ShawnDecember 10, 2018 at 18:4410475 views45 comments
Suppose we have a memory of something.
Ontologically speaking, where does that memory refer to?
Comments (45)
MentalusionDecember 10, 2018 at 18:49#2355180 likes
1. One has a memory of some thing, call it "x".
2. The thing that the memory of "x" is about or refers to is x.
3. Therefore, the memory refers to wherever x happens to be.
Ontologically speaking, where does that memory refer to?
How about this approach (I find it consistent with what Mentalusion is saying):
Memory is the (re-)experiencing of a previously obtained experience. The latter can either be of the external world or of internal cognitive givens (e.g., dreams, or else formerly obtained ideas). Hence, memories refer to previously obtained experiences.
-----
BTW, how do you guys insert the link of “@username”?
Ontologically speaking, where does that memory refer to?
The use of "where" in relation to "refer to" puzzles me. The ordinary use is to connect one term or idea to another. Something like: When I speak of heartless cretins, I am referring to my employers."
The use of "where" is kind of a poetic repurposing or transposition of that syntax.
The first thought I had was of the use of "memory palaces", techniques to keep what is remembered in a structure that facilitates retrieval or reuse. Short term memories turn into long term memories by either training or strong emotion (and maybe for other reasons).
I don't know how much an observation of of the sort I just made is ontological versus other kinds of "logic."
I've been reading into the Loci technique, for instantiating or obtaining of memory retrieval. When, we instantiate a subject into a Cartesian plane, then, some coordinate map is necesaary.
If I were to say that this place, that is, the logical space that this forum occupies, is special. Then how do I reference this "place"?
ValentinusDecember 10, 2018 at 22:15#2355880 likes
Reply to Wallows
And if there is a map, there is a territory.
I am interested in how techniques become mixed up with descriptions of what is happening.
In my work, a map is given to me and I have to make another one on top of it to make it "real."
It is like a book one has read carefully, every part is connected to the other parts.
But, General Semantics says, that the map is not the territory. If it is not, then what is it?
ValentinusDecember 10, 2018 at 22:56#2356010 likes
Reply to Wallows
You can hold the map in your hands. You can put a compass on it so that you point yourself in alignment with with the arrows on the map. It is a set of operations within your control.
When you start walking, you might find the map is not quite right, bears may attack you without warning, there was no mention of the swamp you will have to circumvent.
Ontologically speaking, where does that memory refer to?
Because we don't have direct contact with reality--we only have sensory input which we develop into more or less consistent images, sounds, odors, textures, flavors--memory can only be an experience of images derived from the senses.
Let's pay a visit to our underground ontology lab. First we fasten you to an immovable chair with duct tape in front of a screen. Then we leave the dark room and lock the door. You are instructed to report whatever you are remember. The following word appear on the screen:
Christmas
Tell us what are you remembering, Wallows! (we have ways of making you talk...)
Images of Christmas trees? the smell of cinnamon and apples? decorated urban streets? boxes wrapped in colorful paper? gingerbread cookies? sweetness? Saint Nicholas? incense at Midnight Mass? Shopping at Target? Angry people trying to get out of the parking lot? Screaming children? cursing adults? The feeling of overwhelming dread? ...
What could your memories be but reactivated sensory input. Perhaps some of your memories are from A Nightmare Before Christmas. Is any reference made at all?
Donald Trump
Robert Mueller
...
ValentinusDecember 10, 2018 at 23:07#2356060 likes
Reply to Wallows
That map of the world is held by you. I didn't say you came up with all of it. On the other hand, no map handed to you is free of your design.
The point I am trying to make is not about finding the author. You asked for a distinction. Does it suffice?
On the contrary.
The need for separation gives birth to the book.
How does that process work?
ValentinusDecember 10, 2018 at 23:21#2356140 likes
Reply to Wallows
If a map is important, and not just a poster on the wall, you want to travel to another place.
You have to leave one place to go to another.
That doesn't answer the question of how the process works because I can only apply that sort of explanation for things under my control or for things I am pretending I can control.
If a map is important, and not just a poster on the wall, you want to travel to another place.
You have to leave one place to go to another.
That doesn't answer the question of how the process works because I can only apply that sort of explanation for things under my control or for things I am pretending I can control.
A map is important because it designates a reality of its own. Dimensionality? How does one jump from a two-dimensional plane that is the map, and the world that exists in many dimensions?
ValentinusDecember 10, 2018 at 23:28#2356160 likes
Reply to Wallows
You asking for a better map. When you run into the mountains, a topographical map is helpful. Maybe I won't just walk due north.
There is a divide that is fundamental to the map/territory thing that I sense you are not willing to embrace.
I think, the type-token distinction or the map-territory distinction is important; but, can be deflated into a less ambiguous proposition. How is this done?
Reply to Wallows I can summon two particular scent memories which "Christmas" stimulates: the odor of musty newspaper in which Christmas tree decorations were wrapped (and stored in a damp basement). The penetrating odor of volatile chemicals in the shellac we used in grade school to finish horrid art projects which we were supposed to force on parents as Christmas gifts.
Do these scent memories refer to anything beyond a mental experience? Only more mental experiences: the dimly lit and unpleasant cellar; the pine tree on which the ornaments were hung; the elementary school building and its classrooms...
My memories--your memories--anyone's memories--are the same: impressions from sensory input one step removed from a supposedly concrete world. What can the refer to but the now vanished sensory input?
ValentinusDecember 11, 2018 at 00:05#2356250 likes
What if you were in a situation where the propositions ran out?
What if what happens calls you out because whatever you prepared for or not is shown in awful relief to be just a story compared to other stories?
I have had my perceptions cancelled in real time by suddenly becoming aware of what I had not been aware of before the cancellation.
So, what do you mean by "can be deflated into a less ambiguous proposition?" Presuming, for the moment we are talking about the same things.
I am trying to represent a point of view I don't hear in yours. That is all. Maybe I am wrong. But I would only know an argument was taking my point of view seriously if I saw it in the rebuttal.
Here's a nice song about memory by Ysaye M. Barnwell sung by Cantus, a Minneapolis male choir, one of my favorites, both choir and song.
I am sitting here wanting memories to teach me
to see the beauty in the world through my own eyes.
I am sitting here wanting memories to teach me
To see the beauty in the world through my own eyes.
You said you'd rock me in the cradle of your arms.
You said you'd hold me ‘til the storms of life were gone.
You said you'd comfort me in times like these and now I need you.
Now I need you...
And you are -
gone.
I have consciousness; you have consciousness; we do not have consciousness. Not as far as I know, anyway.
Walpurgisnacht doesn't have many connotations; mostly just denotations (the night of April 30). St. Walpurgis specialized in protecting people from pestilence, rabies and whooping cough, as well as witchcraft. She has been oozing oil from her bones for... 800 years or so. Actually the oil is water, but... even so... Apparently she is still i business; she died in 777.
Christmas on the other hand is so loaded with connotations one can't even get close to what it denotes. (denote = factual attachments; connote = affective attachments)
Christmas on the other hand is so loaded with connotations one can't even get close to what it denotes. (denote = factual attachments; connote = affective attachments)
What's the difference between connnatations and denotation? How do they exist mutually independent of one abother?
Reply to Wallows One word used in two ways; denote means to use a word for factual communication. In the sentence, "I have ten marbles." "marbles" denotes small round glass objects that are used in games. In this sentence, "She has lost her marbles." marble connotes the sanity or good sense that she has lost. "He still has all his marbles." connotes that he is still high functioning.
If I say "The right wing of the bird is crooked." I am using "crooked" to objectively describe a broken wing. If, on the other hand, I say "The right wing of the Republican party is crooked." I am making a value judgement, I am connoting wickedness. Some would say that I am denoting wickedness because it is a plain fact that the right wing of the Republican party is wicked. So the difference between denote and connote is a bit fuzzy. But the Republican right wing is definitely crooked, no matter how you slice it.
When you start walking, you might find the map is not quite right, bears may attack you without warning, there was no mention of the swamp you will have to circumvent.
If you survive, you might want to make a new map.
I like this, and this is itself a map to aid us in the journey or our map making on its journey into its blindness.
Terrapin StationDecember 11, 2018 at 16:58#2358850 likes
First, memories do not refer to anything if they're not present-to-mind.
When they're present-to-mind, they only refer to a "where" when the individual in question takes some part of the memory, or the whole thing, to "point to" a location.
The problem with memory is that we have other memories that are influencing our interpretation of the memory we want to decipher.
No memory is without a context of another memory, thus, all memory is not factual, but abstract and based on our interpretation before we speak it as fact. Memory is a false truth about past events and actual truths that gets corrupted by emotion and biological processes as a veil in front of the real truth.
Memory defines us as a person but is merely an illusion of the actual truth about us.
I would say so. Memory is nothing magical, it's a physical process of a biological mind that is interpreting data as it is playing back data. A computer that is playing back memory does it with perfect data recovery, but a human mind is scrambling everything and mixing it together with other memories. It's basically not a tool for playing back information, but playing back identity and the aspects of a human intellect. Memory is playing back data and mixing it with new information in order to further the development of that human intellect.
Compared to animals, who remember things as both memories and instinct, we have a far more advanced form of memory which is forming how we behave. We can interpret memory and make choices based on it. But it's still mixed with emotion that is changing how we remember things, which means we have memories to be able to function through our intellect, not just remember because we can. We remember something, just like other animals, but we can interpret it to change behavior in order to change outcomes in natural situations.
This means that we don't have memories to be able to record history and remember the actual truth about something, but to evolve behavior within a life instead of within lifetimes through changed instincts. The basic difference between us humans and other animals is that we have the ability to change within a life and not between generations. Biologically, it seems that we are the first species to be able to change before generational shifts or biological shifts. We control the biology of ourselves with how we adapt to reality.
Memory as we define it seems to be pretty simply defined through biology, but corrupted by our ways of interpreting it as more magical and mysterious than it actually is. If we observe ourselves as a species through the lens of us being just another animal on this planet, we might more clearly see how our abilities as an animal are working. I think it's arrogant to believe that we are more advanced than we actually are, thinking our intelligence is the product of something mystical rather than accepting that the byproduct of our intelligence is trying to wrap our heads around that we are intelligent. Is the ouroboros of our intelligence.
Comments (45)
2. The thing that the memory of "x" is about or refers to is x.
3. Therefore, the memory refers to wherever x happens to be.
What's the issue?
What's the "wherever" part denoting?
In other words, at some spatio-TEMPORAL location, call it "y". In that case, x is at y.
How about this approach (I find it consistent with what Mentalusion is saying):
Memory is the (re-)experiencing of a previously obtained experience. The latter can either be of the external world or of internal cognitive givens (e.g., dreams, or else formerly obtained ideas). Hence, memories refer to previously obtained experiences.
-----
BTW, how do you guys insert the link of “@username”?
Insert name in @ "name" .
:smile: Just saw that. Cool
:up:
The use of "where" in relation to "refer to" puzzles me. The ordinary use is to connect one term or idea to another. Something like: When I speak of heartless cretins, I am referring to my employers."
The use of "where" is kind of a poetic repurposing or transposition of that syntax.
The first thought I had was of the use of "memory palaces", techniques to keep what is remembered in a structure that facilitates retrieval or reuse. Short term memories turn into long term memories by either training or strong emotion (and maybe for other reasons).
I don't know how much an observation of of the sort I just made is ontological versus other kinds of "logic."
I've been reading into the Loci technique, for instantiating or obtaining of memory retrieval. When, we instantiate a subject into a Cartesian plane, then, some coordinate map is necesaary.
And if there is a map, there is a territory.
I am interested in how techniques become mixed up with descriptions of what is happening.
In my work, a map is given to me and I have to make another one on top of it to make it "real."
It is like a book one has read carefully, every part is connected to the other parts.
But, General Semantics says, that the map is not the territory. If it is not, then what is it?
You can hold the map in your hands. You can put a compass on it so that you point yourself in alignment with with the arrows on the map. It is a set of operations within your control.
When you start walking, you might find the map is not quite right, bears may attack you without warning, there was no mention of the swamp you will have to circumvent.
If you survive, you might want to make a new map.
My map is irrelevant. The map of the World is of more utility here.
Because we don't have direct contact with reality--we only have sensory input which we develop into more or less consistent images, sounds, odors, textures, flavors--memory can only be an experience of images derived from the senses.
Let's pay a visit to our underground ontology lab. First we fasten you to an immovable chair with duct tape in front of a screen. Then we leave the dark room and lock the door. You are instructed to report whatever you are remember. The following word appear on the screen:
Christmas
Tell us what are you remembering, Wallows! (we have ways of making you talk...)
Images of Christmas trees? the smell of cinnamon and apples? decorated urban streets? boxes wrapped in colorful paper? gingerbread cookies? sweetness? Saint Nicholas? incense at Midnight Mass? Shopping at Target? Angry people trying to get out of the parking lot? Screaming children? cursing adults? The feeling of overwhelming dread? ...
What could your memories be but reactivated sensory input. Perhaps some of your memories are from A Nightmare Before Christmas. Is any reference made at all?
Donald Trump
Robert Mueller
...
That map of the world is held by you. I didn't say you came up with all of it. On the other hand, no map handed to you is free of your design.
The point I am trying to make is not about finding the author. You asked for a distinction. Does it suffice?
The author of a book in inseparable from the works itself, no?
What does "Christmas" denote in your mind?
Happy holidays!
The need for separation gives birth to the book.
How does that process work?
If a map is important, and not just a poster on the wall, you want to travel to another place.
You have to leave one place to go to another.
That doesn't answer the question of how the process works because I can only apply that sort of explanation for things under my control or for things I am pretending I can control.
A map is important because it designates a reality of its own. Dimensionality? How does one jump from a two-dimensional plane that is the map, and the world that exists in many dimensions?
You asking for a better map. When you run into the mountains, a topographical map is helpful. Maybe I won't just walk due north.
There is a divide that is fundamental to the map/territory thing that I sense you are not willing to embrace.
Maybe you could answer questions too.
What questions do you have for me?
I think, the type-token distinction or the map-territory distinction is important; but, can be deflated into a less ambiguous proposition. How is this done?
Do these scent memories refer to anything beyond a mental experience? Only more mental experiences: the dimly lit and unpleasant cellar; the pine tree on which the ornaments were hung; the elementary school building and its classrooms...
My memories--your memories--anyone's memories--are the same: impressions from sensory input one step removed from a supposedly concrete world. What can the refer to but the now vanished sensory input?
What if what happens calls you out because whatever you prepared for or not is shown in awful relief to be just a story compared to other stories?
I have had my perceptions cancelled in real time by suddenly becoming aware of what I had not been aware of before the cancellation.
So, what do you mean by "can be deflated into a less ambiguous proposition?" Presuming, for the moment we are talking about the same things.
Interesting. So, would you say that our collective consciousness denotes Christmas or is it something else?
Can you provide an example?
I can.
But I don't feel like an equal partner in this conversation.
None of my challenges are worth taking up but yours are given to you by whatever you see is not provided by my explanations.
I am not that harsh even to myself. Which is saying something.
What am I doing wrong here?
Sorry.
Don't be sorry. Life is short.
I am trying to represent a point of view I don't hear in yours. That is all. Maybe I am wrong. But I would only know an argument was taking my point of view seriously if I saw it in the rebuttal.
So, therefore and so forth.
Something to be cherished.
I have consciousness; you have consciousness; we do not have consciousness. Not as far as I know, anyway.
Walpurgisnacht doesn't have many connotations; mostly just denotations (the night of April 30). St. Walpurgis specialized in protecting people from pestilence, rabies and whooping cough, as well as witchcraft. She has been oozing oil from her bones for... 800 years or so. Actually the oil is water, but... even so... Apparently she is still i business; she died in 777.
Christmas on the other hand is so loaded with connotations one can't even get close to what it denotes. (denote = factual attachments; connote = affective attachments)
What's the difference between connnatations and denotation? How do they exist mutually independent of one abother?
If I say "The right wing of the bird is crooked." I am using "crooked" to objectively describe a broken wing. If, on the other hand, I say "The right wing of the Republican party is crooked." I am making a value judgement, I am connoting wickedness. Some would say that I am denoting wickedness because it is a plain fact that the right wing of the Republican party is wicked. So the difference between denote and connote is a bit fuzzy. But the Republican right wing is definitely crooked, no matter how you slice it.
I like this, and this is itself a map to aid us in the journey or our map making on its journey into its blindness.
First, memories do not refer to anything if they're not present-to-mind.
When they're present-to-mind, they only refer to a "where" when the individual in question takes some part of the memory, or the whole thing, to "point to" a location.
What does that even mean?
Namely, those memories occupy no spatiotemporal location. They exist in the mind. Whatever that denotes.
The problem with memory is that we have other memories that are influencing our interpretation of the memory we want to decipher.
No memory is without a context of another memory, thus, all memory is not factual, but abstract and based on our interpretation before we speak it as fact. Memory is a false truth about past events and actual truths that gets corrupted by emotion and biological processes as a veil in front of the real truth.
Memory defines us as a person but is merely an illusion of the actual truth about us.
Good, so memories are metaphysical?
I would say so. Memory is nothing magical, it's a physical process of a biological mind that is interpreting data as it is playing back data. A computer that is playing back memory does it with perfect data recovery, but a human mind is scrambling everything and mixing it together with other memories. It's basically not a tool for playing back information, but playing back identity and the aspects of a human intellect. Memory is playing back data and mixing it with new information in order to further the development of that human intellect.
Compared to animals, who remember things as both memories and instinct, we have a far more advanced form of memory which is forming how we behave. We can interpret memory and make choices based on it. But it's still mixed with emotion that is changing how we remember things, which means we have memories to be able to function through our intellect, not just remember because we can. We remember something, just like other animals, but we can interpret it to change behavior in order to change outcomes in natural situations.
This means that we don't have memories to be able to record history and remember the actual truth about something, but to evolve behavior within a life instead of within lifetimes through changed instincts. The basic difference between us humans and other animals is that we have the ability to change within a life and not between generations. Biologically, it seems that we are the first species to be able to change before generational shifts or biological shifts. We control the biology of ourselves with how we adapt to reality.
Memory as we define it seems to be pretty simply defined through biology, but corrupted by our ways of interpreting it as more magical and mysterious than it actually is. If we observe ourselves as a species through the lens of us being just another animal on this planet, we might more clearly see how our abilities as an animal are working. I think it's arrogant to believe that we are more advanced than we actually are, thinking our intelligence is the product of something mystical rather than accepting that the byproduct of our intelligence is trying to wrap our heads around that we are intelligent. Is the ouroboros of our intelligence.
Whoa. Let me think over this. Preliminarily, what does a memory denote then?
Material conservation permits for the conservation of memory and what it references.