Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id XAA08105 (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 23:27:25 GMT X-Originating-IP: [209.240.222.132] From: "Scott Chase" <ecphoric@hotmail.com> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: Perception, Memory, Knowledge, Imagination and Cognition Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2002 18:21:42 -0500 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Message-ID: <F2938iUFN2HcfqbX7pq0000b47a@hotmail.com> X-OriginalArrivalTime: 01 Feb 2002 23:21:42.0270 (UTC) FILETIME=[350EB9E0:01C1AB77] Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>From: "Francesca S. Alcorn" <unicorn@greenepa.net>
>Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>Subject: Re: Perception, Memory, Knowledge, Imagination and Cognition
>Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2002 22:44:28 -0500
>
>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.
>
Are you sure you're not thinking of Wilder Penfield? Daniel Schacter has him
as a Canadian neurosurgeon in his _Searching for Memory:the Brain,the Mind
and the Past_. Penrose is another chap altogether if I'm not mistaken, but I
could very well be mistaken.
>
>I think he might have been the
>originator of "engram" and the concept of holistic memory, but don't
>hold me to that.
>
I'm not familar with Penfield (?) enough to know all of what he was about,
but the engram concept for a memory trace goes back AFAIK to a German
biologist named Richard Semon (1859-1918), though it is commonly attributed
to Karl Lashley. Daniel Schacter is the expert on Semon. His book _Forgotten
Ideas, Neglected Pioneers: Richard Semon and the Story of Memory_ is a
worthy read.
There was some holographic or hologram dude who came around after Lashley,
but I can't remember who off the top of my head.
>
>Are you suggesting that these "nerratized and abstracted remainders"
>might be somehow related to memes?
>
>
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