A memory is a physical thing.

[Liberal]

@Foible

This isn’t quite how I understand memory to work but close. When you access your Mary memory, you are strengthening the association to it but you are adding new associations that connect with the original. The effect is the same as you described, the next time you think of Mary you’ll access the composite, but the original memory is still there. If you get to it by a new association, say a smell reminds you of the Mary event, you can experience the Mara event without the associations formed by your other accesses to the event.

I know the rest of you are well past this point but I’m not reading the thread often enough to keep up.

It’s actually good that you didn’t read much, because your comments offer an opportunity to expound on what we’ve deduced. When we use the term memory image, we do not mean just a picture, or something visualizable; we mean “a vivid description or representation” (American Heritage). This representation may include emotions, prejudices, odor patterns, etc., as well as visual patterns. Thus, when you remember Mary, you might remember that she is an off-putting religious fundamentalist who smells like your grandmother’s ginger cookies, right along with her face pattern and hair color.

We have also described the process of memory synthesis before awareness as a comparison of permanent memory with immediate memory for the purpose of presenting to the consciousness a composite that is familiar. Awareness is born of familiarity. You cannot be aware of something that is not familiar. Once you have become aware of the composite, the immediate memory has been discarded. The memories that have been retrieved and synthesized are now changed, skewed by the synthesis.

Let us invent a symbol, -s->, to denote “is synthesized into”, so that when we write (A, B) -s-> C, we mean “A and B are synthesized into C”. C contains elements of both A and B. Note that it is possible for C itself to be a part of the synthesis process: (A, B, C) -s-> C. Here, C contains elements of its old product along with elements of A and B.

Now, consider a set of elements, R = {A, B, C, D, E, F, G}. Let us say that these are memories of Mary. Let’s see what happens with varying Mary events. Let us assume that in all of these, you’ve always had a crush on Mary and remember her fondly, and you remember Joe as an asshole.

Event 1: Joe mentions Mary generally and in passing.

Let M be the immediate memory of Mary. The brain selects only item G (top in the stack) to be necessary for familiarity of the topic. Awareness receives (G, M) -s-> G, or in other words, a new slightly altered G. It might well contain things that aren’t even about Mary at all. In fact, it might contain almost nothing about Mary, but mostly things about Joe, the person talking, such that very little is taken from R. Awareness might be presented something like this: “I can’t believe this asshole is talking about Mary.” Mary is relegated to being the object of an auxiliary predicate. The brain might well determine that synthesized G belongs more to Joe than to Mary, and so Mary’s G is spared. The next time you recall her G, you might not even recall an association to Joe, since her G is a small part of the {T, U, V, W, X, Y} elements that were synthesized with respect to Joe. But the association the other way might be stronger; i.e., recalling Joe will evoke a sympathy for Mary. Dwelling too much on that recall might indeed eventually reshape Mary’s G. It all depends on what the brain considers to be priorities for the purpose of its storage and ordering.

Event 2: Joe says that Mary has blond hair.

Let C be the memory of gazing at Mary’s beautiful hair. Awareness now contains (C, M) -s-> C. When C is returned to memory, the next time it is recalled, it might be the memory of Joe invoking the memory of gazing at Mary’s beautiful hair. Or not, depending on how important Joe is to your brain.

Event 3: Joes says, “I want you to meet my new bride, Mary. Honey, come here!”

This event might well cause a nearly traumatic surge of memory recall as the brain rushes to put together a composite that your consciousness can tolerate. In fact, it might well send a preliminary presention, M -s-> P, of denial and confusion to occupy you while it works on its task. Thus, you stand there gaping and blinking, aware of nothing but your surreal state, as the brain plumbs the depths of R. Part of the reason that the brain is having so much trouble is that doubtless many of your memories are of your undying devotion to Mary and of resolutions to love her until the end of time, and so forth. Reconciling these with the new immediate memory is problematic. But since you are aware of P, M is already destroyed. And so what becomes attached to A, B, C, D, E, F, and G is P, not M. Confusion, dread, astonishment, and so forth have now flooded all memories of Mary so that, by the time she appears, ( A, P, B, P, C, P, D, P, E, P, F, P, G, P) -s-> R.

But what about the sort of event you describe? You smell something, and it reminds you of Mary. It’s the same process. The immediate memory of the smell, S, is synthesized into R, or certain elements of R, so that the next time you recall that element or those elements, they will also be associated with the circumstances of the new smell event. The old memory, “Mary smells wonderful” is now changed into the new memory, “Mary smells wonderful, very much like the smell in that antiques shop.”

[Liberal]

@other-wise

oh. my. god.

You mean I’m not nuts?!?

Lib, more than anybody else I’ve ever met (er, not met) you’ve made me think. Hard. And you’ve kept me from being sloppy in that thinking.

Coming from you, that last post meant a lot. Thank you.

I’m very glad that that matter is now settled. Surprisingly, memory is physical after all but has only subjective meaning. Now we can return to a matter that you wanted to discuss previously, but that I had waived aside because it was an irrelevant distraction at the time: namely, what purpose does awareness serve? Obviously, it serves no physical purpose. It is just how the process works. The “why MUST I be aware?” dilemma that so bothered you before, wondering why the brain didn’t just do all this in the background, is ready to be addressed. Our deductions (thanks to you) about memory are complete.

This might well be a topic for a new thread, and if so, feel free to take it there. For now, I’ll just touch on it here. It turns out that awareness serves a metaphysical purpose — moral accountability. Because your consciousness has been made aware of memory events, you cannot say that you didn’t know. Remember the little old lady we spoke of way back when? (It might even have been in the other thread.) Awareness serves God’s purpose as a means of allowing you to make moral decisions. Again, whether he created this deliberately (ID style) or not is of no relevance. It serves His purpose all the same.

[Liberal]

Voyager, I do understand that, but once again, what I’m interested in is just how it all works. Before, I had asked for an explanation, but at this point, a link will do just fine. Thanks.

[SentientMeat]

@o-w

Sentient, this is just plain wrong. If the brain laid down specific links with specific locations for every memory association, we’d never make it past toddlerhood.

But I never said this: I said there was a physical neural association between visual memories (geon configurations) and the linguistic word for them. The linguistic modules are in the left hemisphere, the left side of the visual field is in the right: when the neural links between the two hemispheres are severed, people cannot name the objects in their right visual field.

“What makes a telephone call between two occupants, rather than two other occupants?”

Because, like the linguistic sound and the object in the visual field, they are occurring at the same time. During toddlerhood, when a atering can is in my visual field forming a visual memory, my parents say the words “watering can”, forming a literal, physical association between that sound and that memory.

The location of the line (and the occupants) is irrelevant; what makes it a telephone call is that meaningful information has been exchanged. Just like with neurons.

I understand what you’re trying to get at, but if the location was irrelevant, then damage to the corpus callosum would not have such consequences. I am proposing a monistic explanation of “information” solely via physical entities and processes (Remember, “Could we be biological computers?”, not “Are we?”, is the approach I ask of you here). You must tell me why those physical entities and processes cannot explain memory: if it is merely your preference that they do not, I let Ockham’s Razor do my work for me.

Your post #253 actually contains stuff I was going to go on to anyway once we had agreed that memories are physical entities, so we might as well proceed:

Computer memories can be encrypted with a one time hash under a unique protocol meaning that third parties cannot access them like we access photos on people’s computers. Those same 25th century scientists would likely have a great deal of trouble accessing memories in our computers because they don’t know the protocol by which to turn that electronic activity from magnetic domains into pictures. Yet again, encryption can be explained solely by physical entities.

[Liberal]

I think that depends on what you mean by “explain”.

Voyager, Digital, et al, are “explaining” to me how the process they’ve mentioned works, and yet I have no more knowledge than I had before — not because I don’t understand what they’re saying, but because instead of explaining how it works, they are explaining that it works. It is like asking, “How does yellow combine with blue to make green?”, and being answered, “Yellow and blue combine to make green”.

Memory is indeed neural group A (from Other-wise’s example), and that indeed is a physical thing. But what the memory represents is contingent on the attributes of closedness and familiarity — analytics. Therefore, memory QUA physical thing is not the totality of memory. When something about Mary (or, if you insist, an encrypted message) manifests only as meaningless gibberish or, as Other-wise put it, electrified meat, you do not have the essence of the memory.

[Liberal]

Incidentally, I think the modern notion that citing the physical neural group A as what memory is derives in part from a certain capitulation to existentialism. Existence is not all that matters since it does not address essence. Consider, for example, presenting to a man a rotting corpse with worms in its eye sockets and saying, “Have you met my mother?”. Well, no. And you still haven’t.

[SentientMeat]

@Lib

Memory is indeed neural group A (from Other-wise’s example), and that indeed is a physical thing. But what the memory represents is contingent on the attributes of closedness and familiarity — analytics. Therefore, memory QUA physical thing is not the totality of memory. When something about Mary (or, if you insist, an encrypted message) manifests only as meaningless gibberish or, as Other-wise put it, electrified meat, you do not have the essence of the memory.

Which is why, throughout, I suggested we go very slowly, from photography up, and not jump head to ‘information’ or ‘meaning’ except by clearly physical steps. From now on, let us consider a digital photograph stored in a hard drive or CD. What makes it a photograph rather than randomly aligned magnetic domains or optical surfaces? There is a protocol by which the signals from the light-receptive cells is encoded as those domains, just as we develop our own protocol from birth, such that an object in our visual field generates a certain configuration of neural activity rather than another one. Our memory is that neural response, only ‘fainter’ (of course, the mechanics of the computer is such that the intensity of the response is not fainter - your digital photos don’t fade on CD, although they can of course become corrupted). We humans also have a transmission protocol: By assuming that you’ve seen the same things I have and committed them to memory, I use the socially agreed word ‘watering can’ associated with my visual memory to trigger those memories in your hard drive.

So what of the physicality of ‘familiarity’? Again, the senses and memory work statistically: there are arbitrary thresholds from which decisions (in a telecomms sense) are output. The physical process here is that of correlation as realised via computational logic gates (or the neural equivalent): when two visual memories are superposed, a high correlation output equals “familiar”.

I assume that we agree that these entities and processes need no humans around: I’m trying to get at what aspect of digital photography people here think is non-physical.

[SentientMeat]

@Lib

Consider, for example, presenting to a man a rotting corpse with worms in its eye sockets and saying, “Have you met my mother?”. Well, no. And you still haven’t.

Haven’t explained why dead meat != mother? Because my linguistic referent “mother” requires physically demonstrable state of respiration in order to apply: I would say “this was my mother” since that state of respiration applied only in the past. This physical association of sounds/symbols with memories (perhaps ‘averages’ of memories in order to conceive of ‘states’) is what I propose as your ‘essence’.

[SentientMeat]

@Me

The linguistic modules are in the left hemisphere, the left side of the visual field is in the right: when the neural links between the two hemispheres are severed, people cannot name the objects in their left visual field.

Ugh, Monday mornings!

(Actually, the results are even more interesting: the left stores the geons, the right stores the size and relative positions of the whole object. But the physical links between language and visual memories was the point of the reference.)

[SentientMeat]

@Polerius

A stupid question from someone not philosophically trained:
If a memory is not a physical thing, then what else can it be?

On the contrary: An excellent question from one walking in the woods unencumbered by the familiar view of the trees.

[Polerius]

@other-wise

Whatever Hoodoo was aware of when he was aware of Mary (associations and all), no one else can ever know.

At some point after Hoodoo stopped interacting with or thinking about Mary, there was still “Something About Mary” lodged deep within his brain, (for the purposes of illustration, let’s say “Something About Mary”, as a permanent memory, is a specific pattern of firing in neural group A).

However, Hoodoo has forgotten “Something About Mary”; he is not currently aware of it, and hasn’t been for some time (other systems in his brain have not accessed “Something About Mary”, at least, not in a way that lead to it’s inclusion in Hoodoo’s awareness). Then, alas, Hoodoo has a mild cerebral ischemia; in the resulting glutamate cascade, a few select neurons in the access pathways to “Something About Mary” are permanently damaged. Neural group A is still happily firing away, but all other brain systems are blocked from accessing it. “Something About Mary” will never again be part of Hoodoo’s awareness, nor help form the basis of a new composite permanent memory.

If someone were to poke a 25th century x-ray microscope into Hoodoo’s skull to take a look at neural group A, what would they see? They’d see neural group A firing away, but they would not be able to discern a pattern to the firing, at least, not one that can be interpreted as “Something About Mary”. Because consciousness is closed, that interpretation was reserved for Hoodoo and Hoodoo alone.

Is memory physical? The physical neurons in group A are intact, as is their firing pattern. But Hoodoo cannot access Neural group A, and others, with the microscope from the future, can access Neural group A, but they cannot interpret what they see. Neural group A has a message that no one can read, and a message isn’t a message if no one can read it, just as a memory that cannot be remembered is merely a bit of electrified meat.

How is the above any different from the simple case of me storing information onto my hard disk, and because of a hard disk sector failure, I cannot access that information. If someone in the 25th century finds my hard disk and sees a pattern of 1’s and 0’s in the area where my information was stored, they have no idea what those mean, even though I would be able to know what they mean had I been able to access those bits.

To paraphrase: “Hard disk sector A has a message that no one can read, and a message isn’t a message if no one can read it, just as a hard disk memory that cannot be deciphered is merely a bit of magnetized material”

How does this differ from your example?

[Arwin]

@Liberal

This might well be a topic for a new thread, and if so, feel free to take it there. For now, I’ll just touch on it here. It turns out that awareness serves a metaphysical purpose — moral accountability. Because your consciousness has been made aware of memory events, you cannot say that you didn’t know. Remember the little old lady we spoke of way back when? (It might even have been in the other thread.) Awareness serves God’s purpose as a means of allowing you to make moral decisions. Again, whether he created this deliberately (ID style) or not is of no relevance. It serves His purpose all the same.

I’ll start a topic on this.

[Liberal]

@Polerius

How does this differ from your example?

It doesn’t. And that is the point that he was making. If you wish to call the gibberish that is in Sector A “memory”, that’s fine. But without the familiarity of awareness, a memory is useless. Because awareness is an inextricable part of the memory process, removing it makes the process something completely different.

And with respect to this…

If a memory is not a physical thing, then what else can it be?

…it can be a metaphysical thing. Or, like man, it can have a dual nature.

[Polerius]

@SentientMeat

We humans also have a transmission protocol: By assuming that you’ve seen the same things I have and committed them to memory, I use the socially agreed word ‘watering can’ associated with my visual memory to trigger those memories in your hard drive.

There are similar cases in computer communications.

One example is fonts. One computer need not transmit a bit map of the word “Hello” in Times New Roman to another computer. If both agree what “Times New Roman” font looks like, the transmission need only include the ascii sequence for the letters in “Hello”, as well as an indication of what font is used.

Of course, if the receiving computer’s Times New Roman definition file gets altered, it will not display the word “Hello” exactly as it appeared on the screen of the first computer.

With humans, the “object definition files” are slightly different from human to human, and so we can never transmit the information in our memories exactly.

When I tell someone that I saw a ‘watering can’, if we both come from the same part of the country where watering cans look alike, I don’t have to describe it any further. If, however I’m talking to someone from another country, I may have to give a more detailed description of the watering can, just like, when one computer is missing a font definition file, the transmitting computer can send the entire bitmap of the font.

[Liberal]

@SentientMeat

I assume that we agree that these entities and processes need no humans around: I’m trying to get at what aspect of digital photography people here think is non-physical.

I don’t know why photography is at the bottom and all else is “up” from it. A memory isn’t just a photograph anyway. A great thread tends to spawn multiple discussions about many angles of the same thing, and you’ve started a great thread here. Other-wise and I have established that a memory is an image in the sense of a representation of an event. That representation might or might not contain any visual element. Besides, lots of people have never seen anything, and they have memories.

As to what is non-physical, I’ve stated before that you sometimes impress me as defining physical as everything conceivable plus everything that isn’t. If you are going to claim that analytics are physical, then it seems to me that you are using physical as a Jabberwocky word. What is physical? Well, the metaphysical is physical, of course. And that which isn’t is.

[Liberal]

@Arwin

I’ll start a topic on this.

Great! This has been enjoyable, but Other-wise has solved it. We can leave what remains as a debate about computers.

[Polerius]

@Liberal

…it can be a metaphysical thing.

What is a metaphysical thing?

I looked at wikipedia and m-w.com for definions and, maybe what you’re referring to is: “of or relating to the transcendent or to a reality beyond what is perceptible to the senses”

The question, scientifically speaking, is: has anyone ever proven that there is a reality beyond what is perceptible to the senses?

I guess one way would be to assume everything is physical, and then derive a contradiction, thus proving that not everything is physical.

But, if anyone had ever done this, I’m sure there would be no physicalists (as SentientMeat is)

If, on the other hand, the existence of the metaphysical cannot be proven using logic or anything else besides personally experiencing it, then how can people be debating the existence of metaphysical things? Wouldn’t it be useless, since you can never convey or prove your experience of the metaphysical?

Or, like man, it can have a dual nature.

Again, like the the “metaphysical” issue above, how can you prove man has a dual nature, and if it is not provable, then why go through lengthy discussions debating it?

[Liberal]

Polerius, science proves nothing true. It only proves things false. And then, only things that can be tested empirically. You cannot rely on science for everything under the sun any more than Sentient can define physical as everything you might conceive and more. You cannot, for example, prove scientifically that 1 + 1 = 2, but that certainly doesn’t mean that it isn’t provable.

[Polerius]

@Liberal

Polerius, science proves nothing true. It only proves things false. And then, only things that can be tested empirically. You cannot rely on science for everything under the sun any more than Sentient can define physical as everything you might conceive and more.

I was not restricting my comment to science. I was including logic also.

In any case, if some concepts are not amenable to proof or disproff via logic, science, or any other method of reasoning that humans use, what is the point of debating these issues, since all debating involves human reasoning, and if that can’t prove or disprove the point of the debate, that renders the debate useless, does it not?

You cannot, for example, prove scientifically that 1 + 1 = 2, but that certainly doesn’t mean that it isn’t provable.

You don’t have to prove it, it’s a matter of definition of the numbers 1 and 2.

[Polerius]

@Polerius

You don’t have to prove it, it’s a matter of definition of the numbers 1 and 2.

As well as the definition of the ‘+’ operator and the ‘=’ sign.