Citizen: If remembering is so complex, then why does it seem so effortless, simple and natural? Each idea reminds me of similar ones, which then make me think of related ideas—until I recall the ones that I need.
Why does ‘remembering’ seem so effortless? As long ago as you can remember, you could always recall things that happened to you. However, you cannot remember much of your earliest years; in particular, you cannot recall how you developed your early abilities. Presumably, you had not yet developed the skills one needs for making those kinds of memories.[109]
Because of this Amnesia of Infancy, we all grow up with simplistic views of what memories are and how they work. You might think of your memory as like a writing-pad, on which you can jot down mental notes. Or perhaps for each significant event, you store ‘it’ away in some kind of memory-box and later, when you want it back, you somehow bring ‘it’ out of that box—if you are lucky enough to find it. But, what kinds of structures do we use to represent those ‘its’ and how do we bring them back when we need them? Our recollections would be useless unless (1) they are relevant to our goals and (2) we also have ways to retrieve the ones that we need at the times when we need them.
To do this, a computer expert might suggest that we store everything in some single ‘data base’ and use some general-purpose ‘matching’ technique. However, most such systems still classify things in terms of how they are described instead of what they are likely to be useful for. The trouble with this is we do not usually know what kind of thing we are looking for, but only what we want to accomplish with it—because we’re facing some obstacle, and want to know how to deal with it.
So, instead of using some general method, I suspect that every child develops ways to link each new fragment of knowledge to goals that it might help us to achieve, as well as to other related ideas. These additional links might help to answer questions like these:
What kinds of goals might this item serve? Which kinds of problems could it help to solve? What obstacles could it help to overcome?
In which situations might it be relevant? In which contexts is this likely to help? What subgoals must first be achieved?
How has it been applied in the past? What were some similar previous cases? What other records might be relevant? See §8-Credit Assignment.
Each fragment of knowledge may also need links to some knowledge about its deficiencies—and the dangers and costs of using it:
What are its most likely side effects? Is it likely to do us more harm or more good?
How much will it cost to use it? Will it repay the effort of using it?
What are its common exceptions and bugs? In which contexts is it likely to fail us—and what might be good alternatives?
Is it part of some relevant family? [See Glossary: Ontology.]
We also link each item to information about its sources and to what other persons might know.
Was it learned from a reliable source? Some informants may simply be wrong, while others may mean to mislead us.
Is it likely to be outdated soon? That’s why this book does not depend much on current beliefs about how our brains work.
Which other people are likely to know it? Our social activities strongly depend on knowing what others may understand.
All this raises question about how we make so many connections to and from each new fragment of knowledge. I suspect that we can’t do this all at once—and indeed there is some evidence that it normally takes some hours or days (including some sessions of dream-laden sleep) to establish new long-term memories. Also, we probably add more links each time we retrieve a fragment of knowledge, because then we’re likely to ask ourselves, “How did this item help (or hinder) me at overcoming this obstacle?” Indeed, some research in recent years suggests that our so-called long-term memories are not so permanent as we used to think; it seems that they can be altered by suggestions and other experiences.
We all know that our memory systems can fail. There are things that we can’t remember at all. And sometimes we tend to recollect, not what actually happened to us, but versions that seem more plausible. At other times we fail to remember something relevant until—after several minutes or days—suddenly the answer appears—and you say to yourself, “How stupid of me; I knew that all along!” (That could happen either because an existing record took long to retrieve, or because it was never actually there, and you had to construct a new idea by using some process of reasoning.)
In any case, we should expect such ‘lapses’ because our recollections must be selective; §4-4 discussed how bad it would be to remember everything all the time: it would overwhelm us to recall all the millions of things that we know. However, none of this answers the question of how we usually retrieve the knowledge that we currently need. I suspect that this is mainly due to our already having prepared in advance the sort of links discussed above. But constructing these requires additional skills; we’ll discuss these in §8-5 Credit Assignment.
As the start of this section we asked about how we retrieve the knowledge we need. The following section will argue that part of the answer lies in those links to the goals that each fragment of knowledge might help to achieve.” To make that statement more concrete, the next few sections will investigate what goals are and how they work.
§6-3. Intentions and Goals
“No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve in quality as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing it is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them.”
Sometimes we seem to act passively, just reacting to things that happen to us—but at other times we feel more in control, and feel that we’re actively choosing our goals. I suspect that this most often happens when two or more goals become active at once and thereby lead to a conflict. For as we noted in §4-1, when our routine thinking runs into trouble, this engages our higher reflective levels.
For example, when angry or greedy enough, we are likely to take actions that later may make us have feelings of shame or guilt. Then we may offer such justifications as, “that impulse became too strong to resist” or “I found that I did it in spite of myself.” Such excuses relate to the conflicts between our immediate goals and our higher ideals, and every society tries to teach its members to resist their urges to breach its conventions. We call this developing ‘self-control’ and each culture makes maxims about such feelings.
109
See Elizabeth Johnston’s notes on “Infantile Amnesia” at http://pages.slc.edu/~ebj/IM_97/Lecture6/L6.html