Quote:
Originally Posted by LeoM  |
Well we don't need extreme cases like that to realise that the brain affects memory. It is not as if we can remember everything we have ever done.
My hypothesis is that we have memories of everything
we have ever experienced but the structure of the brain prohibits access to them. Indeed most memories appear to be irretrievably lost eg what I was doing on a particular day when I was 7 years old.
But if the brain merely "filters" out memories then it seems to me that no memories would ever be irretrievably lost, and when the self becomes detached from the brain we will have access to all our memories i.e everything that has ever happened to us.
Now I believe that long forgotten memories
can be elicited by poking about the brain in an appropriate way. So that would be compatible with transmission theory. Is it also compatible with production theory? (i.e the brain produces consciousness). I suppose that
prima facie if you subscribe to the production theory then you wouldn't expect the brain to store (and maybe it's not even
capable of storing) every single memory of everything that has ever happened to us. But there again, maybe the brain doesn't. Maybe poking around in the brain can only retrieve certain lost memories and not others.
More importantly if the brain merely filters out memories then you would expect people who undergo deep NDEs to have access to everything that has ever happened to them. Now I do believe that happens, at least sometimes. So that suppoerts transmission theory over production theory. But is it not the case that even during deep NDEs many people do
not have access to all memories? And what about just normal OBEs? I can't recall people who undergo OBEs claim they can remember everything that has ever happened to them whilst during that state. On the other hand maybe we need to distinguish between something like voluntary induced OBEs and the OBEs experienced very close to death (or just after death).
Anyway I don't believe the fact that someone has a 30 second memory rules out the transmission theory. In order to maintain that you would need to argue that if the brain doesn't create the self, then the brain cannot possibly affect any properties of the self such as memories, personality etc.