Thursday 2 July 2020

Memory

As sometimes happens, several texts have come together in my head.

(i) Our discussion of logical positivism because Poul Anderson mentions it in Three Hearts And Three Lions.

(ii) "Tiger Ride" by James Blish and Damon Knight in which space travelers have to accept that an alien intelligence has planted false memories in their minds so that a dead crew member whom they all remember did not exist.

(iii) Poul Anderson's "The Barrier Moment."

(iv) "'...when we remember, we are not getting the result of something that goes on inside our heads. We are directly experiencing the past.'"
-CS Lewis, "The Dark Tower" IN The Dark Tower And Other Stories (London, 1977), pp. 17-91 AT p. 20.

I remember walking by the river yesterday. Remembering is not like consulting a (possibly false) record of a past event. It feels much more like direct acquaintance with that event.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And we see Aycharaych doing precisely that, implanting false memories in the minds of Jaan in THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN and Kossara Vymezal in A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS.

I don't think remembering something I saw or did yesterday is the same as re-experiencing it. Because I would know I was remembering something that happened in the past.

Ad astra! Sean