Abstract
In discussion on consciousness and the hard problem, there is an unquestioned background assumption, namely, our experience is stored in the brain. Yet Bergson (in: Matter and memory. Zone Books, New York, 1896/1991) argued that this very question, “Is experience stored in the brain?” is the critical issue in the problem of consciousness. His examination of then-current memory research led him, save for motor or procedural memory, to a “no” answer. Others, for example Sheldrake (in: Science set free. Random House, New York, 2012), have continued this negative assessment of the research findings. So, has this assumption actually been proven since Bergson? Do we know how experience is stored? Or that it is stored? Here, a recent review and model of memory is examined to see where this assumption actually stands. Again, the assessment will be that nothing has changed. The core of the problem, it will be argued, lies in two things: Firstly, the search for how/where experience is stored is motivated—rephrasing Bergson—in the classic metaphysic, a framework on space and time whose logic cannot be coherently, logically adhered to in attempting to explain how experience is stored. Secondly, the search generally assumes an inadequate theory of perception that is implicitly based in this classic metaphysic. If framed within Bergson’s model of perception and his temporal metaphysic, conjoined with J. J. Gibson’s model, the storage-search appears misguided from the start.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adelson E, Bergen J (1985) Spatiotemporal energy model of the perception of motion. J Opt Soc Am 2:284–299
Bartlett FC (1932) Remembering: a study in experimental and social psychology. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge
Bergson H (1889) Time and free will: an essay on the immediate data of consciousness. George Allen and Unwin Ltd, London
Bergson H (1896/1991) Matter and memory. Zone Books, New York
Bergson H (1912/1920) Intellectual effort. In: Mind-Energy, Lectures and Essays, Wildon Carr (translator). MacMillan and Col Ltd., London, 1920, pp 217–218. (Originally published in the Revue Philosophique, Jan., 1902).
Bohm D (1980) Wholeness and the implicate order. Routledge and Kegan-Paul, London
Cassirer E (1929/1957) The philosophy of symbolic forms, vol 3: The phenomenology of knowledge. Yale University Press, New Haven.
Dietrich E (2000) Analogy and conceptual change, or you can’t step into the same mind twice. In: Dietrich E, Markman AB (eds) Cognitive dynamics: conceptual and representational change in humans and machines. Erlbaum, New Jersey
Domini F, Caudek C (2003) 3-D structure perceived form dynamic information: a new theory. Trends Cognit Sci 7:444–449
Fuster JM (1994) In search of the engrammer. Response to Eichenbaum et al. Behav Brain Sci 17:476.
Gentner D (1983) Structure-mapping: a theoretical framework for analogy. Cognit Sci 7(2):155–170
Gibson JJ (1966) The senses considered as visual systems. Houghton-Mifflin, Boston
Gibson JJ (1975) Events are perceived but time is not. In: Fraser JT, Laurence N (eds) The study of time II. Springer, New York, pp 295–301
Gibson JJ (1979) The ecological approach to visual perception. Houghton-Mifflin, Boston
Goff P (2019) Galileo’s error. Pantheon, New York
Gray JA (1995) The contents of consciousness: A neuropsychological conjecture. Behav Brain Sci 18:659–722
Gunther C (2012) Mind, memory, time. Amazon Digital Services, Seattle
Hofstadter D, Sander E (2013) Surfaces and essences: analogy as the fuel and fire of thinking. Basic Books, New York
Hummel JE, Biederman I (1992) Dynamic binding in a neural network for shape recognition. Psychol Rev 12:487–519
Kastrup B (2019) The idea of the world. Iff Books, Aresford
Klein DB (1970) A history of scientific psychology. Basic Books, New York
Kugler P, Turvey M (1987) Information, natural law, and the self-assembly of rhythmic movement. Erlbaum, Hillsdale
Lashley K (1950) In search of the engram. In: Danielli JF, Brown R (eds) Physiological mechanisms in animal behaviour. Academic Press, New York, pp 454–482
Lynds P (2003) Time and classical and quantum mechanics: Indeterminacy versus discontinuity. Found Phys Lett 16:343–355
Maguire E (2014) The neuroscience of memory—The Royal Institution. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdzmNwTLakg
Maguire EA, Intraub H, Mullally SL (2016) Scenes, spaces, and memory traces: What does the hippocampus do? Neuroscientist 22:432–439
McCarthy J, Hayes P (1969) Some philosophical problems from the standpoint of artificial intelligence. In: Meltzer B, Michie D (eds) Machine Intelligence, vol 4. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, pp 463–502
McClelland JL, Cleeremans A (2009) Connectionist models. In: Byrne T, Cleeremans A, Wilken P (eds) Oxford companion to consciousness. Oxford University Press, New York
McClelland JL, McNaughton BL, O'Reilly RC (1995) Why there are complementary learning systems in the hippocampus and neocortex: insights from the successes and failures of connectionist models of learning and memory. Psychol Rev 103(3):419–457
Moscovitch M, Cabeza R, Winocur G, Nadel L (2016) Episodic memory and beyond: the hippocampus and neocortex in transformation. Annu Rev Psychol 67:105–134
Nadel L (2018). How thinking about memory has changed in the past 35 years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYvhMTq2-Ac
Nottale L (1996) Scale relativity and fractal space-time: applications to quantum physics, cosmology and chaotic systems. Chaos, Solitons Fractals 7:877–938
Piaget J (1954) The construction of reality in the child. Ballentine, New York
Pittenger JB, Shaw RE (1975) Aging faces as viscal elastic events: implications for a theory of non-rigid shape perception. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 1:374–382
Pribram K (1971) Languages of the brain. Prentice-Hall, New Jersey
Robbins SE (2000) Bergson, perception and Gibson. J Conscious Stud 7:23–45
Robbins SE (2002) Semantics, experience and time. Cognit Syst Res 3:301–337
Robbins SE (2004) On time, memory and dynamic form. Conscious Cognit 13:762–788
Robbins SE (2006a) Bergson and the holographic theory. Phenomenol Cognit Sci 5:365–394
Robbins SE (2006b) On the possibility of direct memory. In: Fallio VW (ed) New developments in consciousness research. Nova Science, New York
Robbins SE (2007) Time, form and the limits of qualia. J Mind Behav 28:1–22
Robbins SE (2009) The COST of explicit memory. Phenomenol Cognit Sci 8:33–66
Robbins SE (2010) The Case for Qualia: A review. J Mind Behav 31:141–156
Robbins SE (2013) Time, form and qualia: the hard problem reformed. Mind Matter 11:53–181
Robbins SE (2014) Collapsing the singularity: Bergson, Gibson and the mythologies of artificial intelligence. CreateSpace, Atlanta
Robbins SE (2017) Analogical reminding and the storage of experience: the Hofstadter-Sander Paradox. Phenomenol Cognit Sci 16:355–385
Russell B (1945/1972) Chapter XXVIII: Bergson. A history of western philosophy. Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, pp 791–810
Sacks O (1987) The man who mistook his wife for a hat. Harper and Row, New York
Sartre J (1962) Imagination: a psychological critique. (Translated by Forrest Williams). University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Shaw RE, McIntyre M (1974) The algoristic foundations of cognitive psychology. In: Palermo D, Weimer W (eds) Cognition and the symbolic processes. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, New Jersey
Sheldrake R (2012) Science set free. Random House, New York
Sherry D, Schacter D (1987) The evolution of multiple memory systems. Psychol Rev 94:439–454
Smolin L (2013) Time reborn. Mariner Books, New York
Spencer H (1896) A system of synthetic philosophy. D. Appleton and Company, New York
Taylor JG (2002) From matter to mind. J Conscious Stud 9(4):3–22
Teyler TJ, DiScenna P (1986) The hippocampal memory indexing theory. Behav Neurosci 100:147–152
Teyler TJ, Rudy JW (2007) The hippocampal indexing theory and episodic memory. Hippocampus 17:1158–1169
Turvey M, Carello C (1995) Dynamic touch. In: Epstein W, Rogers S (eds) Perception of space and motion. Academic Press, San Diego
Unger R, Smolin L (2014) The singular universe and the reality of time. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Watson AB, Ahumada AJ (1985) Model of human visual-motion sensing. J Opt Soc Am A 2:322–341
Weiss Y, Simoncelli E, Adelson E (2002) Motion illusions as optimal percepts. Nat Neurosci 5:598–604
Weiskrantz L (1997) Consciousness lost and found. Oxford Univ Press, New York
Wheeler M (2008) Cognition in context: phenomenology, situated robotics and the frame problem. Int J Philos Stud 16:323–349
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Robbins, S.E. Is Experience Stored in the Brain? A Current Model of Memory and the Temporal Metaphysic of Bergson. Axiomathes 31, 15–43 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-020-09483-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-020-09483-x