The Particulars Of Memory

For as crucial as memory is to prolonged abstract exploration and practical life, it is almost entirely beyond one's control.  It is vital that a person can voluntarily lift themselves out of irrationality at any time by shedding philosophical negligence and assumptions and looking to reason, and to an extent can potentially use intentionality to stabilize or improve their memory.  Rationality does not depend on the extent and quality of someone's memory; even if they could not maintain memories from the present moment to the following one, they could still discover or focus on logical axioms and their own conscious existence in the present to an extent, as well as realize that they are genuinely experiencing immediate sensory perceptions, though progressing beyond such recognition would be extremely difficult at best.  What is self-evident is always accessible in the moment.

But someone with an excellent memory cannot guarantee that their stable recollection will not falter or be snatched from them entirely, perhaps even abruptly and without warning.  Whether from neurological diseases like Alzheimer's (with physical neurons and their behaviors in the nervous system correlating with immaterial, mental properties), extreme psychological stress, exhaustion, or some other cause, a memory could be plunged into terrible instability.  Having a thriving memory does not logically necessitate that it will not rapidly decline, whatever the reason.

In truth, there is a nuance to the particulars of memory that might be overlooked or taken for granted even by those who have fortunately never had to grapple with a declining capacity to memorize or to recall what was already committed to memory.  It is not that perfect clarity in recollection means a past event actually occurred or that it happened as remembered.  However, it is necessary to rely on memory from moment to moment in order to accomplish even the simplest of external tasks.  And yet, looking back on events that certainly seem to have happened, one might notice oddities.  Someone could remember that they dreamed the previous night without recalling the dream's content, or have memories of eating breakfast in the morning five days before without actually remembering the exact food or the precise time of morning.

Again, having a memory of an event does not prove it happened because there is no logically necessary connection between the experience of a memory and an event having truly occurred outside of one's mind.  A memory is still the only fallible evidence one might have of a great many things—such as that one is married, that one works in a certain profession, that one possesses a given article of property, and so on.  And it remains true that the particulars of one's memories might be more paradoxical than would seem the case to someone who merely assumes that past events happened as it appears to them or who never reflects on their own memories with any thoroughness, much less memory as a philosophical subject.

The nuanced particulars of memory can get even more ironic than remembering an event seemingly happened without certain other details or any others at all coming to mind.  It is possible to remember an aspect of something while not recalling almost any other aspect.  There is even the extreme nuance of remembering that you do not remember something—this does not involve remembering something while not remembering it at once, which is contradictory and thus logically impossible.  This entails remembering that something is eluding your memory without recalling what exactly it is.  As paradoxical as this is, it is logically possible, and some readers might have already experienced this in their lives.

To have any sort of stable experience perceiving how one thought leads to another (regardless of whether the thought is rational, aka, aligned with the objective laws of logic) or how one sensory experience sets up another, one must have a somewhat functioning memory.  Was it not for this, it would be impossible to have coherent sensory experiences from moment to moment in a shifting environment or while, say, walking from one room to another.  Every change in thought or scenery would disorient someone.  Every moment would be disorienting even when standing, sitting, or laying in place.  Those who take memory for granted on the level of assuming things about it, which is irrational even if the things assumed are logically true, or who do not gratefully acknowledge its benefits might very well find theirs collapsing one day and land in such a situation.