Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id DAA06167 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 1 Feb 2002 03:49:47 GMT X-Sender: unicorn@pop.greenepa.net Message-Id: <p04320400b87fbcc168df@[192.168.2.3]> In-Reply-To: <200201310205.g0V255609359@mail12.bigmailbox.com> References: <200201310205.g0V255609359@mail12.bigmailbox.com> Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2002 22:44:28 -0500 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk From: "Francesca S. Alcorn" <unicorn@greenepa.net> Subject: Re: Perception, Memory, Knowledge, Imagination and Cognition Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Joe said:
> All of the other mental modalities have their source in
>perception. Memory comes directly from perception, knowledge is the
>subcless of former memories that have been narratively compressed or
>abstractly represented, imagination is comprised of perceptions and
>memories deconstructed and components of them recombined, and
>cognition is the deconstruction and recombination of components of
>perception and knowledge.
> Memory is restricted to the reproduction to some degree of a
>segment of past perception, complete with a spatiotemporal
>perspective; thus memory is diachronic and positional. On the other
>hand, knowledge of an informational datum would not entail that we
>be capable of reproducing the experience of learning it; thus
>knowledge may be considered synchronic and apositional. Imagination
>and cognition extrapolate possibilities from the actualities grasped
>in perception and retained in (for imagination) memory and (for
>cognition) knowledge. However, imagination is restricted to a
>generation of possible perceptions from particular spatiotemporal
>perspectives and is diachronic and positional; cognition is
>synchronic and apositional.
Maybe I am misunderstanding you, but it seems to me that cognition
has *some* spatial elements to it. I think more three-dimensionally
and my husband is a linear thinker. I've always seen this as a
left-brain/right-brain thing. Or maybe space is the best analogy
that we can find to describe a connective pattern.
Dispensing with the spatiotemporal lends itself to the concept of
abstraction. I had never thought of that before.
> Although they are all to some degree autonomous with respect to
>perception (knowledge and cognition more so than memory and
>imagination, due to the fact that the former two have dispensed with
>spatiotemporal context), they are all directly or ind!
>irectly grounded in perception, and recurse to inform it.
>Forgetting needs to be mentioned also. If we consider memory to be
>an imprinted representation of presented experience, a perceptual
>text, if you will, and subsequent experience to be continually
>inscribing upon the same neural parchment, the minor details and
>routine experiences would become obliterated first; thus broad
>outlines and the unusual would be remembered longer. Finally, the
>experiential, that is, spatiotemporal and object-perceptual context
>in which the information was received would be destroyed, and thbat
>which remains would no longer be memory, but knowledge. Cognition
>deconstructs and recombines these nerratized and abstracted
>remainders, as imagination deconstructs and recombines memory images
>(of all percpetual media, not just visual) and perceptions.
I have wondered about the process of memory decay. I could never
reconcile it with Penrose (the canadian surgeon) who stimulated
certain portions of a person's brain during neurosurgery and got them
to reproduce quite mundane memories. I think he might have been the
originator of "engram" and the concept of holistic memory, but don't
hold me to that.
Are you suggesting that these "nerratized and abstracted remainders"
might be somehow related to memes?
frankie
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