Memory as Triage: Facing Up to the Hard Question of Memory
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Memory as Triage: Facing Up to the Hard Question of Memory Nikola Andonovski 1 Accepted: 19 October 2020/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract The Hard Question of memory is the following: how are memory representations stored and organized so as to be made available for retrieval in the appropriate circumstances and format? In this essay, I argue that philosophical theories of memory should engage with the Hard Question directly and seriously. I propose that declarative memory is a faculty performing a kind of cognitive triage: management of information for a variety of uses under significant computational constraints. In such triage, memory representations are preferentially selected and stabilized, but also systematically modified and integrated into generalized, model-like representational structures. Further, I propose a hybrid theory of remembering, which takes into account both the nature of the cognitive processes underlying remembering and the norms that govern representational success in relevant cognitive/epistemic contexts. And then what happens? - Dennett (199a, p.255) Memory is involved in almost everything we do, but most of the time we think of ourselves not as remembering but rather as doing something else. - Anderson (2007, p.122)
1 The Hard Question of Memory The Hard Question of memory appears, albeit in an unfamiliar guise, at one of the inaugural moments of Western philosophy. Meno, doing his best Socrates impression, presents us with his “paradox of inquiry” (Meno 80d-e). If one knows what they are
* Nikola Andonovski [email protected]
1
Department of Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University, 281 Gilman Hall, 3400 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
N. Andonovski
searching for, then inquiry is unnecessary; if they don’t, however, it is impossible. So, inquiry is either unnecessary or impossible.1 Socrates’ solution, that favorite punching bag of many a freshman, is deceptively simple: inquiry is recollection of knowledge the immortal soul already possesses, “so it is no way surprising that it can recollect the things it knew before” (81d). Bracketing freshman rage and metaphysical extravagance, it is somewhat surprising that recollection is called on for rescue. As numerous commentators have observed,2 recollection seems to be problematic for the very same reason that bothered Meno. Indeed, applied to recollection, the puzzle gains intuitive force.3 Sophie-Grace Chappell (2017) presents it with characteristic flair:
What happens when you try to recall a name that you have forgotten? Well, you aim to retrieve a name from your memory. But: how? There is no point to do this unless that name is already there in your memory, right where you are and without any... separation between you and it... Do you know it, or don't you? (p.392). Sensing the need for such ‘separation’, the Plato of the Theaetetus introduces his famous image of the soul as “a sort of aviary of all kinds of birds; some in flocks separate from the others, some in small groups, and others flying about singly here and t
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