In “The Problem of Memory Knowledge”, Michael Huemer describes, and ultimately argues against three accounts on how memory beliefs are justified. 1. The Inferential Theory 2. The Foundational Theory 3. The Preservation Theory 1. The Inferential Theory If I infer that P from my memory that P, together with the belief my memory is generally reliable. As Huemer proposed an example, I now seem to remember that the earth is 93 million miles away from the sun. In the past experience, those expectations formed by the memory where turned out to be true. This makes that his memories are highly reliable. With this in mind, it looks like it will be true that the sun is 93 million miles away from the earth. However, the problem with this the premise …show more content…
In this view that my justification for a memory is just my justification for the original belief. In this theory it does not involve in memory compared to the Inferential Theory. Suppose, God created an identical person five minutes ago, and named Mike 2. So, God had created Mike 2 based on Mike five minutes ago. Mike 2 was created with all the false memories of the past life, similar to Mike had. The only difference between them is Mike had lived in this world for many years, and Mike 2 was just came to this world five minutes ago with all prior knowledge. Mike 2 contain all the rational belief that Mike contains. Mike 2 is unaware of the fact that he came to this world five minutes ago and all his belief about past experience is false, and he don’t know that and has no reason to believe that all his past experience is false. So, suppose Mike has a justified belief that he has breakfast this morning, the same way Mike 2 also believe that he had breakfast this morning. Although, Mike 2 have a belief that he had breakfast is the morning and justiofied, it is through a mistake, because in reality he didn’t had breakfast in the morning; as he was created just five minutes ago with prior knowledge. In this case, both are correct in their own way where both are justified. This contradicts the theory of memory knowledge. Mike is having justified belief having breakfast through his sensory experience and Mike 2 has no such justification, because he had not had breakfast in the morning. In fact, he was just created couple minutes ago. Therefore, it can be said that Mike 2 is highly irrational even though he is naturally identical to Mike. The only difference between Mike and Mike 2 is that Mike 2 doesn’t contain any justification as
The experiment showed how our memory can be easily mislead even if we saw it with our own eyes. I believe Gould’s essay is indeed convincing when it comes to whether or not to doubt what people believe they remember is actually
Memory is our gateway to the past. It changes and alters overtime and may become at some point inaccurate. What people see in the present also changes our opinions on previous events. It plays a great role in storytelling for better or worse. In Janie Mae Crawford’s story of her entire life is affected by her memory in many significant ways.
Due to this belief, readers are left with a question, what caused the two characters to form this belief? Furthermore, readers can conclude that both characters in the story are acting on a memory that involves their
In conclusion, I believe that memories in general are real, and theorized about negative and positive
Third, I will state an indirect memory view of personal identity. Fourth, I will show that Reid’s objection does not hold against the indirect memory view of personal identity. Fifth, I will apply both memory views of personal identity to a murder case in which a drunk driver cannot remember the act of killing a pedestrian and
“In truth [memory] no longer represents our past to us, … if it still deserves the name of memory, it is because it prolongs their useful effect into the present moment.” (Bergson, 1910). This is a powerful statement with regards to amnesiac patients. KC suffered brain damage, and consequently amnesia, after a motorbike accident. “… KC may be said to have global anterograde amnesia (AA), and episodic retrograde amnesia (RA)”,
First, Gettier Edmund Gettier is an American philosopher who’s well known for his work in the field of epistemology. Gettier is one of the first to challenge the tripartite structure of ‘justified-true-belief’, arguing there are instances in which an individual could have a true belief, this true belief is justified, and given all that, the individual still fails to acquire any knowledge. We’ve all heard the phrase, “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.” Now, imagine by sheer coincidence you look at a broken clock, which happens to read the correct time; this is a simple, yet valid example of where the ‘JTB’ method goes awry. In other words, the time displayed is true and you’re justified in your belief that the time displayed is correct, and yet, you lack knowledge of the time.
Q14. The memory criterion mentioned that A is B if A can remember B's experiences or thoughts. For instance, I can remember being 9, so I'm the exact same person I was when I was nine. But, actually, you can find problems with this memory criterion: it's unlike the transitivity of identity and don't include forward looking psychological connections, such as that between present intention and future action, as determinants of personal identity. Using example to spell out, the charge that the memory criterion conflicts with the transitivity of identity was illustrated by the famous case of the schoolboy, the young lieutenant and seniors general (Reid 1975).
An example that effectively supports the memory theory and the “same real memory, same person” mantra is the case of Rachel in the film Blade Runner. To give some context, Rachel is a replicant (genetically engineered) who works for the very company that created her, the Tyrell Corporation. She however, does not know she is a replicant and believes she is human. She also can pass the tests designed to reveal people as replicants. All other replicants in the galaxy know that they are not human and have no childhood memories.
The biological approach to the basis of memory is explained in terms of underlying biological factors such as the activity of the nervous system, genetic factors, biochemical and neurochemicals. In general terms memory is our ability to encode, store, retain and recall information and past experiences afterwards in the human brain. In biological terms, memory is the recreation of past experiences by simultaneous activation or firing of neurons. Some of the major biopsychological research questions on memory are what are the biological substrates of memory, where are memories stored in the brain, how are memories assessed during recall and what is the mechanism of forgetting. The two main reasons that gave rise to the interest in biological basis of memory are that researchers became aware of the fact that many memory deficits arise from injuries to the brain.
The theory of reconstructive memory is the idea that the brain automatically fills in the missing pieces in a memory with information that makes sense. Reliability is defined
This brings back to the idea that memories aren’t reliable but in fact they have been constructed according to our beliefs and stereotypes. This can also be seen in Allport and Postman’s study where participants were asked to recall details of a picture. The participants stated that the black man was the person who was holding the razor when in reality it was the white man. This demonstrated that our memories are actively being
Memory is traditionally understood as a way of maintaining and encoding information, typically a personal and individual affair. Now Bell (2008) understands collective memory as a shared and expressed memory among a group of individuals, but not something that can be transmitted to younger generations. Booth (2009) sees collective memory as a major part of community identity, something that is selectively chosen to create a sense of a people enduring across time. Importantly Booth’s conception would be what Bell may consider ‘myths’, “highly simplified narratives” based on selected places, events and persons, that are passed on to younger generations to create an idea (Bell 2008, p. 151). Collective memory is understood in this assignment as
One approach to explaining FM is the source monitoring framework (SMF; reference). It purports that mental experiences are attributed to memory by ongoing judgment processes (Johnson, 1993). False memory might then be explained by errors in source monitoring. Such errors include; a disruption to perceptual processes such as restricted encoding of the source information or by disturbed judgment processes. The SMF insinuates that: qualitative characteristics of an experience - such as emotional details, the embeddedness of the experience, a set of flexible criteria and ones own social beliefs can distort memory.
Following encoding is the second memory system, storage, which is the action of maintaining memories in your brain (Gilbert, et al., 2015). The final memory system is retrieval, which is the action of bringing memories into the present (Smith, 2016). With a basic understanding of the different types of memory and how they are stored, we can now explore some ways these systems fail us, which are commonly known as the “Seven Sins of Memory.” The first sin of memory that Daniel Schacter discusses is transience. Transience happens to everybody and is the process of forgetting things as time passes (Gilbert, et al., 2015).