Phenomenology of Memory

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind  brings to the fore that memory amputation critically endangers one’s sense of “being-in-the-world”, results in ontological self-doubt and insatiable emptiness as experienced by the protagonists. Next to this, I will argue that we are in fact our memories and that it is not something that we have. As a consequence of Lacuna’s procedure, the characters experience a sense of loss of identity, existential crisis and pathological melancholia.

"This paper offers an interpretation of Roland Barthes’ writing on photography. Barthes uses photography to point to a third region of meaning, one which is neither public nor private and which both our theoretical and ordinary approaches to photography miss. Following Barthes’ attempts to articulate this region of meaning, the paper examines his different responses to photography and his gradual movement from punctual criticism and structural analysis toward a theory of photographic meaning. The relationship between photography and time is analyzed to show how photography can express the ephemeral nature of being as well as the arbitrariness and singularity of existence."

When so much is being written on conscious experience, it is past time to face the question whether experience happens that is not conscious of itself. The recognition that we and most other living things experience non-consciously has recently been firmly supported by experimental science, clinical studies, and theoretic investigations; the related if not identical philosophic notion of experience without a subject has a rich pedigree. Leaving aside the question of how experience could become conscious of itself, I aim here to demonstrate that the terms experience and consciousness are not interchangeable. Experience is a notoriously difficult concept to pin down, but I see non-conscious experience as based mainly in momentary sensations, relational between bodies or systems, and probably common throughout the natural world. If this continuum of experience — from non-conscious, to conscious, to self-transcending awareness — can be understood and accepted, radical constructivism (the “outside” world as a construct of experience) will gain a firmer foundation, panexperientialism (a living universe) may gain credibility, and psi will find its medium.

The aim of this article is to present a succinct review and evaluation of the main areas of contention in the false memory debate and, from this basis, to suggest ways in which the best from both sides can be utilized. We examine the potential pitfalls of therapy in terms of the fallibility and suggestibility of autobiographical memory and therapists and therapeutic techniques as the architects of false memories. We then evaluate the case for false memory formation examining if some researchers hold misconceived views of psychotherapy, if experimental studies lack ecological validity, and the effect of trauma on memory. Finally, we explore how the potential pitfalls of therapy can be avoided in practice, reflecting on the usefulness of British Psychological Society guidelines, how clinicians can implement research findings, and how research on the false memory debate can be improved. We conclude that the way forward is researcher–clinician collaboration in the development of ecologically valid research paradigms.

"In his phenomenological study of imaginative acts in The Imaginary, Jean-Paul Sartre declares that memory and imagination are two different functions, and consequently severs the two from one another. Imagination, he argues, is the epitome of human freedom, since it allows consciousness to detach itself from experience or to negate reality; recollection, on the other hand, entirely depends on perception and is portrayed in The Imaginary as reproduction of perceptual experience. I show in this paper that although he explicitly treats memory and imagination as dichotomous, Sartre’s description of the two indicates strong affinities between them. First, Sartre uses recollections as examples of imaginative acts. Second, his phenomenological description of imagination is wholly applicable to recollection. The paper re-examines the relationship between memory and imagination in The Imaginary and uses Sartre’s theory of imagination as well as his autobiographical writing to conceptualize autobiographical memory as an active and productive aspect of the human mind "

This essay is divided into two parts, deeply intermingled. Part I examines not only the origin of conscious experience but also how it is possible to ask of our own consciousness how it came to be. Part II examines the origin of experience itself, which soon reveals itself as the ontological question of Being. The chief premise of Part I chapter is that symbolic communion and the categorizations of language have enabled human organisms to distinguish between themselves as actually existing entities and their own immediate experience of themselves and their world. This enables them to reflect upon abstract concepts, including “self,” “experience,” and “world.” Symbolic communication and conceptualization grow out of identification, the act of first observing conscious experiencing and intimating what it is like, mimesis, a gestural proto-language learned through imitation, and reflection, seeing oneself through the eyes of others. The step into actual intentional speech is made through self-assertion, narrative, and in-tersubjectivity. These three become the spiral of human cultural development that includes not only the adaptive satisfaction of our biological needs, but also the creativity of thought. With the mental-conceptual separation of subject and object — of self and world — the human ability to witness the universe (and each other) is the ground of our genuinely human quality. Consciousness gives human life its distinctively human reality. It is, therefore, one and the same ability that enables us to shape planet Earth by means of conceptual representations (rather than by means of our hands alone) while also awakening us to the significance of being.

Looking beyond human self-consciousness to investigate the origin and nature of awareness itself in Part 2, reductive objective materialism is found to be of little use. Direct experience also falls short in that, in order to be transformed into objective knowledge about itself, it must always be interpreted through and limited by the symbolic contexts of culture and the idiosyn-cratic conceptualizations of the individual. Awareness in itself must thus be considered ultimately unexplainable, but this may more indicate its inexpressible transcendence of all symbolic qualifiers than its nonexistence. It is suggested that awareness is not “self-aware” (as in deity) but is instead unknowing yet identical with the only true universal: the impetus of crea-tive unfolding. Our human knowledge, as an expression of this unfolding, is seen to emerge from our conscious experiencing and, in turn, to have the power — and enormous responsibility — of directing that experience. Our underlying symbolic worldviews are found to be autopoietic: They limit or open our conscious experience, which, in turn, confirms those worldview expectations. As we explore a future of unforeseeable technological breakthroughs on an ailing planet who patiently copes with our “success,” truly vital decisions about the nature, meaning, and future of conscious experience will have to be made.

Collective memory quite often lies in the nexus where social beliefs can be interwoven with legitimacy claims advanced by authority, while ideology customarily emerges to provide symbolic models and suasive images through which power is justified. The image of Alexander the Great persisted long after his passing and was disseminated over a large area, especially with the assistance of the means of coinage. Even more, the figure of Alexander transcended the Hellenistic Age and continued to have a significant impact, haunting the metallic fields of coins and coin-shaped artefacts. The appeal of the great campaigner was employed on occasion to draw attention to cities as ‘lieux de mémoire’, to evoke identity pieces from a glorious past, as well as to flatter ambitions of Roman emperors. As Alexander was transformed after a fashion into a model of chivalry, his images travelled through time surviving into the Renaissance and beyond.
Building upon essays that take a broader approach, the present paper focuses on a few somehow neglected case studies, in an attempt to offer a more thorough analysis of the selected material. Such a case is constituted by coin issues of Smyrna with the representation of the local legend relating the ‘dream of Alexander’ (first emission appearing in the name of Marcus Aurelius; a couple more were minted just before the middle of the 3rd century AD). Another intriguing example is traced on ‘medallions’ of Abydos depicting the crossing of the Hellespont by Alexander; the query about the raison d’être of the initial appearance on an issue for Commodus as caesar leads to a rather revealing insight; quite interestingly this coin type was later re-used by Septimius Severus, Caracalla (as caesar), Severus Alexander and Maximinus Thrax.
The lasting impression made by the numismatic portrait of Alexander the Great moves to another level as the discussion comes to certain Renaissance medallions. The focus is turned particularly on the reputed meeting of Alexander with the Jewish High Priest, illustrated on medals produced for Pope Paul III by the engraver Alessandro Cesati (1545/46), a subject rich in connotations.

The present paper explores the humanity of SP-404 and the SP-404ity of the human. To those unaccustomed to what an SP-404 or a human is, below they may find two chapters introducing their basic qualities. The final chapter reflects and questions on the parallel nature of the two species. Perhaps, one might have no interest at all on the nature of SP-404 or of the human. Their common structuration, though, is of great interest for any entity bearing similar ontological and epistemological structure. Furthermore, for developing the present analysis, we have applied cybernetic and phenomenological models of description - models considered traditionally incompatible, just like the comparison of an SP-404 to a human. Thus, the scope of this essay becomes twofold: not only the structure of SP-404ity and humanity are found to be structurally identical, but also cybernetics and phenomenology combined provide with an overlap of the first/second and third points of view.

The following is a study of Jean-Paul Sartre’s ontology of conscious awareness. Ontology, for Sartre, consists in the delineation of the constituent elements, structures and dimensions of Being as well as the way in which such constituent features interact within the ekstatic dynamics of the lived experience of the being for whom such ontological features are capable of becoming phenomena of possible awareness. Sartre’s methodology, then, is manifold. The ontological project which Sartre undertakes to develop is at once transcendental, phenomenological and dialectical. It is transcendental inasmuch as it is a theory of the way in which phenomena become experientially possible for a being whose primary existential mode of conscious awareness is as an act of immanent self-relation, as pure auto-affection, and is capable of divesting itself of its modality of active self-affective immanence in constituting for itself a particular phenomenon transcendent to itself. This is to say that w...