Memory and Imagination

By: Gabriel Rise
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:26:59
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There is one important difference between memory, in the more precise meaning of the word, and mere imagination, which makes it desirable to devote a separate chapter to its study. We might go on indefinitely having similar, or even identical, images pass through our minds, and, if we did not recognise them as having been previously portions of our experience, we should never in any strict sense be able to speak of our having a memory process. In memory, our consciousness not only re-presents old experiences to us, but we are aware of the ideas thus brought to us as actually standing for items of our previous states of consciousness. If I am turning over in my mind the wisdom of making a journey to India, the thoughts which come into my mind are brought there by some form of reinstatement of knowledge which I have gained on some earlier occasion. Productive, or reproductive, processes of ideation are at work. But my attention may be wholly monopolised with the reference of these thoughts to the future.

They may not at any point in my thinking present themselves as mere exponents of my antecedent experiences. I think of India as an interesting country, and my attitude is of course determined by things which I have previously learned about it. But this fact of my having gotten my information in some moment of my earlier life may drop wholly out of sight in my enthusiasm over the knowledge itself. Clearly, then, there is a distinction between the mere reappearance of ideas in consciousness, and the fact of memory, as involving recognition of these ideas as elements in my own past history. All conscious memory is reproductive imagination, but not all reproductive imagination is memory. Let us take a specific instance of memory as thus defined and examine it. Suppose we attempt to recall where we were and what we were doing at 10 o'clock on the fifteenth day of last month. Ordinarily we shall be obliged to begin by remembering upon what day of the week that month began, and this in turn may require our remembering upon what day the present month came in.

Let us suppose that we find in this way that the fifteenth of the preceding month fell upon a Tuesday. If our life is subject to a fixed routine, this will generally suffice to give us the clue to our whereabouts and doings at the hour suggested. After a moment's reflection we remember, perhaps, that we were in the library reading American history, and upon a little more reflection we may recall what other persons were in the room, and what portions of the text we were reading.

Gabriel Rise has been experiencing in custom research papers and dissertation writing for several years. Now she is consulting writers and customers on term paper writing.

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