Is Experience Stored in the Brain? A Current Model of Memory and the Temporal Metaphysic of Bergson

Abstract

In discussion on consciousness and the hard problem, there is an unquestioned background assumption, namely, our experience is stored in the brain. Yet Bergson (in: Matter and memory. Zone Books, New York, 1896/1991) argued that this very question, “Is experience stored in the brain?” is the critical issue in the problem of consciousness. His examination of then-current memory research led him, save for motor or procedural memory, to a “no” answer. Others, for example Sheldrake (in: Science set free. Random House, New York, 2012), have continued this negative assessment of the research findings. So, has this assumption actually been proven since Bergson? Do we know how experience is stored? Or that it is stored? Here, a recent review and model of memory is examined to see where this assumption actually stands. Again, the assessment will be that nothing has changed. The core of the problem, it will be argued, lies in two things: Firstly, the search for how/where experience is stored is motivated—rephrasing Bergson—in the classic metaphysic, a framework on space and time whose logic cannot be coherently, logically adhered to in attempting to explain how experience is stored. Secondly, the search generally assumes an inadequate theory of perception that is implicitly based in this classic metaphysic. If framed within Bergson’s model of perception and his temporal metaphysic, conjoined with J. J. Gibson’s model, the storage-search appears misguided from the start.