Memory recall

It may be helpful to have the Model of the Mind open whilst reading this definition.

Memory is created by learning, but there is also an extra function – memory recall or ‘remembering’.  Whilst learning creates memory, remembering uses memory, one creates amends and deletes data, and the other extracts data. 

It is rare to remember anything from Perceptions  - to relive events as they happened, generally this only happens when we have a spiritual experience, so it is only by having a spiritual experience that we get perfect recall of an event.  At all other times we get all our information about past events from Memory.  It is a key driver to the decision making function.

The output of remembering and recall is a ‘memory extract’ – a thought often held in working memory.

We can consciously access our memory database – in which case we say we are thinking, but sometimes memories come unbidden and are triggered by something we have perceived - an image or sound or smell or taste or touch acts like a search trigger – an entry point into the software of our minds. 

We may thus go round and round in a loop of reverie -  perceive, remember, perceive remember and remember again as one memory triggers yet more.  The memories extracted may then trigger yet more activities -  emotional,  behavioural, the act of the will,  or the act of speaking as we try to express what we have extracted, or writing as we express what we have extracted in words.

More details on how it works is provided in two sections – Remembering.

and Memory - traversing the database of facts

Observations

For iPad/iPhone users: tap letter twice to get list of items.

• Bergson, Henri - Matter and Memory - The Dangers of Memory
• Bergson, Henri - Time and Free Will - Souls and objects
• Captain Humphries - National Review – The dead bulldog apparently returns
• Damasio, Professor Antonio - Remembering
• Edouard Claparède
• Grof, Dr Stanislav - Peter relives being locked in the cellar
• Hume, David - Memory and the database of facts
• Janet, Pierre - Névroses et les idées fixes (On neuroses and fixed ideas), - Subliminal memory
• Kant, Immanuel - Quotes - Where is the soul?
• Krishnamurti - The Network of Thought - You, the ego… the me is just memory
• Mach, Ernst - The limitations of memory and the 5 senses
• Madame D's dreams
• Ramachandran, Dr V S - The distortion of perceptions to fit belief systems
• Sacks, Oliver - On Inner speech
• Schopenhauer, Arthur - The World as Will and Idea - Memories and emotions
• Spinoza, Baruch - Ethics - On navigating memory
• Swedenborg, Emanuel - The Infinite - Where is the intellect?
• Tennyson, Alfred Lord - In Memoriam A H H - Who loves not Knowledge?