John
Sutton
Back to my home
page.
Tel. (02)-9850-8817, or
email.
Back to the Philosophy Department,
Macquarie
University.
Home page for this Honours
seminar course.
Semester 2, 2001. Fridays 11-1, W6A 720.
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Memory cannot go back that
far,
fades into myth, I find myself walking down a long
straight passage hung with bead
curtains. Through one curtain after another, like sheets
of coloured rain, but I notice
very little in the passage, only at the end there is a staircase.
I go up it several flights, at
the last floor but one there is a small window of cheap
stained glass which throws a
stain
on the floor mingling with the pattern of the worn-
out linoleum. The last flight of
the stairs is uncarpeted and the top is all but dark. The
top is a blind alley, a small
lobby
without any doors and the roof sloping down as in an
attic. It smells very fusty.
Close
in under the roof, but I can hardly see it, is a trunk, an
old-fashioned trunk with metal
studs on it. On the lid of the trunk there are initials but I
cannot see if they are mine.
Anyway
the trunk is locked.
Louis
MacNeice,
The
Strings Are False: an unfinished autobiography (Faber, 1965), p.36
Some Topics
1. Memory and brain
Neuroimaging, localization,
and the search for the engram
Amnesia: broken memories
2. Memory and Cognitive Science
Computational models, digital
memories, & expert systems
Connectionism and
catastrophic
interference
Schema theory, the extended
mind, and external symbol systems
3. Reduction and Interdisciplinarity
Metaphysics and philosophy
of science: new-wave reduction & interfield theories
4. Memory Systems and Cognitive Psychology
Implicit and explicit memory
Episodic and semantic memory
Source monitoring and memory
distortion; personality and social psychology
Memory and time; mental time
travel
Memory in other animals;
spatial
and temporal representation
5. Memory Development
Early autobiographical
memory:
infants and children
Memory and the self-schema
Memory, meta-representation,
and theory of mind
Social constructivism,
narrative,
culture, and language
6. Philosophy of Memory
Epistemology of memory
Causal theories
Direct realism and
representationism
Wittgensteinian approaches
to memory
Phenomenology of memory
Memory in modern European
philosophy
Memory and personal identity
7. Memory Distortion
Psychoanalysis: mourning,
condensation, and screen memories
False and recovered memory
Trauma and memory
8. Social and Collective Memory
Memory and history; Holocaust
studies
Sociology and anthropology
of memory; archives and museum studies
Memory and media, memory and
writing, cognitive technology
Memory and film, prosthetic
memories
Evolution of memory, external
memory
9. Memory and Autobiography
Narrative and memory;
literary
and postcolonial studies
Alzheimer's, memory loss and
memory aids
Memoir, biography, and
autobiography
First
set of readings
History of Theories
Aristotle, On Memory, in The
Complete
Works of Aristotle vol.1 (Princeton UP, 1984)
John Locke, 'Of Retention', in An Essay
Concerning
Human Understanding, Book II chapter
X, P.H. Nidditch (ed) (Oxford
UP, 1978)
Philosophy
Norman Malcolm, 'Memory and Representation',
Nous
4 (1970), 59-70
Christoph Hoerl, 'Memory, Amnesia, and the Past',
Mind
and Language 14 (1999), 227-251
John Campbell, 'The Structure of Time in
Autobiographical
Memory', European Journal of
Philosophy 5 (1997),
105-118
Marya Schechtman, 'The truth about memory', Philosophical
Psychology 7 (1994), 3-18.
David Stern, ' Models of memory: Wittgenstein
and cognitive science', Philosophical
Psychology 4 (1991),
203-218
Psychology and Social Memory
Michael Leyton, 'Introduction', Symmetry,
Causality, Mind (MIT Press, 1992)
Katherine Nelson, 'The Psychological and Social
Origins of Autobiographical Memory',
Psychological Science 4
(1993),
7-14
Ian Hacking, 'Memoro-politics, Trauma, and the
Soul', History of the Human Sciences 7
(1994), 29-52
Norman M. Klein, 'Where is Forgetting Located?',
The
History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and
the erasure of memory (Verso,
1997)
Oliver Sacks, 'Reminiscence', in The Man
Who
Mistook His Wife For A Hat (Picador, 1985)
From R. Wilson & F. Keil (eds), The MIT
Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences (MIT, 1999):
Endel Tulving, 'Episodic vs
Semantic Memory'
Daniel Schacter, 'Implicit
vs Explicit Memory'
Alan Baddeley, 'Memory'
Stuart Zola, 'Memory: animal
studies'
Larry Squire, 'Memory: human
neuropsychology'
Background
Reading
The best short single book on memory is
Mary Warnock, Memory (London: Faber,
1987).
It's in RESERVE at BF371.W37.
There are two excellent and very broad popular
intros to the psychology of memory:
Susan Engel, Context is Everything: the
nature
of memory (Freeman, 1999)
Daniel Schacter, Searching for Memory
(Harper Collins, 1996)
For phenomenological and postmodern/ European
philosophical approaches see
David Farrell Krell, Of Memory, Reminiscence,
and Writing: on the verge (Indiana U.P., 1990)
Ed Casey, Remembering: a phenomenological
study (Indiana UP, 1987)
For a start on social memory, collective
memory,
and memory and politics see
James Fentress & Chris Wickham, Social
Memory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992)
D. Middleton & D. Edwards (eds.), Collective
Remembering (London: Sage, 1990)
Paul Connerton (1989) How Societies Remember.
Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Some memoirs and autobiographies which deal
explicitly
with memory: you may want to look
for your own examples,
especially
Australian ones.
Ronald Fraser, In Search of a Past (Verso,
1984)
Alice Kaplan, French Lessons (Chicago
UP, 1993)
Georges Perec, W or The Memory of Childhood
(Collins
Harvill, 1988)
Louis MacNeice, The Strings Are False: an
unfinished autobiography (Faber, 1965)
Lauren Slater, Spasm: a memoir with lies (Methuen,
2000)
Richard Rayner, The Blue Suit (Picador,
1995)
See also Esther Salaman, A Collection of
Moments
(St
Martins Press, 1972)
Richard Coe, When the
Grass
was Taller: autobiography and the experience of childhood (Yale
UP,
1984)
Some films: Total Recall, Strange Days, Johnny Mnemonic, Until the End of the World, Memento
Future page for resources on interdisciplinary
study of memory
http://www.phil.mq.edu.au/staff/jsutton/Memory.html
Philosophy of Memory page:
http://www.phil.mq.edu.au/staff/jsutton/Memoryphilosophy.html
Reading list from old course on memory (1994):
http://www.phil.mq.edu.au/staff/jsutton/Memoryreading1994.html
John Sutton
Dept of Philosophy
Macquarie University.
Back to my home page.
Last updated 24 March 2005.