Yes, basically. What interests me most is my recent impression that memory is an organism, a living thing, as a metaphysical being. Not a static set of physical records—but actually alive and whole. Hence the elephant...
Yes, because our 'memories' are part of our being - not objects in a closet. And, therefore, we will have those 'memories' in postmortal existence...:
'Every psyche is found to be primarily an unconnected, and unmerge-able, eclosion or “pop-out” of “existential finitude.” Although rare, the word “eclosion” will nevertheless appear often in this article. The phrase “existen-tial finitude” denotes for natural scientists every reality able to sense and move a portion of nature while altering herself by sedimenting those causal involvements away from temporality – this refers to an “instant” and not a time sequence. The designation “away from temporality” thus means “not on a time course but inside the instant,” specifying where such reality occurs and simultaneizes the sedimented sequences [a la Piaget] (“memories”) of her reactions to her causal interactions. This is why any reality that knows itself ought to possess memory, being in turn erroneous the Aeschylus-Plato theory that envisaged brain-engraved memory traces, namely the never found "engrams". Or, in other words: since nature vacates itself outside actuality and consequently every thing in nature, including each mind, exists only within the physical instant, the preservation of memories is an effect due to the absence of time course rather than the presence of brain engrams.'
Or, more technically, but nevertheless valuable knowledge:
'Noûs poieetikós (Greek for “productive intellect”): mind’s acquired component (articulated collection of mental contents) that produces the proper notion about sensory notices, after these notices arrived by sensory channels. For example, when sewing a button or leading an army to battle one sees the thread and button positions – or the field positions – by sensory means, and the noûs poieetikós turns these attended sensory contents into interpreted, meaningful perceptions; but the sort of knot one is doing and one’s army’s strategy are “seen” only by means of the noûs poieetikós. The noûs poieetikós was carefully studied throughout the history of Western and Oriental psychology except in Modernity’s Empiricism (which, essaying in this way to counter the Scholastic notion of soul, promoted Plato’s view of memories as bodily-impressed data, claimed to be the mind’s unique acquired contents). Currently the noûs poieetikós is best described in Piaget’s terms, as the internally consistent system of the operations that one can do with every sensorily detected encounter through the means at one’s reach, thus “categorizing” these encounters. The noûs poieetikós beautifully instances the experiences without sensory contents, or non-intonated because the noûs poieetikós’ monitoring (the availability of one’s abilities and knowledges and the fitting of new perceptions to them, as in recognizing a previously forgotten name or a problem’s solution) does not require causal exchanges (given that one’s onticity is ontological, not demanding a further causal action to know oneself) and the causal enactment of its praxias has extramental effects, exhausted outside their originating mind and thus powerless to generate by themselves intonative reactions in the enacting mind’s onticity. This system of the operations that one can perform conserving the operated-on things is developmentally formed in the ontic-ontological consistency of one’s existentiality by “sedimentation” of the operations one is doing day by day on the encountered realities, as well as of the combinations of these operations that the reality of the encountered things renders either fruitful or frustrated.' Mariela Szirko.
'Ontological (adj.): concerned with the study of the diverse ontic conditions (ontology). In the particular case in which the study is about the observer’s own mind, her ontic makeup or consistency is directly apprehended gnoseologically, so her onticity is also and directly ontological.'
Yes, basically. What interests me most is my recent impression that memory is an organism, a living thing, as a metaphysical being. Not a static set of physical records—but actually alive and whole. Hence the elephant...
Yes, because our 'memories' are part of our being - not objects in a closet. And, therefore, we will have those 'memories' in postmortal existence...:
'Every psyche is found to be primarily an unconnected, and unmerge-able, eclosion or “pop-out” of “existential finitude.” Although rare, the word “eclosion” will nevertheless appear often in this article. The phrase “existen-tial finitude” denotes for natural scientists every reality able to sense and move a portion of nature while altering herself by sedimenting those causal involvements away from temporality – this refers to an “instant” and not a time sequence. The designation “away from temporality” thus means “not on a time course but inside the instant,” specifying where such reality occurs and simultaneizes the sedimented sequences [a la Piaget] (“memories”) of her reactions to her causal interactions. This is why any reality that knows itself ought to possess memory, being in turn erroneous the Aeschylus-Plato theory that envisaged brain-engraved memory traces, namely the never found "engrams". Or, in other words: since nature vacates itself outside actuality and consequently every thing in nature, including each mind, exists only within the physical instant, the preservation of memories is an effect due to the absence of time course rather than the presence of brain engrams.'
http://electroneubio.secyt.gov.ar/Effects.pdf
Or, more technically, but nevertheless valuable knowledge:
'Noûs poieetikós (Greek for “productive intellect”): mind’s acquired component (articulated collection of mental contents) that produces the proper notion about sensory notices, after these notices arrived by sensory channels. For example, when sewing a button or leading an army to battle one sees the thread and button positions – or the field positions – by sensory means, and the noûs poieetikós turns these attended sensory contents into interpreted, meaningful perceptions; but the sort of knot one is doing and one’s army’s strategy are “seen” only by means of the noûs poieetikós. The noûs poieetikós was carefully studied throughout the history of Western and Oriental psychology except in Modernity’s Empiricism (which, essaying in this way to counter the Scholastic notion of soul, promoted Plato’s view of memories as bodily-impressed data, claimed to be the mind’s unique acquired contents). Currently the noûs poieetikós is best described in Piaget’s terms, as the internally consistent system of the operations that one can do with every sensorily detected encounter through the means at one’s reach, thus “categorizing” these encounters. The noûs poieetikós beautifully instances the experiences without sensory contents, or non-intonated because the noûs poieetikós’ monitoring (the availability of one’s abilities and knowledges and the fitting of new perceptions to them, as in recognizing a previously forgotten name or a problem’s solution) does not require causal exchanges (given that one’s onticity is ontological, not demanding a further causal action to know oneself) and the causal enactment of its praxias has extramental effects, exhausted outside their originating mind and thus powerless to generate by themselves intonative reactions in the enacting mind’s onticity. This system of the operations that one can perform conserving the operated-on things is developmentally formed in the ontic-ontological consistency of one’s existentiality by “sedimentation” of the operations one is doing day by day on the encountered realities, as well as of the combinations of these operations that the reality of the encountered things renders either fruitful or frustrated.' Mariela Szirko.
To conclude lol:
'Ontological (adj.): concerned with the study of the diverse ontic conditions (ontology). In the particular case in which the study is about the observer’s own mind, her ontic makeup or consistency is directly apprehended gnoseologically, so her onticity is also and directly ontological.'
One might say that it is the soul that remembers - and nothing is 'engraved'. It doesn't need to be because time is not passing for the psyche:
'La columna: ¿Cómo pueden existir recuerdos? Las
formas se borran. Para que duren, deben grabarse: amantes
corazones en los árboles, leyendas en mármol, genes en
ADN, leyes y contratos en papel, música en discos. Algo que
dura sostiene las formas para que el tiempo no las vuele enseguida.
¿Acaso el cerebro tiene otra manera de conseguir lo
mismo?
La física dice que sí. Pero mientras en nuestro país los
neuropsicólogos abarcan varias carreras, en el extranjero
muchos se especializan demasiado y no suelen estudiar también
física. Por eso desde 1950 gastaron más que nuestra actual
deuda externa en investigar la memoria, sin acertar.
Como no advierten que las personas originamos acciones
(semoviencia), creen que los recuerdos tienen que grabarse
en el cerebro. Veamos en cambio cómo se responde tal pregunta
en un edificio severo, con gran parque, a los fondos
del Hospital Borda, donde una placa celeste y blanca avisa:
ʺMonumento Histórico Nacional. Aquí la ciencia argentina
del órgano cerebral produjo desde 1899 sus mayores descubrimientos
en neuroanatomía, neurofisiología y memoriaʺ.
Un rayo de luz tarda ocho minutos en llegarnos desde
el sol. Años, en venir desde las estrellas a nuestros ojos;
millones de años en llegar desde las galaxias a nuestros telescopios.
Pero ese largo viaje para el rayo de luz es instantáneo:
todo el trayecto le ocurre simultáneamente. Eso se
debe a que las causas que originan transformaciones físicas
no pueden demorar, principio básico de la relatividad.
Aunque desde afuera las veamos tardar siglos en causar
efectos, desde su sitio el tiempo no pasa.
Y las personas somos causas: causamos que nuestro
cuerpo se mueva y así originamos actos, buenos o malos.
Para que podamos ser causas reales, nuestra mente tiene que
localizarse en partes de nuestro cuerpo que funcionen como
tales. A la parte del cuerpo donde se asoma o localiza nuesa
la neurobiología y psicofísica
137
tra mente le tiene que pasar lo mismo que al rayo de luz. Por
eso nuestros recuerdos están todos de una vez: el tiempo no
pasa para ellos, de modo que nuestra biografía puede sumarse,
y aprendemos, volviéndonos prácticos en las frustraciones
que las cosas imponen a nuestra semoviencia.'
So the soul 'remembers' - and without this re-membering (outside of time's passing) we would not have conscience...
'Por eso si un ser querido se torna demente, o cae en
coma, no creamos que se aniquiló. Su órgano cerebral no le
permite ʺenchufarseʺ en línea con las transformaciones de las
cosas. Pero nuestro cariño tiene razón de seguir intacto: esa
persona subsiste. Hemos visto restablecimientos tras veinte
años de coma, ʺvegetalesʺ humanos que despertaron tras cincuenta,
y no con mentes de lactante otra vez, sino con sus
propios recuerdos. Porque el alma nunca pierde su lozanía.»
Los alcances del aporte los ilustra mejor que yo Néstor
Ravazza, porteño poeta cuyo asombro buriló en 2007 un
poema sobre Los Recuerdos:
Néstor Ravazza
Hubo una luna llena en la cancha de Lanús
Y un vaso de vino en el invierno del 84.
Hubo una hiperinflación y un supermercado
En la Avenida La Plata.
Norberto César Contreras – Algunos aportes de Mario Crocco
138
Hubo un ascenso en automóvil al cerro San Antonio
En el verano de Piriápolis.
Hubo una noche de niebla en Mataderos
En el bar Carlos Gardel de Larrazábal.
Hubo un artículo de Mario Crocco
En el diario que regalan en el Subte.
Hubo el llanto de una mujer en Belgrano.
Y ningún recuerdo
Sin embargo
Está registrado en mis neuronas.
No hay disco rígido en mi cerebro.
No hay una cinta de audio o de video.
No hay nada.
El hombre causa y promueve sus propias acciones
Y la ética se encarga de juzgarlas.
No es el cerebro el que recuerda.
La que recuerda es el alma.
En definitiva, Crocco mostró que los ʺengramasʺ son
tan superfluos para la retención de los contenidos mentales
como lo es el ʺímpetuʺ para la continuación de un estado de
movimiento, hecho señalado en su momento por Isaac Newton.'
'From Aeschylus and Plato on, too memory was explained in this way, with a
lastingness imparted by some support apt to be shaped, or inscriptionable medium
perdurable by itself. Namely, memory was explained by engrams (which is the modern
name given to the searched for supports of the biographical memories), or impressions
acting as durable tokens. For these engrams, psychologists and neuroscientists
abroad do search assiduously, applying most of the granted funds in psychophysics
and brain physiology, in the certainty that they in fact exist. They are not yet
found; but, as a matter of course, which other physical way could exist, of making
memories to last? Thus, none of a wonder it should be that, like the little men reported
in sperm by early microscopists and like the many professional observations, century
and a half ago, of the inexistent planet Vulcan when orbital calculations seemed
to require its existence, also the finding of engrams has been already reported many
times, always prematurely if in full good faith: never changing its basic notion, if on
every occasion locating them in ever more inaccessible brain sites. It became sort of
an unrevisable cultural myth. Yet, pharmaceutical laboratories and academic institutions
do rightly sense the huge importance of discovering the way in which memories
remain available over the whole life, and of knowing the true limits and possibilities of
its therapeutical handling. Accordingly, over the last fifty years the entry of research
funds directly or indirectly connected with the search for the engram was probably the
greatest one availed for any single topic of basic science, hundreds of thousands of
millions of dollars worldwide.
Nonetheless, since a century ago, in this remote neurobiological tradition we
refused to partake in such strange idea, of engraving the rememberings in order to
keep them available. Since 1899 our main early figure, Prof. Chr. Jakob (1866-1956)
stressed many times the impossibility of localized tokens. Yet he avowedly remained
at a thorough loss about any physical alternative to a different kind of engraving,
which he conceived as sort of distributed, non-local engrammation of resonant or stationary
waves [Thalamo-cortical- thalamic macrocircuits and intra-gray microcircuits].
This disquieting situation was abided by our greatest researchers in the field of
demencies, as Drs. J. T. Borda and Braulio Moyano. [The present awardee] contributed
the conception of the detailed mechanism whereby memory ought to be
achieved without any engraving of the memoirs, and also discovered the evolutionary
context that selected such a mechanism; further, [he] specified the physical features
of the components of the brain where psychisms are localized so as to be able of
possessing memory. Some of these contributions are outlined in what follows. The
central fact is speed; namely, the speed with which some components do move in the
organic substrate of a psychism.'
Mariela Szirko