MemoryA way of knowing

Understanding

One personal narrative

One activity to test your memory

One video on testimony

Test your confidence on memory

Writing reflection

Memory is……knowledge from the past. It is not necessarily knowledge about the past.

-Avishar Morgalit

It’s the door

Ever walked into a room with some purpose in mind, only to completely forget what that purpose was? Turns out, doors themselves are to blame for these strange memory lapses. Psychologists at the University of Notre Dame have discovered that passing through a door-way triggers what's known as an event boundary in the mind, separating one set of thoughts and memories from the next. Your brain files away the thoughts you had in the previous room and prepares a blank slate for the new locale.

It's NOT aging, it's the door!

ActivityIn your notebooks, narrate an incident which you remember from the past (childhood) and which you think is the oldest incident you could remember (first you learnt to memorize).

Write a brief description mentioning few important details. (Place/ name/ objects/ emotions)

Now think it over…

Why do you remember this incident?

Why do you want to keep this memory?

Are there certain forgotten facts in this incident?

Why few incidents are important while others vague (forgotten)?

Do you choose to preserve the good and bad memories equally?

Read the following wordsDoor glass pane

shade ledge sill

house open

curtain frame view

breeze sash

screen shutter

37 percent people think that confident eyewitness testimony should be sufficient to convict a defendant

48 percent people think; memory is permanent

55 percent people think memory can be enhanced through hypnosis

63 percent people think memory works like a video camera

78 percent people think that unexpected objects generally grab attention

83 percent people think that amnesia makes one unable to remember one’s own identity.

It’s perhaps initially surprising that memory is something common to virtually all human beings, regardless of culture, religion, language, or personal background.

Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.

-Tennessee Williams

The faculty by which the mind stores and remembers information:

1. I’ve a great memory for faces, the brain regions responsible for memory, the mind regarded as a store of things remembered: he searched his memory frantically for an answer;

2. Something remembered from the past: one of my earliest memories is of sitting on his knee, the mind can bury all memory of traumatic abuse, the remembering or commemoration of a dead person: clubs devoted to the memory of Sherlock Holmes, the length of time over which a person or event continues to be remembered: the worst slump in recent memory;

3. The part of a computer in which data or program instructions can be stored for retrieval, a computer’s capacity for storing information: the module provides 16Mb of memory

Memory and Emotions

Man is the only creature whose emotions are entangled with his memory.

-Marjorie Holmes  

Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.

-Albert Schweitzer

Memory and ImaginationIntelligence is the wife, imagination is the

mistress, memory is the servant.

-Victor Hugo

Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory; nothing can come of nothing.

-Joshua Reynolds

Memory and ReasonAnyone who conducts an argument by appealing

to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

-Leonardo da Vinci  

Memory is not wisdom; idiots can by rote repeat volumes. Yet what is wisdom without memory?

-Martin Farquhar Tupper

What do we gain by Memories?

Informally developed shared knowledge.

Personal sense of identity in community

Truth – I was there. I saw it. I remember. I felt

So, what we need to understand..

An accurate appraisal of memory leads to best use of it towards knowledge claims.

Memory is what you remembered

And Forgotten

And Intersected with other ways of knowing.

Memory does not work like a video camera

Video

So..Not all memories are treated same way in our

brain

Facts and events are processed different from skills

Procedural memory – is stored and processed to encoded information that we do not consciously recall. Riding a bicycle, driving a car, badminton

Declarative memory – subgroup semantic memory (information) and episodic memory (experience in time). Lesson learnt in grade 3, past event.

Generally in knowledge claims; Declarative memory is questioned.

Eyewitness testimony

What features of eyewitness memory might make it difficult for even the most ‘honest’ witnesses to tell the truth of what really happened?

A – acquisition of the memory

B – retention of the memory (between acquisition and recall)

C – retrieval in testimony

Memory and IntuitionWe saw the shopkeeper cheating

You observed the bridge hanging

OBVIOUSLY; is the reply

The conflict between:

CONFIRMATION BIAS – tendency to notice what we are supposed to notice

AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC – the likelihood of something to happen; lottery, air crash, terrorist attack

Collective memory and History

Society

– for what purposes in the present will our collective memory of past be used?

Shared memory and knowledge

Every Area of Knowledge is the shared memory of past turned to knowledge.

Memory and TOKIt doesn’t work in isolation.

Supported by language, emotion, intuition.

Memory is a constructive, dynamic and selective process.

It allows us to create knowledge and our personal identity.

In case of truth from the past; we must confront memory.

In case of objectivity; memory conflicts can be imperfect. Memory of similar incident between two.

Objectivity: Using reasons we aspire to overcome diversity of subjective interpretations of reality to achieve logical and factual universally accepted knowledge.

Subjectivity: is human diversity in interpretation of reality – our individuality, cultural variability, and many differences in perspectives.

Our imaginations, emotions and worldview gives us our understanding of our lives in the world around us.

Write down as many words as possibly you could remember from the slide.