Memory Cognitive What Is the Nature of Essay

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Memory

Cognitive

What is the nature of memory and how does it relate to experience? Which metaphor for memory is the most appropriate or applicable? In the endeavor to answer these questions and more, the paper presents a metaphor that combines a few of the suggested metaphors into one. The paper provides an interpretation on the nature of memory from a practical perspective, relating contemporary and historical media representations of memory as support. The paper supports the dynamism and flexibility of memory as well as its power of humans in the past, present, and future.

Interpretations of Memory

Memory functions as all of the metaphors listed in the guidelines. There is no one way memory works. That is one of the great and convenient traits of memory is that humans can approach access to their memories from so many angles. At some point every person has had an experience of trying to recall a fact or detail in specific manner and failed. When approaching the memory a different way such as through smell, or retracing steps, or whatever, the memory comes to the forefront of consciousness, becoming accessible. From the list of choices provided regarding metaphors of memory, the ones found most striking are memory as switchboard/network; as reconstruction of a skeleton with fossils; and as active process such as a workbench or computer program. In attempting to narrow the choice down to one, an original idea of a metaphor for memory came to mind: memory is like palimpsest. The paper argues for the metaphor of memory as palimpsest for several reasons including that newer memories mediate the experience of remembering an older memory making the older memory different each time it is recalled into the present.

Memories change based on newer experiences and newer memories; when something new happens, people look back on the same experience they have a memory of, but remember something new or different, or alter a detail, not necessarily because of hyperbole, but because with the new experience overlaying the memory, the memory is different.

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The newer experience is a filter through which humans recall an older memory and perceive it differently. It is similar to the experience of watching a movie that has not been seen in some time. The film is the same, but the viewer is different because the viewer has had experiences since last the film was seen, and those experiences mediate the experience with the memory of the film.

The interpretation that is the subject of the paper on is not on the list, though it is an appropriate metaphor for memory and related to other examples on the list such as those related to jumbled storage, record of experience, and interconnectedness. I came to this because as I examined the list, an idea came to me. I read over the list of metaphors for memory and thought of a toy I had as a child. It was a pad where I could write notes on the surface with a stylus and when lift the top sheet when I wished to erase what I wrote, making it a reusable tablet for drawing and writing. I could not recall the name of the toy, but I knew it was related to slates for writing. I thought of sayings that involved slate such as "wipe the slate clean" or someone looking past a mistake to "give you a clean slate." In my search for slates, I came across "palimpsest," a word I learned from an experimental film course I took. Even though I am sure the name of the toy was not "palimpsest," or a related term, I knew that this is what the toy was based on and I knew this was the metaphor for memory with which I agreed the most.

The first forms of palimpsests were scrolls in Ancient Roman and Greek cultures.….....

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