Online research in philosophy

Theories of perception and of memory are closely allied. The binding problem (which considers how bits of perception are reassembled by the brain) leads to neurophysiological subjectivism. This could be outflanked by arguing with Bergson that perceiving consciousness is out in the world. Thus the brain would bind only behavioral “maps.” In turn, consciousness would retain our personal pasts. Such personal (episodic) memories both help us to recognize present objects and to perform creative acts. Memory, although retentive, is also creative. This is important in rethinking biological and evolutionary memory.

Daniel C. Dennett

Is Perception the 'Leading Edge' of Memory?

Consciousness appears to us to consist of a sequence of contentful items, arranged in a sequence, the so-called "stream of consciousness," in which each item in turn bursts quite suddenly into consciousness and thereby enters memory, perhaps only briefly to be remembered, and then forgotten. I think that hidden in this comfortable and largely innocent picture of consciousness is a deep and seductive mistake. I intend to expose and elucidate that mistake, and describe an alternative vision.

My aim in this paper is to show that consciousness entails self-consciousness by focusing on the relationship between consciousness and memory. More specifically, I addreess the following questions: (1) does consciousness require episodic memory?; and (2) does episodic memory require self-consciousness? With the aid of some Kantian considerations and recent empirical data, it is argued that consciousness does require episodic memory. This is done after defining episodic memory and distinguishing it from other types of memory. An affirmative answer to (2) is also warranted especially in the light of the issues raised in answering (1). I claim that 'consciousness entails self-consciousness' is thereby shown via the route through episodic memory, i.e. via affirmative answers to (1) and (2). My aim is to revive this Kantian thesis and to bring together current psychological research on amnesia with traditional philosophical perspectives on consciousness and memory.

Consciousness has resisted scientific explanation for centuries. The main problem in explaining consciousness is its subjectivity. Subjective systems may be adaptive. Humans can produce voluntary new or novel intentional (adaptive) action and such action is always accompanied by consciousness. Action normally arises from perception. Perception must be rerepresented in order to produce new or novel adaptive action. The internal explicit states produced by a widespread nonlinear emergent mechanism from perception have all the same properties as consciousness. Hence they may be identical to consciousness. Consciousness is natural, material, and functional; utilized in the production of adaptive action.

Within cognitive science, language is often set apart (as it is in the present volume) from perception, action, learning, memory, concepts, and reasoning. Yet language is intertwined with all of them. Language perception is a kind of perception; language production is a kind of action. Vocabulary and grammar are learned and stored in long-term memory. As novel utterances are perceived or produced, they are built up in working memory. Concepts are most often studied in the context of word meanings; reasoning is most often studied in the context of inferring one sentence from another.

Perception enables us to think demonstrative thoughts about the world around us, but what must perception be like in order to play this role? Does perception enable demonstrative thought only if it is conscious? This paper examines three accounts of the role of consciousness in demonstrative thought, which agree that consciousness is essential for demonstrative thought, but disagree about why it is. First, I consider and reject the accounts proposed by Gareth Evans in The Varieties of Reference and by John Campbell in Reference and Consciousness before offering an alternative proposal of my own. My proposal is that consciousness plays an essential epistemic role in explaining the capacity for demonstrative thought about an object by enabling the subject to form immediately justified beliefs about the object.

A phenomenology of action is outlined, analyzing the structure of volition, kinesthesis, and perception in the experience of action, and, finally, the experience of embodiment in action. The intentionality of action is contrasted with that of thought and perception in regard to the role of the body, and the relations between an action, the experience of acting, and the context of the action are specified.