Can memory be considered a sense?

Time and memory are independent variables, totally unrelated to each other. Memory has a biological basis and time has a temporal basis.

Time and memory are independent variables, totally unrelated to each other. Memory has a biological basis and time has a temporal basis.

Time and memory are independent variables, totally unrelated to each other. Memory has a biological basis and time has a temporal basis.

Time and memory are independent variables, totally unrelated to each other. Memory has a biological basis and time has a temporal basis.

Time and memory are independent variables, totally unrelated to each other. Memory has a biological basis and time has a temporal basis.

You mean like tomorrow never happened?

How could tomorrow happen without the passage of today?

New Haven

We know you are witty and profound but would you like to delete 3 or 4 or those posts?

Believe it or not, I JUST discovered these multiple posts!

The X for deletion is gone.

Dys;

To explain this phenomenon, we must separate "brain" function (the cpu), from "memory" function (the hard drive).

The brain categorizes experience stored in the memory for quick retrieval, similar to the file tree system we use in computing. But the brain, being fallable, sometimes draws information, in error, from the wrong "file", into perception, or should we say "consciousness" (the part of the brain that interacts with the ever changing environment around us).
The result of such "glitches", for example, a bit of sensory info representing current perception, is read into the brain as memory; and we have "deja vu"; it totally convinces the conciousness that we have seen the subject vision, or odour, or feeling, before.
So memory doesn't store inputs that never occurred, it just "thinks" it did!

Lots of interesting perspectives on this subject. Thanks Everyone

Many people have seen the movie _Memento_, in which the main character has lost the ability to remember back more than a brief period of time. Under such a scenario human consciousness can exist, albeit in a very shattered form.

But try to imagine what it would be like if you had *no* memory at all, not even for a second. If this were the case, our consciousness and awareness, and our humanity, would not exist. We would never have evolved as we did, and might instead have lives more akin to a bacteria, or a sponge, or something else with no (or limited) memory capacity.

I agree that memory is not a sense organ like the other sense organs, but isn't the fact that we remember the past, the only way we can sense time? And if so, in this way, couldn't memory still be considered a sense?

Best regards,

I believe time to be an outcome of experiences recorded by the memory much the same as depth perception is the outcome of experiences recorded in the memory( Visual stimuli enter the brain as two dimensional----the brain adds depth perception with the aid of memory and constant calculations). Current happenings of reality demand that we refer to past experiences to create a concept of an impending event such as an oncoming car. We conceptualize what is happening based on past experience---something that lower animals cannot do or if they do, they err far to the extremes such as a wild dog would see a car and rush wildly away to a great distance. On the other hand a squirrel in the road could not conceptualize how rapidly the car was approaching and the result might be fatal. The human mind constantly searches the memory for comparisons of current perceptions of reality and is constantly keeping note of time relative to all activities. Humans can conceptualize depth perception and time very accurately and must do so every second of the day to survive.

rosborne extends the semiotics of the word "sense".

It is certainly the case that sense of "self" or any other continuity is a function of memory. Interestingly, since we physically change all our body molecules once every seven years it could be said that "memory" is the essence of "identity".

I think rosborne is going beyond the semiotics of "sense", in his comment

"I agree that memory is not a sense organ like the other sense organs, but isn't the fact that we remember the past, the only way we can sense time? And if so, in this way, couldn't memory still be considered a sense?" ,

he is actually using the wrong word entirely; no we do not sense time, as in perception's example, we use experience and memory in relation to time to extropolate an understanding of the effects of time to help us decide on a course of action most suited to the circumstances; the only sense involved is "common"_.

I think rosborne is going beyond the semiotics of "sense", in his comment

"I agree that memory is not a sense organ like the other sense organs, but isn't the fact that we remember the past, the only way we can sense time? And if so, in this way, couldn't memory still be considered a sense?" ,

he is actually using the wrong word entirely; no we do not sense time, as in perception's example, we use experience and memory in relation to time to extrapolate an understanding of the effects of time to help us decide on a course of action most suited to the circumstances; the only sense involved is "common"_.

Science tells us that time is a constant and is just as basic as matter or energy but to the mind it is a concept that must be put into perspective and correlated with other concepts. The mind can then use that concept to calculate which other concepts must have a reference to time.

Memory


Experience requires memory.
Experience requires time.

Does time require memory?
Does memory require time?

Define memory. Define time.

'Tis a verrry interesting question Rosborne.
I will have to think on it awhile ... but it does
seem to have kernels of truth in it, doesn't
it? Memory.... is it, or is it not? Hmmmm.

And, on a personal note;

My "memory" definitely doesn't make any "sense"!