Rilkean Memory

4 RILKEAN MEMORY1 Abstract: This paper identifies a form of remembering sufficiently overlooked that it has not yet been dignified with a name. I shall christen it Rilkean Memory. This form of memory is, typically, embodied and embedded. It is a form of involuntary, autobiographical memory that is neither implicit nor explicit, neither declarative nor procedural, neither episodic nor semantic, and not Freudian. While a discussion of the importance of Rilkean memory lies beyond the scope of this paper, I shall try to show that admitting Rilkean memory into our ontology does point us in the direction of a very different conception of the mind and mental processes. Keywords: associationism, cognitivism, embedded, embodied, intentionality, memory, Rilke. 1. The Roots of Cognitivism Jerry Fodor, with more than a little help from Arthur Conan Doyle, provides a nice example of the sort of view of cognition I am going to question in this paper. Here is Sherlock Holmes doing what Holmes does best, in the closing pages of The Speckled Band: I instantly reconsidered my position when … it became clear to me that whatever danger threatened an occupant of the room could not come from either the window or the door. My attention was speedily drawn, as I have already remarked to you, to this ventilator and to the bell-rope that hung down to the bed. The discovery that this was a dummy and that the bed was clamped to the floor, instantly gave rise to the suspicion that the rope was there as a bridge for something passing through the hole, and coming to the bed. The idea of a snake 1 I would like to thank John Sutton for very helpful comments on earlier versions of the ideas of this paper. 1 instantly occurred to me, and when I coupled it with my knowledge that the Doctor was furnished with a supply of the creatures from India, I felt that I was probably on the right track. Fodor cites this passage in support of the influential cognitivist conception of psychological processes.2 The key to this conception is postulation of an isomorphism between the causal profile of beliefs, and other cognitive states, and the inferential profile of the semantic contents of those beliefs. The belief that a poisonous snake was involved, coupled with the belief that the doctor has a supply of such snakes, causes the belief that the doctor did it. The content that a poisonous snake was involved, coupled with the content that the Doctor had a supply of such snakes, if not entails then substantially raises the probability of the content that the Doctor did it being true in this world. Thinking, for Fodor, is defined by this sort of isomorphism between the causal and semantic properties of cognitive states. The alternative to this cognitivist paradigm is associationism, of which Fodor takes a dim view: Compare the sort of mental history that goes ... ‘Bell-ropes always make me think of snakes, and snakes make me think of snake oil, and snake oil makes me think of doctors; so when I saw the bell-rope it popped into my head that the Doctor and a snake might have done it between them.’ That's mental causation perhaps; but it's not thinking.3 2 ‘Fodor (1985) ‘Fodor (1985) p. 85. It is striking, of course, is that even in the passage Fodor cites, there seem to be at least two clear – and rather crucial – instances of association. The discovery that the bell rope was a dummy, and the bed clamped to the floor, “instantly gave rise to the suspicion that the rope was there as a bridge for something passing through the hole, and coming to the bed. The idea of a snake 3 2 For my purposes, the origins of this cognitivist vision are more important than the vision itself. Causal relations between cognitive states can mirror logical relations between the contents of those states only if cognitive states are relations to content. If I think that the cat is on the mat, then I am the subject of a cognitive state – a thought – and this state is about the cat and its relation to the mat. But the idea that a cognitive state is a relation to content did not spring up fully formed, like Venus from the waves, with the birth of the cognitivist revolution. It was, rather, inherited. Franz Brentano famously claimed that all mental states are intentional. By this, he meant that any mental state is directed towards a specific content: Every mental phenomenon is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object, and what we might call, though not wholly unambiguously, reference to a content, direction towards an object (which is not to be understood here as meaning a thing), or immanent objectivity. In presentation something is presented, in judgment something is affirmed or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired, and so on.4 The idea that intentionality is the hallmark of the mental formed the basis of the phenomenological tradition in philosophy, and is widely, if not universally, accepted instantly occurred to me. ” The inference from the bell rope being a dummy to its being a bridge for something is hardly deductive, or even inductive. The rope might have been ornamental, for example. And the inference from the rope being a bridge to a snake is, similarly, neither deductive nor inductive. I suspect that actual thinking, as opposed to Fodor’s idealized conception of it, is usually a mélange of classical logical inference and association going hand‐in‐hand. The position I defend in this paper provides one explanation of why this should be so. 4 Brentano (1995), p. 88. 3 outside of it. The cognitivist idea that cognitive states are relations to contents is simply a restricted expression of Brentano’s thesis. Both the phenomenological tradition and its cognitivist descendent insist on a distinction between the act and the object of an intentional state. The object, as Brentano makes clear, with his use of the parenthesized, “which is not to be understood here as meaning a thing,” is not an object simpliciter but a content. Thus, every intentional state comprises both act and content. In the cognitivist vision of thinking, content is doing most of the work. Causal relations between intentional states are supposed to mirror logical relations between intentional contents not between intentional acts. Once we accept the distinction, however, then there is the logical possibility that acts and contents might come apart. What would it be like for an intentional act to come apart from an intentional content? This question is not as strange as it appears. We know of at least one category of mental state where content makes a habit of disappearing: memory. Thus, in the case of a memory whose content has disappeared, this question seems to make sense, even if we don’t know how to answer it: what happens to the act of remembering when its content has been lost? There appear to be two basic possibilities: (1) the act of remembering also disappears, or (2) the act lives on in a new, mutated, form. The second option is the one I shall pursue in this paper. If they are admitted into one’s psychological ontology at all, non-intentional states are typically relegated to the marginalia of the mental: sensations (pains, tickles, orgasms, and the like). In this paper, I shall explore the possibility that the category of nonintentional mental states comprises much more than these sorts of things, and its role in shaping a person’s life mental life is, accordingly, far more significant than can be 4 accommodated within the cognitivist framework. The pervasiveness of these states stems from a process of intentional breakdown where the intentional content becomes lost but where the intentional act, nevertheless, lives on in a new, mutated form. The existence of a non-intentional mental act that is produced by this sort of intentional breakdown is, of course, a hypothesis. The ontological credentials of such a hypothesis will ultimately depend on the sort of theoretical work such acts are capable of performing. Unfortunately, discussion of this matter lies far beyond the scope of this paper. Elsewhere, I argue that the contentless acts that result from this sort of breakdown can play a crucial role in helping us understand what it is to be a person.5 This paper is not concerned with the existence of such contentless acts but, rather, with making it plausible to suppose that they could exist – by showing that they are not as unfamiliar as one might suppose – and delineating the sort of thing they would have to be if they did exist. I shall close the paper with some general remarks about the sort of theoretical work such entities might accomplish. 2. Rilkean Memories In The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge – his only excursion into the art form of the novel – Rainer Maria Rilke writes: And yet it is not enough to have memories. You must be able to forget them when they are many, and you must have the immense patience to wait until they return. For the memories themselves are not important. Only when they have changed into our very blood, into glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer 5 See Rowlands (2017) 5 to be distinguished from ourselves – only then can it happen that in some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their midst and goes forth from them. 6 In this passage, Rilke is Rilke is talking about the importance of memory – or, more precisely, of a certain kind of transformation that memory might undergo – for artistic creation. I shall argue that his idea is of much wider significance. The general contours of this transformation described are reasonably clear. We begin with memories of relatively familiar sorts. Rilke provides some examples. Some of these memories are of specific episodes: of encounters, partings, of the noises in the room where you sat next to your dead father. Some are more general: the gesture that small flowers make when they open in the morning. And others seem to be a curious mixture of the particular and general: many nights of love, each one different from all the others. Whether these memories are specific, general or hybrid, they have content. They are about something. This content, however, fades: “you must be able to forget them”. But the memory lives on in another form, and at some point and in some way can “return”. When it does so, this is in a very different form: the memory has become “blood”. It is now “glance and gesture”, “nameless and no longer to be distinguished” from the person whose memory it was. The products of this process – these memories that have become “blood”, “glance and gesture,” “nameless and no longer to be distinguished from ourselves” – I shall christen Rilkean memories. Nothing, for my purposes at least, depends on whether these are properly understood as memories or, instead, as things into which memories can transform (‘Rilkean post-memories’, we might then call them). If one would prefer to withhold the label ‘memory’ from these entities, I have no objections. What is important 6 Rilke (1985), p. 14. 6 is that these states, in a way to be made clear, place their subject in a concrete and (often) significant relation to his or her past. These new states carry in them a trace of the past. The past lives on in the subject not as memories in the familiar sense but, rather, as their Rilkean counterparts. 3. Embodied Rilkean Memories Rilke employs strong bodily imagery in the expression of his idea: “blood”, “glance and gesture”. This seems as good a place to start as any. Let us suppose that a runner is having problems with calf muscle tears. One day, he meets a running coach who examines his form and tells him that he is not lifting his knees high enough. If he does so, the coach tells him, more of the effort will be born by his quads and hamstrings which, being larger muscles, are better equipped to handle the load. The runner dutifully focuses on changing his form and after some weeks succeeds in doing so. Rather disappointingly, however, he is now quickly beset by a host of knee problems. Suppose, further, that, although he doesn’t remember it, the runner used to have these sorts of knee problems, and his peculiarly low knee-lift was an attempt to negotiate them. For example, at the time of their occurrence, the knee problems occasioned unpleasant experiences, and these in turn occasioned episodic memories – memories of those unpleasant episodes. The memories are necessary even if they are relatively short lived. The experiential unpleasantness would change nothing if it were almost instantly forgotten. These experiences and his memories of them provided the impetus the runner had for amending his form. We don’t need to suppose there was any overt planning involved in this process. More likely is that the form of the runner changed incrementally, as the result of subliminal feedback concerning the relation between gait and pain, both 7 during and after his runs. A gait that minimized the unpleasantness was, therefore, subliminally selected for over time. There are now two possibilities. The first is that, when his knee issues recur, the runner now recalls his prior problems. His former unpleasant experiences come flooding back, and he thus thinks thoughts such as: “Oh, now I understand: I must have been running in such a way to compensate for my knee issues.” However, this sort of conscious recall of his former unpleasant experiences may not occur. If it does not, the runner may never understand why his running took on this particular form. In such circumstances, the runner’s idiosyncratically low knee lift is the only remaining trace of his former episodic memories. In both cases we have Rilkean memories, as I shall deploy this concept. In both cases, the Rilkean memory is the runner’s idiosyncratic form. In the latter scenario, where there is no subsequent episodic recall, the Rilkean memory is all that remains of the original memories. The runner’s form would then connect him to the past in a way that more traditional memories do not. The idiosyncratic form of the runner is what these memories have become. I shall call this an example of embodied Rilkean memory. This choice of locution is, perhaps, ill advised. The notion of embodiment has become so popular in the last decade or so that it now means many things to many people. This is not the place to survey the various meanings of ‘embodiment’ as it currently figures in a voluminous literature. But it is important to distinguish my sense of embodiment from at least one other widespread sense. Here is an example of what Ed Casey calls ‘body memory’: Each time my tongue passes over my right lower molar tooth these days, distinct memories of being in a dentist’s chair and, somewhat less frequently, of chewing 8 on a hard kernel of popcorn somewhat earlier, are elicited. In particular, I recall biting down on the kernel and feeling immediately afterward parts of something very hard lying loose in my mouth: at first I wasn’t sure whether they were bits of kernel or bits of tooth. I also remember, from a period of about a month later, being in the dentist’s chair and experiencing acute pain as my dentists drilled deeply into the broken tooth as part of the procedure of crowning it.7 This is a perfectly legitimate sense of embodied remembering, but it is not my sense. Casey’s conception of embodiment, at least as expressed in this passage, is a causal one: running the tongue over the molar causally produces memories of a reasonably standard (episodic) sort. The causal relations between the bodily event and these episodic memories may be complex and reciprocal. But they are still causal relations. The case of the runner is different: it employs a constitutive sense of embodiment. His idiosyncratic running gait is his memory of his prior unpleasant experiences. If the recurrence of his knee problems does not occasion episodic recall, then his gait is his only memory of his unpleasant experiences. More precisely, this gait is the form his previously episodic memories have now taken. His memories have become blood in Rilke’s sense. This is a claim about the constitution of memories rather than their causation.8 The category of embodied Rilkean memory, as I understand it, incorporates bodily and/or behavioral dispositions. The bodily and the behavioral are not, of course, equivalent categories. However, for our purposes, bodily and behavioral dispositions can be treated together. The stooping shoulders that accompany a temporary setback might be 7 Casey (1980), p. 154. This is an example of what Casey calls ‘traumatic’ body memory. His other main category – ‘erotic’ body memory – is also a causal category in the above sense. 8 See Bachelard, (2014), p. 27 for a lovely example of what I am calling embodied Rilkean memory. (Originally published 1958, by Presses Universitaire de France). 9 a behavioral disposition. But – due to muscle shortening, weakening, and so on – the stooping shoulders that accompany a lifetime of disappointment might well have become a bodily disposition. The absence of a firm distinction is not, of course, the absence of a distinction. But the categories of the bodily and behavioral, as I shall employ them, shade by degrees into each other. 4. Affective Rilkean Memory The strong bodily imagery notwithstanding, it is clear that, even in Rilke’s hands, the idea of Rilkean memory must encompass more than the bodily and behavioral. After all, Rilke introduces the idea as an account of artistic creation – specifically, poetic composition – and bodily and behavioral dispositions alone will not supply us with an explanation for this. Accordingly, I shall now introduce a second category of Rilkean memory. I shall call this affective Rilkean memory. It is at precisely this point that one must acknowledge the temptation to start talking of Proust, sipping tea and eating a Madeleine cake, and in doing so being transported to his childhood in Illiers-Combray. However, with Proust’s writing there are, typically, lots of different things going on at any given time, and because of this his writing does not, perhaps, provide us with the purest (i.e. least adulterated) vision of what I am going to mean by affective Rilkean memory. Also, there is an issue of chronology and, therefore, posthumous credit. This passage, from Kenneth Grahame’s, The Wind in the Willows, was published five years before À la Recherché. It describes a curious experience undergone by Mole: 10 We others who have long lost the more subtle of the physical senses have not even the proper terms to express an animal’s intercommunication with his surroundings, living or otherwise, and have only the word ‘smell’ for instance, to include the whole range of delicate thrills which murmur in the nose of the animal night and day, summoning, warning, inciting, repelling. It was one of those mysterious fairy calls from out of the void that suddenly reached Mole in the darkness, making him tingle through and through with its very familiar appeal, while as yet he could not clearly remember what it was. He stopped dead in his tracks, his nose searching hither and thither in its efforts to recover the fine filament, the telegraphic current that had so strongly moved him. A moment and he had caught it again; and with it this time came recollection in its fullest flood. Home! That is what they meant, those caressing appeals, those soft touches wafted through the air, those invisible little hands pulling and tugging, all one way.9 Mole is the subject of certain sensations or feelings: of a “telegraphic current”, of “caressing appeals”, of “soft touches” and “invisible hands pulling and tugging, all one way”. These are examples of affective Rilkean memories. In its purest form, affective Rilkean memories consist in sensations, feelings, and moods. These are what Mole’s memories of home have become: the affective Rilkean form they have now assumed. Prior to the onset of “recollection in its fullest flood”, these are all that remain of Mole’s memories of home. Note that although these affective Rilkean memories are not embodied – that is, they do not comprise bodily or behavioral dispositions – they are 9 Grahame (1908), p. 67. 11 nevertheless thoroughly embedded in an environmental context. These precise feelings can assail Mole only when he returns to the place he lived before he found the riverbank. They are, in this sense, environmentally embedded in the sense that without the requisite environment these Rilkean memories either (i) would not occur, or (ii) the probability of their occurring falls below a certain threshold.10 5. Locating Rilkean Memory The concept of Rilkean memory that emerges from these examples can be characterized in general terms as follows: Rilkean memory is a type of involuntary autobiographical memory that is not Freudian, neither implicit nor explicit, neither procedural nor declarative, and neither episodic nor semantic. I shall deal first with the negative part of this definition. Freudian. There are clear similarities between Rilkean memories and Freud’s notion of repressed memories (henceforth, “Freudian memories”). In both cases, we have the idea of the transformation of a memory into something else – something that is not obviously a memory. Thus, it is tempting to regard Freudian memory as a sub-category of Rilkean memory. It is clear, however, that the two categories of memory cannot, in general, be identified. There are several differences. First, the category of Rilkean memory is much 10 The idea that a given environment is connected to the probability of subsequent recall is relatively familiar. For example, Godden and Baddeley (1975) showed that divers who learned material underwater were better able to recall information when tested underwater, while material learned on land was better recalled on land. 12 larger than that of Freudian memory.11 Repressed memories derive from unpleasant experiences. Rilkean memories can derive from experiences that are pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Second, Freudian memories result from the operations of a psychic defense mechanism, whose function is to transform memories of traumatic experiences into another form, in which they will do less immediate harm (although the long term consequences may, of course, not be so good). Rilkean memories are not, in general, the product of the operations of a psychic defense mechanism. Third, the ‘vertical’ imagery embodied in standard Freudian theory does not really fit very well with the more ‘horizontal’ – embodied and embedded – conception implicated in the idea of Rilkean memory. In standard Freudian accounts, repressed memories bubble away beneath the surface of the conscious mind. Rilkean memories don't bubble beneath the surface of anything. They are spread out, often incorporating the entirety of a person’s body and embedded in her environment. Procedural and Declarative. Rilkean memories are neither procedural nor declarative. Procedural memories are memories of how to do things – play the piano, ride a bicycle, and so on. Rilkean memories are not, typically, memories of how to do things or perform tasks.12 Neither, however, are they declarative memories. A declarative memory is one that can be assessed for truth or falsity, and Rilkean memories cannot be assessed in this way. Rilkean memories take the form or bodily or behavioral dispositions (embodied) or feelings, sensations and moods (affective). Lacking content – not being about anything – 11 The relative ubiquity of Rilkean memories is important, given the use to which I shall put them. Rilkean memories, I argue (Rowlands 2017), are among the most important building blocks of the self or person. We cannot build a self from comparatively rare elements. 12 The qualification, ‘typically’, is intended to leave open the possibility that some Rilkean memories are procedural. If so, they are not the sorts of Rilkean memory that are of primary interest to me. 13 they are not the sorts of thing that can be true or false. This does not mean that Rilkean memories cannot be assessed in other ways. The feelings of a telegraphic current, of invisible hands all pulling one way, might be appropriate in Mole’s circumstances – of returning to a place that has long been his home but that he initially does not recognize. The unusual running gait of the runner might be a useful response to the experiential unpleasantness of inflamed knees. However, Rilkean memories cannot be evaluated for truth or falsity, and therefore they are not declarative memories. Rilkean memories, therefore, occupy a curious position with respect to current typologies of memory. The procedural-declarative distinction is usually taken to be exhaustive: any memory must be either procedural or declarative. If Rilkean memories exist, we must reject this. The procedural-declarative distinction may still be a viable one. But it can no longer be regarded as exhaustive. Semantic and Episodic. Rilkean memories are neither semantic nor episodic. Semantic memories are memories of facts; Rilkean memories are not. They may be caused by facts13 – facts about the conditions of the runner’s knees may be the ultimate cause of his running gait – but they are not about facts. They do not have facts as their intentional content because, in general, they do not have content. For the same reason, Rilkean memories are not episodic. Episodic memories are memories of episodes or situations the remembering subject once experienced. This is not so with Rilkean memory. There is no mental time travel back to the event that precipitated – or is the ultimate causal basis of – the Rilkean memory. Indeed, the absence of such time travel is precisely why the Rilkean 13 Assuming, of course, that you believe in fact‐causation. I have no dog in that particular fight. 14 memory exists. Rilkean memories are not about episodes or experiences. They are not about anything at all. They have no intentional content. This makes Rilkean memories curious in another way. Within the category of autobiographical memory – usually understood as memory that is of or about oneself – the distinction between semantic and experiential memories is generally taken to be exhaustive. I shall argue, shortly, that there is one clear sense in which Rilkean memories are autobiographical. If this is correct, the idea that any autobiographical memory must be either semantic or episodic must be rejected. Implicit and Explicit. The distinction between implicit and explicit memories invites confusion because it is not one distinction but two: one that is typically observed by philosophers, the other by psychologists. Bernecker provides a useful account of the way this distinction is usually understood by philosophers: You explicitly remember that p if this representation is actually present in your mind in the right sort of way, for example, as an item in your ‘memory box’ or as a trace storing a sentence in the language of thought. To implicitly remember that p your mind may not contain a representation with that content. The content of implicit memories … have never previously been tokened and don't inhabit our long-term memory. Although at any given moment we have only a finite number of explicit memories, we implicitly remember countless things.14 There are two different accounts of what it is to hold an implicit memory in this sense. According to simple-consequence accounts, to implicitly remember that p is to have an 14 Bernecker (2010), p. 29. 15 explicit memory from which p swiftly and obviously follows. According to formationdispositional accounts, to implicitly remember that p is to be disposed to have a dispositional memory of it in certain circumstances. Rilkean memories qualify as implicit in neither of these philosophical senses. First, having no content, it makes no sense to speak of them entering into logical relations to explicit memories in the way required to conform to the simple-consequence account. But neither do they qualify as implicit in the formation-dispositional sense. This is so for two reasons. First, the relation between Rilkean memories and their explicit counterparts does not seem sufficiently robust to satisfy the formation-dispositional model. Mole eventually experiences “recollection in its fullest flood.” But this is merely a contingent fact about Mole. Rilkean memories are sometimes accompanied by explicit memories and sometimes are not. Thus it is far from clear that the relation between Rilkean memories and explicit memories is sufficiently robust for us understand this on the formation-dispositional account. Second, even if Rilkean memories are accompanied by explicit memories, there is no reason to suppose that the former cause the latter – as opposed to say, their being caused by the original episodes. So, if we understand the notion of disposition in a causal sense, it need not be true that Rilkean memories dispose us to have explicit memories. The psychologist’s sense of implicit memory is rather different. As Bernecker puts it: “In the psychological sense, explicit memory involves the conscious recollection of previously presented information, while implicit memory involves the facilitation of a task, or change in performance as a result of previous exposure to information without, or 16 at least not as a result of, conscious recollection.”15 For example, if, on a word-pair memorization, task a subject found it easier to learn a ‘forgotten’ pair of words the second time this might be evidence for implicit memory. Conceived in this way, the concept of implicit memory is task-oriented: implicit memory is that which plays a facilitative role in accomplishing a task, or changes the performance of a subject vis-à-vis that task. Rilkean memories, however, do not qualify as implicit in this sense either. The psychologist’s sense of implicit memory is a task-oriented one. Implicit memories are ones that alter a subject’s performance in a given task. Rilkean memories, however, are typically not task oriented and need not change a subject’s performance in any given task. They might do this, of course, but they need not do so. There is a clear temptation to suppose that Rilkean memories must, in some sense, be implicit. I feel this temptation keenly. However, if there is a sense of ‘implicit’ in which Rilkean memories qualify as such, it remains to be seen what this is. Rilkean memories are neither procedural nor declarative, neither episodic nor semantic and, as things stand, neither implicit nor explicit. These are all claims about what Rilkean memories are not. Next: some perfunctory remarks on what they are. Involuntary and voluntary. Voluntary memories are ones that a person actively seeks out. You are trying to remember where you left the car keys last night, and so you mentally retrace your steps. All of this is voluntary recall. Involuntary memories are ones that thrust themselves upon you. Rilkean memories are involuntary ones. You do not, and indeed cannot, seek them out. They simply find you. 15 Bernecker (2010), p. 29. 17 Autobiographical. On the one hand, Rilkean memories, in some sense are autobiographical memories. On the other, it is not immediately obvious in what sense that would be. An autobiographical memory is usually understood as one that is about you – either in the sense of being about a fact that is true of you or being of an experience that is one you had. An experiential memory of, say, falling out of a tree on your tenth birthday is about something that happened to you. Semantic memories can also be autobiographical. You might remember (the fact that) that you were born in a certain town – but not, of course, the experience of being born. Rilkean memories are not autobiographical in either of these senses. The root of the problem, of course, is that Rilkean memories are not intentional. They are not about anything at all – and, therefore, cannot be about you. There is another – weaker – sense in which a memory can be autobiographical – a sense that I can merely outline rather than defend here. A memory of yours can be autobiographical even if you are not part of the intentional content of that memory, as long as you are implicated in its mode of presentation. In most episodic memories, you are typically thus implicated: the episode that an episodic memory captures is presented, precisely, as one that you formerly experienced – as an episode that happened to you or in which you were otherwise involved. In such circumstances – true of most episodic memories – you are not part of the intentional object of the memory, but you are implicated in its mode of presentation. This weaker sense of autobiographical is also not applicable to Rilkean memories. Being non-intentional states, they lack content and so cannot comprise modes of presentation of objects. Nevertheless, it does allow us to make sense of one clear way in 18 which Rilkean memories are autobiographical. While Rilkean memories are not about you, they nevertheless pertain to you. And they pertain to you because they are the result of a transformation that occurs in states that are about you – in either the stronger or weaker sense. They, thus, place you in a concrete relation to your past and the experiences you had in that past. In this sense, relatively attenuated, sense Rilkean memories are autobiographical. 6. Rilkean Memory and the Self The existence of Rilkean memories is a hypothesis and, as such, stands or falls on the explanatory work it is able to accomplish. An examination of this work is beyond the scope of this paper. 16 I shall conclude, however, with a gesture in the general direction. The utility of the idea of Rilkean memory pertains to our understanding of the self or person. Many philosophers concerned with the self locate this concern within the framework of a metaphysical project of a reasonably well-defined sort. This project is concerned with identifying unity and persistence conditions for persons – the conditions under which a person is distinct from all other persons and the same person from one time to the next. It will also seek to answer questions concerning the constitution and composition of persons: what conditions are necessary and/or sufficient for an individual entity to qualify as a person, and of what kinds of things are persons composed? Suppose, now, that you are asked to write your autobiography – the book of you. Unless it was an unusual autobiography, it is unlikely that it would even ask these sorts of questions, let alone answer them. An autobiography is, in this sense, akin, to a Husserlian epoché: it brackets these sorts of metaphysical questions. Thus, if we assume that the 16 See Rowlands (2017) for development of the ideas of this paper. 19 book of you is about someone, it seems there must be an understanding of the person that is not captured in this sort of metaphysical project. Let us call this sense of person the autobiographical self. Rilkean memory plays an important role in helping us understand the autobiographical self. Rilkean memories – the products of intentional breakdown, the separation of intentional act from intentional content – play a crucial role in holding the self together, in the face of certain well-documented facts. There is the obvious fact that most of what we experience will be forgotten. There is the well-documented fact, with recently identified neurochemical basis, that memories are astonishingly fragile entities, prone to falsity, inaccuracy and other forms of distortion. For the metaphysical project, these are problems to be overcome. But, autobiographically speaking, forgetting and the falsity of our memories make us the persons we are just as much as the presence of memories that are unerringly accurate. Rilkean memories are like the dark matter of memory. They hold everything together. And because they are the result of transformation from episodic memories, they link us to our past in concrete and, often, important ways, and so provide a basis for the unity and coherence of the autobiographical self. How, precisely, they do this, is a matter for another time. References Bachelard, Gaston (2014) The Poetics of Space (New York: Penguin) Bernecker, Sven (2010) Memory: A Philosophical Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press) 20 Brentano, Franz (1995) Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint, trans., A. C. Rancurello, D. B. Terell, and L. L. McAlister (London: Routledge) Casey, Ed (1980) Remembering: A Phenomenological Study (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press) Fodor, Jerry (1985) Fodor’s guide to mental representation: the intelligent auntie’s vade mecum’, Mind, Vol. 94, No. 393, pp. 76-100. Godden, D.R. and Baddeley, A. D. (1975) ‘Context-dependent memory in two natural environments: on land and underwater’, British Journal of Psychology, 66, 3, 325-31 Grahame, Kenneth (1908) The Wind in the Willows (London, Methuen & Co. Ltd) Rilke, Rainer Maria Rilke (1985) The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, trans. S. Mitchell, (New York: Vintage Books) Rowlands, Mark (2010) The New Science of the Mind: From Extended Mind to Embodied Phenomenology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) Rowlands, Mark (2017) Memory and the Self (New York: Oxford University Press). 21