets:
because experiences and bits of behavior [have no content or meaning independently of context and perspective] on context, and because [no perspective from which behavior and experience are meaningful is intrinsically preferable to any other], this content or meaning is not something our behavior and experience simply *have”.... If we take this seriously, we must construe human history, not as a series of events with a manifest structure or content, but rather as an intrinsically undifferentiated flow of experiencing and behaving that can be parsed and related to one another in various ways, and also reveal different aspects from the points of view associated with these different parsings and positionings.... we can individuate the things people do or experience and view them as significant relative to other things individuated within the same perspective. But since the content or meaning of an inner or outer episode is a positional property and not something it has intrinsically, we must realize that mental states in general are not context-independent elements in the manifest structure of history; [there is no] such [manifest structure]. Mental states exist only relative to some parsing and characterization of the flow of life.
The passage as a whole is clear enough: mental states in general are not context-independent elements in the manifest structure of history; there is no *such* manifest structure — you conveniently omit the important “such”. The histories we construct on the basis of (or extract from) an intrinsically undifferentiated flow of experiencing and behaving depend on us (who do the constructing or extracting), our needs, interests, predilections, diverse perspectives.
This is a positive statement of a positive fact about the ordinary minds of ordinary humans dealing with the content of ordinary human experience. Nothing is thereby eliminated except such nonsense as the notion of a memory trace. The passage has no bearing on swabhava, overmind gods, an all-creative omniscient Origin, the Hermetic ideality (not ideation) which Sri Aurobindo mentions in the Record of Yoga, or Heidegger (God forbid).
Besides, “the nature of things,” too, has different meanings depending on interests etc. It could refer to the mind’s need to deal with the flow of experience by carving it up into separate things, or it could refer to the entities postulated by metaphysical realists. Ditto for “metaphysical realist” — applied to some it would be high praise, applied to Sri Aurobindo it is more of an insult.
Ulrich, thanks for this excellent post. After many decades of research, materialist have nothing, nada, zilch to account for memory. And they'll never be able to do so. Nor can they explain related phenomena, such as the many cases of "terminal lucidity" being reported for Alzheimer patients.
To quote clinical psychologist Douglas Varoch: "we have a woefully limited understanding of the phenomenon". Shorter version: "we have no clue."
Thanks for the link to this interesting article. Acknowledgment of woefully limited understanding is a welcome rarity. The usual euphemism for "not understood at all" is "not fully understood yet."
"I like to be in America!!" I'm hoping your memory traces now are structured with much better music:>). Seriously though, I thought the idea of memory traces had been abandoned by now, particularly since neuroscientists are rapidly abandoning their phrenological obsession with parts and structures of the brain (hippocampus = memory center; amygdala = fear center, etc) - replacing it with neural networks which involve distributed information throughout the brain. And if Dan Siegel is to be believed, throughout the entire body, and beyond to the entire universe!
In any case, I suppose these primitive ways of thinking still persist. Your pie example reminds me of some comments from Robert Kegan, a developmental psychologist. He used this story to illustrate the cognitive differences between a 4 year old and a 7 year old. Perhaps it may shed some light on the old memory trace theory.
One day a woman was serving some pie to her two sons, one 4, one 7. Since the older boy was quite a bit larger, she felt it appropriate to give him a larger piece of pie. Well, naturally the 4 year old didn't like this at all and started crying for an equally large piece. The mother didn't want to spoil him, but wasn't quite sure how to console him at the moment. Then suddenly, without any forethought, she grabbed the pie cutter and cut the 4 year old's slice into two.
Sae saller piece of pie, but now TWO pieces instead of only one. To her amazement, this utterly delighted him, and now - feeling he had received fair treatent (having "more" pie than his brother) he was completely happy.
sorry, that should read "same smaller" piece of pie....
Neural networks! Information distributed throughout the brain if not the entire body if not the entire universe! Good Heavens! That's not deep nonsense, but the shallowest kind of nonsense imaginable.
Yes, well, I thought it a nice accompaniment to the 4 year old way of thinking:>)
Analytical philosophy is doing a good job of distancing theories of consciousness from physicalism and mechanism, another good example being the work of Galen Strawson. But does the relativistic subjectivism that makes all thought and understanding dependent on context, conditioning, "needs and interests" provide an adequate explanation of either the "nature of things" or the "nature of knowledge"? Continental philosophy might be able to add more and better insights into both theory of "memory" and the idea of "trace" - but Mnemosyne might be a better guide to understanding than either school of philosophy.
Hi Rod, in the Synthesis of Yoga (chapter "The Planes of Our Existence"), Sri Aurobindo writes:
"We find that in the various systems the facts dealt with are always the same, but there are considerable differences of theoretic and practical arrangement, as is natural and inevitable in dealing with a subject so large and difficult. Certain things are here omitted, there made all-important, here understressed, there over-emphasised; certain fields of experience which are in one system held to be merely subordinate provinces, are in others treated as separate kingdoms. But I shall follow here consistently the Vedic and Vedantic arrangement of which we find the great lines in the Upanishads, first because it seems to me at once the simplest and most philosophical and more especially because it was from the beginning envisaged from the point of view of the utility of these various planes to the supreme object of our liberation."
Thus Sri Aurobindo, too, adopts what Putnam calls Ontological Pluralism — see the second part of my previous post (on Nature’s things/the nature of things). Among the many possible parsings of the situation, he selects the one that “was from the beginning envisaged from the point of view of the utility of these various planes to the supreme object of our liberation.” That is, selected according to needs and interests. The only difference between his Pluralism and that of Putnam or Braude is that the philosophical system he constructs is based on a far wider range of experiences. But experiences always need parsing before they can be formulated and communicated, and the vaster the range of experiences accessible, the greater will be the number of possible parsings. It is not a question here of a “relativistic subjectivism,” except in the uncontroversial sense that all mental constructs are based on the experiences of subjects, and that there will always be many possible parsings. Nor is it a question of “an adequate explanation of either the ‘nature of things’ or the ‘nature of knowledge’” in the sense of an absolutist (as against pluralist) ontology or epistemology. Let’s keep in mind these famous lines from Savitri:
But thought nor word can seize eternal Truth:
The whole world lives in a lonely ray of her sun.
In our thinking’s close and narrow lamp-lit house
The vanity of our shut mortal mind
Dreams that the chains of thought have made her ours;
But only we play with our own brilliant bonds;
Tying her down, it is ourselves we tie.
In our hypnosis by one luminous point
We see not what small figure of her we hold...
For Truth is wider, greater than her forms.
A thousand icons they have made of her
And find her in the idols they adore;
But she remains herself and infinite.
I also doubt that Mnemosyne is of much help. She belongs to a former consciousness structure (to use Gebser’s term), not to the one which is presently trying to manifest itself (Gebser’s integral structure, Sri Aurobindo’s supramental one).
In my understanding of these things, 1) Mnemosyne doesn't belong to an age of symbolic representation but, like Aletheia and Savitri, is an eternal emanation that makes "memory" a fundamental and necessary aspect of "consciousness" in the world of manifestation, as explained adequately by Bergson; 2) the phrase adopted from Braude, "selected according to needs and interests" can conveniently be applied to the statement of Sri Aurobindo and his intention, but the phrase "it was from the beginning envisaged..." exceeds such a reductive interpretation to an extent that dissolves completely the validity of such an application. From the point of view of a critique of the limitations of language, ontological pluralism makes sense, but from the point of view of the "being of truth" and the greater possibilities of consciousness, this idea of the trace, and the nature of things, as expressed by Braude and favored by you, I find altogether inadequate and inappropriate with respect to any endeavor to grasp the truth of existence.
I don't quite grasp how "this idea of the trace" as criticized by Braude is favored by me, nor what you mean by "the nature of things" (which has so many possible meanings).
Besides, I fully endorse that the Vedic/Vedantic arrangement “was from the beginning envisaged from the point of view of the utility of these various planes to the supreme object of our liberation.” You don’t imagine that those guys were interested in our metaphysical speculations?
It seems to me that when you write: Nature has no intrinsic structure which it presents to us. Reality is not “a perspective-free warehouse of ontological furniture” [LOI6 243]. Rather it is we who “parse slices of history in different ways for different purposes” [ESP 204], you are taking the point of view of Braude in a favorable way. It seems to me that when Braude writes of our mental parsing of history and experience that there is "no content or meaning independently of context and perspective and no perspective is intrinsically preferable to another...there is no manifest structure" he, and you, are adopting a form of eliminativism which would deny the idea of swabhava in Sri Aurobindo's philosophy of the "nature of things" and also the point of view which, he says, is from the planes (of matter, life, mind, overmind gods, supermind), which are structured for the sake of our liberation, which is to say our identification with the all-creative omniscient Origin. Sri Aurobindo is a metaphysical realist, and the position you are taking in these articles is a negation of that philosophy. While ontological pluralism can be applied to the characteristic activity of our practical and physical minds, it does not apply to that higher mental function often referred to by Sri Aurobindo as Hermetic Ideation, which "sees" the Origin of things in themselves, their Nature, or what Heidegger refers to as the "Truth of Being", rather than the relative statements we commonly make about "beings" according to our personal perspectives. That is a different understanding of reality from the one arrived at finally by analytical philosophy in the form of Braude's point of view, and it definitely has a different meaning, perspective, and purpose.
Rod, here is the text whence you quote the snippets which I have put in square brackets:
because experiences and bits of behavior [have no content or meaning independently of context and perspective] on context, and because [no perspective from which behavior and experience are meaningful is intrinsically preferable to any other], this content or meaning is not something our behavior and experience simply *have”.... If we take this seriously, we must construe human history, not as a series of events with a manifest structure or content, but rather as an intrinsically undifferentiated flow of experiencing and behaving that can be parsed and related to one another in various ways, and also reveal different aspects from the points of view associated with these different parsings and positionings.... we can individuate the things people do or experience and view them as significant relative to other things individuated within the same perspective. But since the content or meaning of an inner or outer episode is a positional property and not something it has intrinsically, we must realize that mental states in general are not context-independent elements in the manifest structure of history; [there is no] such [manifest structure]. Mental states exist only relative to some parsing and characterization of the flow of life.
The passage as a whole is clear enough: mental states in general are not context-independent elements in the manifest structure of history; there is no *such* manifest structure — you conveniently omit the important “such”. The histories we construct on the basis of (or extract from) an intrinsically undifferentiated flow of experiencing and behaving depend on us (who do the constructing or extracting), our needs, interests, predilections, diverse perspectives.
This is a positive statement of a positive fact about the ordinary minds of ordinary humans dealing with the content of ordinary human experience. Nothing is thereby eliminated except such nonsense as the notion of a memory trace. The passage has no bearing on swabhava, overmind gods, an all-creative omniscient Origin, the Hermetic ideality (not ideation) which Sri Aurobindo mentions in the Record of Yoga, or Heidegger (God forbid).
Besides, “the nature of things,” too, has different meanings depending on interests etc. It could refer to the mind’s need to deal with the flow of experience by carving it up into separate things, or it could refer to the entities postulated by metaphysical realists. Ditto for “metaphysical realist” — applied to some it would be high praise, applied to Sri Aurobindo it is more of an insult.
Ulrich, thanks for this excellent post. After many decades of research, materialist have nothing, nada, zilch to account for memory. And they'll never be able to do so. Nor can they explain related phenomena, such as the many cases of "terminal lucidity" being reported for Alzheimer patients.
To quote clinical psychologist Douglas Varoch: "we have a woefully limited understanding of the phenomenon". Shorter version: "we have no clue."
https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/terminal-lucidity/
Thanks for the link to this interesting article. Acknowledgment of woefully limited understanding is a welcome rarity. The usual euphemism for "not understood at all" is "not fully understood yet."