There are many relationships one can take to their memory. One can be skeptical of it, like Descartes, in the name of finding a firm criterion for knowledge. One can use it as a tool to discover more about the self, as psychoanalysis does by studying what things people tend to remember. One can employ it to learn about the past, as many social sciences do. If one prefers a more archaic relationship, one can worship it, just as the Greeks worshipped the Goddess Mnemosyne, in the hopes that one will always remember what they need to remember. At its worst, memory is a distraction from pure reasoning; at its best, it is a creative power that provides us with control over our world. Where someone stands on the question of memory depends on the method they use.
These days, more emphasis is being placed on how memory can best be used to create moral agency and a healthy self. What attributes of memories (e.g. a feeling of control over them, or distance from them) are most effective for living a good life? What happens to our ego, our mind, our consciousness, or our physical brain when memories lead us astray? Here are some papers which inform us about how to best interact with a part of mind that is constantly with us, whether we are aware of it or not.
- Eduardo Vicentini de Medeiros, “The philosophy of episodic memory and moral agency,” Filosofia UNISINOS, January-April 2018.
- Lior Levy, “Reflection, Memory and Selfhood in Jean-Paul Sartre’s Early Philosophy,” Sartre Studies International, 2013.
- Rebecca Roache, “Memory and mineness in personal identity,” Philosophical Psychology, May 2016.
- Aurea Afonso Caetano and Teresa Cristina Machado, “Complex in memory, mind in matter: walking hand in hand,” Journal of Analytical Psychology, September 2018.
- Andre Sant’Anna, “Mental time travel and the philosophy of memory,” Filosofia UNISINOS, January-April 2018.
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