Research Topic 2: Memory
The second topic I researched was 'memory'. I was particularly interested in how the memories of our experiences shape our behaviour and personality, due to the fact that in my personal life, it was a necessity to grow as a person: remembering and recognising my mistakes helped prevent making them again.
Looking at how the brain changes with age, I was able to learn a few facts related to memory.
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As you get older, it becomes harder to retain new information, a basic example being the remembering of names.
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Memory of events and accumulated knowledge (declarative memory) deteriorate as you get older, whilst knowledge of things like riding a bike and tying your shoelace (procedural memory) remain largely intact.
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Working memory –the ability to hold new information such as a phone number or password– begins to deteriorates with time as well, with the process beginning as early as when someone is 30.
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These changes to how well one's memory works might be related to how many people become more stubborn and struggle to adjust to changes in society (such as increased usage of phones) and the evolution of technology. However, this is speculation on my part and I'd need to research further.
On the left is a young person's brain, and on the right is an elderly brain.​
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Dementia & Other Forms of Amnesia
Dementia is a broader term for having an impaired ability to remember, think or make decisions in a way that interferes with everyday life. The most common form being Alzheimers. Dementia will cause someone to be unfamiliar with things that they should be: a city they have lived in for years, a name, and memories of events. The events forgotten normally begin recent, but become increasingly further in the past. It can result in a difficulty to communicate and a change in personality. Changes in personality and behaviour are particularly common from 'Frontal-Temporal Dementia'.
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In stages of Alzheimers, the difficulty to perform tasks increases, things are forgotten more easily, and a person will struggle to come up with the correct word for something. As it gets worse, their mood will often worsen, and the victim will feel withdrawn from social situations they are put in. They may also become increasingly suspicious, compulsive, or even delusional.
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There has been a study to see if people with amnesia change in personality despite being unable to retain new memories, and if they can recognise those changes. The subjects suffered anterograde amnesia, which made them unable to retain new information. Their understanding of their personality was evaluated over a year, and it was found to be quite consistent. Their care-workers were also asked about how they saw the personality of the subjects, and actually saw changes in their personalities. This left an implication that even without the ability to self-reflection on new experiences and memories, our personality can change, but we won't notice it.
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Hume's Bundle Theory of The Self
Bundle Theory is the view that an object consists of its properties and nothing more. Without properties there is not an object. By extension, we ourselves are nothing but our properties: our appearance, our behaviour, our memory, and our perceptions. The mind is nothing but a collection of perceptions, without any deeper unity or cohesion.
Sources: Wikipedia and Britannica on Bundle Theory
Empiricism
The philosophy of empiricism posits that all 'concepts' we have originate from experience, and that only through having experiences can our beliefs and propositions be justified. Words only have meaning for the concept they are meant to convey. If someone was born completely blind, they will have no concept of what 'red' is, because they have not seen that colour, or any others. It is through seeing something red that we can understand what the word means.
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Whilst generally meaning the senses, mental state is also important to experiences. Being
David Hume
able to reflect on the senses you feel is important. The knowing of how numbers relate to each other could be seen as another part of experiences. Whilst there are some concepts debatably independent from experience, they still rely on experience to justify them. One example would be a baby's belief that they will be nourished by their mother's milk.
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The belief that something is dangerous can also be seen as a result of experience or lack of. Having fallen from a short height and being hurt by it might be an experience that makes you believe falling from a larger height would be more harmful and is something to be avoided.
Locke on Personal Identity
Locke believed that our 'Personal Identity' is based on having a continued consciousness. It is like links in a chain that define who we are. Exactly what 'consciousness' meant in this context is debated, but one belief is that Locke was a strict memory theorist, and that consciousness and memory are one in the same. Our consciousness can be thought of as an attribute, rather than a substance/thing in itself.
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A 'person' is a thinking, intelligent being that can reason and reflect, whilst also considering themselves as the same thinking thing in different times and places. Due to the fact that consciousness accompanies thinking, then it can be concluded that consciousness is what allows one to be the same person over time, and therefore defines the 'self'.
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One question is "if you replaced every part of a ship over time, would it still be the same ship?", and the same line of thinking can be applied to if every one of our memories were replaced. If I and a privileged politician swapped memories, would it be said that a different person is in each body? Different memories now inhabit the body I was in, and they would behave entirely differently to how I would, since I do not have the experience of being a privileged politician. Empiricism would argue that the body (and even the soul) is separate from the person.
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Another question stemming from this, is if we forget something, are we the same person as we were before? Does forgetting the experience change us in a way substantial enough to consider us a new person? If we subscribed to Locke's view on Personal Identity, how would that relate to Amnesia and Dementia? I have personally known people who prefer to think of their friends and family that suffered from dementia as different people before and after the disease, even if the body and soul are the same.
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Some think that 'person' only extends to events or acts deemed to be taken of their own will. Doing something because you are forced to does not define the person. One definition of consciousness that was put forward is that it is a mental state where, in an act of perception, we are aware of ourselves as perceiving and aware of the ongoing self in our conscious state. To quote my source "A momentary subjective experience that the self presently perceiving is the same as the self that remembers having once had a past thought or action."
An argument against this view is that whilst present consciousness of what we do and feel in the present is needed to be who we are now, present consciousness of past actions or feelings is not needed for us to be the same person that performed those actions or had those feelings. They feel that the definition of consciousness given, would allow one to argue that they are not the same person that committed a crime. I think this argument is unnecessarily pedantic, I feel it is stuck in the perspective that 'person' and soul are thought of interchangeably. In reality, subscribing to Locke's thought, a criminal who does not remember their crime has their body and soul judged by society, regardless of the person.