Habit as Memory Incarnate

Abstract

n The Shadow Man, Mary Gordon's painstaking excavation of memories of her father, the novelist expresses considerable embarrassment at the possibility of a connection with the virtual industry that has grown up around the phenomenon of memory. From television talk shows to the pages of The New York Review of Books, controversy rages around the question of the integrity or fallibility of the faculty. Among scholars such as Ian Hacking, Elizabeth Loftus, and Frederick Crews, the notion has stirred serious debate: Can false memories be implanted into the mind, later to assume a life of their own? On another front, philosophers John Searle and Daniel Dennett do battle over the questions of consciousness, memory, and artificial intelligence: Can the most sophisticated of neurally based computer technology ever grasp the driving force in the construction of memory-meaning? And does it matter to human functioning? Linguists Johnson, Lakoff, Varela, Thompson, and Rosch dispute the ancient notion of abstract categories that shape our knowledge of the world. Rather, they believe, it is the body that gives form to memorial categories whose manifestation emerges in the metaphors of everyday use. Again, semantics-patterns of meaning-rather than syntax seem to be the driving force behind the development of these memorial representations. Meanwhile, eminent psychologists and neuroscientists such as Schacter, Edleman, Rose, and Damasio attempt to demystify the esoteric world of the brain sciences. Each writer, in his own way, vigorously attempts to lay to rest the still prevalent model of memory: the digital computer with its store of decontextualized information. In contrast, memory, each author maintains, is dynamic; elaborated; generative; transformatory; dependent on context, meaning, and emotion; biologically unique, and yet, equally, shaped by social environment. In fact, over the past three decades, research