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Tallis in Wonderland

The Elusiveness of Memory

Raymond Tallis talks about um… err…

Readers with long memories may recall that several years ago I invited them to reflect on ‘the true mystery of memory’ (‘A Smile at Waterloo Station’, Philosophy Now Issue 78, 2010). In the course of writing about ‘The Past’ in my new book Of Time and Lamentation: Reflections on Transience (now, after a decade, finished), I came across a fascinating paper on memory whose ideas I want to share with you. But before I do so, some preliminaries are in order.

In the vast research literature on memory, psychologists have divided this extraordinary faculty in many ways. For the purposes of philosophical debate, it is sufficient to distinguish what Henri Bergson called ‘habit memory’ (evident in response conditioning, motor learning, skill acquisition, and behavioural modification) from conscious or explicit memory – what we might call ‘memory of’.

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