Does consciousness require memory?

July 15th, 2021, 12:34 pm

Does consciousness require memory?

How does amnesia and/or severe short-term memory loss (e.g. as depicted in the movie Memento) affect consciousness and the ability for a creature to be or become conscious?

Would we have to say that someone with severe amnesia and an inability to form new memories is less conscious than the average awake human, and significantly less consciousness than you or I?

RJG · Post by **RJG** » July 15th, 2021, 12:36 pm

P1. Consciousness requires the capability to experience 'recognition'.
P2. Recognition requires memory.
C1. Therefore, consciousness requires memory.

July 15th, 2021, 1:00 pm

RJG wrote: ↑July 15th, 2021, 12:36 pm P1. Consciousness requires the capability to experience 'recognition'.
P2. Recognition requires memory.
C1. Therefore, consciousness requires memory.

What do you mean by "recognition" exactly?

Why is P2 allegedly true? In other words, why does "recognition" (as you use the term) require memory?

Is it really that "recognition" requires memory, or that the memory of the recognition having occurred requires memory?

Post by **Pattern-chaser** » July 15th, 2021, 1:52 pm

Scott wrote: ↑July 15th, 2021, 12:34 pm Does consciousness require memory?

For continuity of a chain of thought, yes it does.

Count Lucanor · Post by **Count Lucanor** » July 15th, 2021, 2:40 pm

All consciousness is about past experiences. Past experiences could not be recalled if they were not stored (memory). Therefore consciousness requires memory.

July 15th, 2021, 3:15 pm

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑July 15th, 2021, 1:52 pm
Scott wrote: ↑July 15th, 2021, 12:34 pm Does consciousness require memory?
For continuity of a chain of thought, yes it does.

Does consciousness require thought? If so, does it require a specific type of thought such as verbal thoughts (a.k.a. an inner monologue)?

Does the thought have to be a chain of thought? If so, why does the chain have to have continuity?

Is it possible that certain aspects of apparent continuity are actually an illusion? For instance, is it possible that Pattern-chaser's conscious experience of July 16th actually occurred before his conscious experience of today (July 15th)?

If time is an illusion, then would that mean continuity must also be an illusion?

***

Count Lucanor wrote: ↑July 15th, 2021, 2:40 pm All consciousness is about past experiences.

What makes you say that?

What would you say to someone who with equal confidence asserts instead that 'consciousness is about future experiences'?

Is it possible the argument you have posted above is circular (i.e. a case of the begging the question fallacy)?

Consul · Post by **Consul** » July 15th, 2021, 5:55 pm

According to the Global (Neuronal) Workspace Theory, the content of (phenomenal) consciousness is identical to the content of working memory.

See e.g.: Conscious Processing and the Global Neuronal Workspace Hypothesis

Consul · Post by **Consul** » July 15th, 2021, 7:00 pm

QUOTE>
"working memory n. According to a theory put forward by the English psychologists Alan (David) Baddeley (born 1934) and Graham J(ames) Hitch (born 1946) in a book chapter in 1974, a temporary store for recently activated items of information that are currently occupying consciousness and that can be manipulated and moved in and out of short-term memory. It consists of a central executive and two buffer stores, called the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketchpad, its functions are carried out largely in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, and it is tested in a variety of organisms by means of delayed-response tasks and tests of object permanence. In 2000, Baddeley proposed a third buffer store, called the episodic buffer, providing limited-capacity storage for integrated episodes or scenes using multiple codes."

(Colman, Andrew M. Oxford Dictionary of Psychology. 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. p. 824)
<QUOTE

-0+ · Post by **-0+** » July 15th, 2021, 7:46 pm

Scott wrote: ↑July 15th, 2021, 3:15 pm
Count Lucanor wrote: ↑July 15th, 2021, 2:40 pm All consciousness is about past experiences.
What makes you say that?

What would you say to someone who with equal confidence asserts instead that 'consciousness is about future experiences'?

All consciousness is present experience. Present experience could potentially be about the past or future. An experiencer may or may not experience some awareness that present experience relates to the past or the future.

While memory may be used to flag that present experience relates to the past, it may be possible to experience something as relating to the past without having any memory of this. Present experience could potentially be falsely flagged as relating to the past.

Count Lucanor · Post by **Count Lucanor** » July 15th, 2021, 11:59 pm

Scott wrote: ↑July 15th, 2021, 3:15 pm
Count Lucanor wrote: ↑July 15th, 2021, 2:40 pm All consciousness is about past experiences.
What makes you say that?

First, there cannot be consciousness of non-lived experiences, such as those that might appear in the future.

Secondly, there cannot be consciousness of present experiences because the present is just a concept constructed with our most recent past experiences. If you try to define the present as that moment in time simultaneous with your experience, that moment cannot be an interval of time without having also a beginning in that interval, which would introduce a past into it. Therefore, in order to remain as "present", it cannot be an interval, but a single point without a time-length, which is the same as reducing the interval to its shorter length, an operation that will extend infinitely, never actually reaching the definite point in time that can be identified as the present. So all we have as experience of the present is the events experienced a fraction of milliseconds before that conceptual realization of the present. Something happening involves a chain of events that have happened in tiny fractions of time, and as time moves along, we are collecting it in our memory.

Scott wrote: ↑July 15th, 2021, 3:15 pm What would you say to someone who with equal confidence asserts instead that 'consciousness is about future experiences'?

I would say that one cannot have the realization of experiences that have not occurred yet.

Scott wrote: ↑July 15th, 2021, 3:15 pm Is it possible the argument you have posted above is circular (i.e. a case of the begging the question fallacy)?

No, it is not possible.

RJG · Post by **RJG** » July 16th, 2021, 6:56 am

RJG wrote: P1. Consciousness requires the capability to experience 'recognition'.
P2. Recognition requires memory.
C1. Therefore, consciousness requires memory.

Scott wrote:What do you mean by "recognition" exactly?

In short, "recognition" is "knowing". "Recognition" is a physical bodily experience/reaction that allows us to "know" what our body is physically experiencing. It is the mental matching (the re-experiencing) of a previous bodily experience held in memory. Recognition allows us to "know" what (or that) we are physically experiencing. Without memory, there can be nothing there to know; recognize.

Scott wrote:Why is P2 allegedly true? In other words, why does "recognition" (as you use the term) require memory?

Without 'something' to know, there can be no knowing. If there is nothing to match a present experience with a past experience, then how can we "know" or "recognize" what (or that) we are experiencing something/anything?

Without memory capability, there would be 'nothing' there to recognize or match to; there would be nothing to know. And without something to know there can be no consciousness; no knowing whatsoever.

Without eyes there can be no seeing.
Without ears there can be no hearing.
Without memory, there can be no knowing (no recognition; no consciousness).

Gertie · Post by **Gertie** » July 16th, 2021, 3:15 pm

-0+ wrote: ↑July 15th, 2021, 7:46 pm
Scott wrote: ↑July 15th, 2021, 3:15 pm
Count Lucanor wrote: ↑July 15th, 2021, 2:40 pm All consciousness is about past experiences.
What makes you say that?

What would you say to someone who with equal confidence asserts instead that 'consciousness is about future experiences'?
All consciousness is present experience. Present experience could potentially be about the past or future. An experiencer may or may not experience some awareness that present experience relates to the past or the future.

While memory may be used to flag that present experience relates to the past, it may be possible to experience something as relating to the past without having any memory of this. Present experience could potentially be falsely flagged as relating to the past.

I think this is right about conscious experience. So for example a simple sentient species like a moth (assuming moths have conscious experience) might have a conscious experience of 'what it is like' being aware of light, but have no evolutionary need for storing and accessing previous experiencing (experiential memory of) encountering light before.

Memory might be necessary for an ongoing sense of identity over time, or even a sense of being a 'self', depending on how we define it. But I doubt it's necessary for raw phenomenological 'what it's like' experience in principle.

Consul · Post by **Consul** » July 16th, 2021, 5:56 pm

Scott wrote: ↑July 15th, 2021, 12:34 pmDoes consciousness require memory?

Phenomenal consciousness may require some kind of memory and not require some other kinds of memory. For example, there's a distinction between ultra-short-term memory (sensory memory), short-term memory (working memory), and long-term memory.
See: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/memory/#KindMemo

Post by **Sy Borg** » July 16th, 2021, 6:08 pm

We can parse memory and consciousness. My PC has memory, as do bacterial colonies:

https://www.news-medical.net/life-scien ... -Real.aspx

Another study, by Mathis and Ackerman, tested if tolerance to salt was something that could be remembered by the bacterium Caulobacter crescentus. Here, the authors first exposed C. crescentus to a low level of salt, and then to a higher salt level after allowing the bacteria to recover for different lengths of time. The authors found that while individual cells did not seem to change their behavior based on previous exposure to salt, the community of bacteria reacted in a different way that was suggestive of memory.

So we can at least say that memory does not necessarily facilitate consciousness, at least not consciousness at a level that humans value.

Consul · Post by **Consul** » July 16th, 2021, 7:22 pm

-0+ wrote: ↑July 15th, 2021, 7:46 pmAll consciousness is present experience. Present experience could potentially be about the past or future. An experiencer may or may not experience some awareness that present experience relates to the past or the future.

While memory may be used to flag that present experience relates to the past, it may be possible to experience something as relating to the past without having any memory of this. Present experience could potentially be falsely flagged as relating to the past.

How long is the present of experience, the now of consciousness? What is its duration? Is it a temporally unextended instant or a temporally extended interval?

See: Temporal Consciousness: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cons ... -temporal/