Your memories are almost certainly false

[Comte de Saint-Germain]

Actually, human memories are pretty reliable.

If they're recent, sure.

Why recent?

There's interesting research being done on memory. I don't think this thread does much service to it.

I don't much think many people here dabble in Psychology or Neuroscience on a daily basis either.

Judging by your comment on 'recent memories', I guess so.

[Trolldor]

Eyewitness testimony. Read up on it.

[colubridae]

Please let me know when I am clever enough to basque in the warm glow of your faulty logic.

xamonas chegwe in a basque. pictures please.

[Feck]

Please let me know when I am clever enough to basque in the warm glow of your faulty logic.

xamonas chegwe in a basque. pictures please.

EW Now I want Rohipnol so I can forget that image.

[Trolldor]

Please let me know when I am clever enough to basque in the warm glow of your faulty logic.

xamonas chegwe in a basque. pictures please.

EW Now I want Rohipnol so I can forget that image.

...are you sure you're not just asking for it?

[Feck]

Please let me know when I am clever enough to basque in the warm glow of your faulty logic.

xamonas chegwe in a basque. pictures please.

EW Now I want Rohipnol so I can forget that image.

...are you sure you're not just asking for it?

Well from the picture I saw you had a good time on it

[Trolldor]

You'd give anyone a good time on it.

[Feck]

You'd give anyone a good time on it.

it was nice of you to 'accommodate' the dog as well though

[Trolldor]

Don't talk about Pappa like that!

[PsychoSerenity]

Actually, human memories are pretty reliable. Although there are factors that can influence memory reliability at both acquisition, consolidation and retrieval, in most common-day scenarios our memory is pretty much on. Situations to look out for aren't so much 'spontaneous recovery' of memories (which generally have been retrieved before, but one has forgotten that they were retrieved) but memories that are retrieved under hypnosis or forms of therapy that leave the individual open to suggestion. And of course, talking to other people post-memory can adjust a memory quite effectively.

There's interesting research being done on memory. I don't think this thread does much service to it.

From what I remember from a psychology course I've been doing, memory isn't very reliable and is much more distorted than people usually assume. But I could be remembering that wrong...

[Trolldor]

Actually, human memories are pretty reliable. Although there are factors that can influence memory reliability at both acquisition, consolidation and retrieval, in most common-day scenarios our memory is pretty much on. Situations to look out for aren't so much 'spontaneous recovery' of memories (which generally have been retrieved before, but one has forgotten that they were retrieved) but memories that are retrieved under hypnosis or forms of therapy that leave the individual open to suggestion. And of course, talking to other people post-memory can adjust a memory quite effectively.

There's interesting research being done on memory. I don't think this thread does much service to it.

From what I remember from a psychology course I've been doing, memory isn't very reliable and is much more distorted than people usually assume. But I could be remembering that wrong...

It's not that reliable at all, after-the-fact information is especially destructive to accurate memory recall.

[Comte de Saint-Germain]

Eyewitness testimony. Read up on it.

You're telling someone who studies psychology and law under Jelicic and Merckelbach, who has had lectures by leading Dutch and international experts on Memory in relation to court to read up on eyewitness testimony? I doubt you can produce a study that I have not read.

Now you have two options. You can either extract your foot from your mouth, or you can go on a long tantrum about how this says nothing, and how I know nothing, and blablabla. I don't discuss psychology here - or elsewhere - because it's something I do during the day and I'm not here to extend business into spare time. You think I know philosophy? Try me at neuroscience.

Actually, human memories are pretty reliable. Although there are factors that can influence memory reliability at both acquisition, consolidation and retrieval, in most common-day scenarios our memory is pretty much on. Situations to look out for aren't so much 'spontaneous recovery' of memories (which generally have been retrieved before, but one has forgotten that they were retrieved) but memories that are retrieved under hypnosis or forms of therapy that leave the individual open to suggestion. And of course, talking to other people post-memory can adjust a memory quite effectively.

There's interesting research being done on memory. I don't think this thread does much service to it.

From what I remember from a psychology course I've been doing, memory isn't very reliable and is much more distorted than people usually assume. But I could be remembering that wrong...

No, you remember correctly. However, barring a few rare errors, memory is quite reliable. Like I said. Give me a couple of minutes with your college professors, and they'll agree with me. I know the context in which you heard what you heard, and though it isn't 'wrong', it's not completely spot-on either.

It's not that reliable at all, after-the-fact information is especially destructive to accurate memory recall.

You really don't know what you are talking about. Yeah, I do know what I'm talking about.

[RexAllen]

Further info, for those still interested.

Brian Greene's "Fabric of the Cosmos" has a whole section about this issue. Some quotes:

"Since Newton's laws of physics have no built-in spatio temporal orientation, all of the reasoning we have used to argue that systems will evolve from lower to higher entropy toward the future works equally well when applied toward the past."

"Thus, there is an overwhelming probability that the entropy of a physical system will be higher in what we call the future, but there is the same overwhelming probability that it was higher in what we call the past."

He goes on to say that if we find a half melted ice cube in a glass of water, we may assume the ice cube will be more melted in half an hour, but with the same confidence we could assume it was more melted half an hour ago. Hence the universe is overwhelmingly likely to have formed as a fluctuation from equilibrium, in which case our memories and false and the scientific argument is invalidated.

Hence we assume that the universe started at low entropy to avoid the issue. This is known as the "Past Hypothesis".

[RexAllen]

The model I have of the universe in my mind is most logically consistant with what I experience. Of course that's subjective, but that doesn't negate the possibility that it is also objectively so, just that I can never know if it is objectively so.

Correct. As Kant pointed out, the difficulty is not that we can conclude too little but rather that we can conclude too much. From the structure of our experience of the world, it is possible to deduce contradictory particular claims about how things really are.

“According to Kant, it is vital always to distinguish between the distinct realms of phenomena and noumena. Phenomena are the appearances, which constitute the our experience; noumena are the (presumed) things themselves, which constitute reality. All of our synthetic a priori judgments apply only to the phenomenal realm, not the noumenal. (It is only at this level, with respect to what we can experience, that we are justified in imposing the structure of our concepts onto the objects of our knowledge.) Since the thing in itself (Ding an sich) would by definition be entirely independent of our experience of it, we are utterly ignorant of the noumenal realm.

Thus, on Kant’s view, the most fundamental laws of nature, like the truths of mathematics, are knowable precisely because they make no effort to describe the world as it really is but rather prescribe the structure of the world as we experience it. By applying the pure forms of sensible intuition and the pure concepts of the understanding, we achieve a systematic view of the phenomenal realm but learn nothing of the noumenal realm. Math and science are certainly true of the phenomena; only metaphysics claims to instruct us about the noumena.

By the nature of reason itself, we are required to suppose our own existence as substantial beings and the possibility of our free action in a world of causal regularity. The absence of any formal justification for these notions makes it impossible for us to claim that we know them to be true, but it can in no way diminish the depth of our belief that they are.”

[ColonelZen]

Thus, on Kant’s view, the most fundamental laws of nature, like the truths of mathematics, are knowable precisely because they make no effort to describe the world as it really is but rather prescribe the structure of the world as we experience it. By applying the pure forms of sensible intuition and the pure concepts of the understanding, we achieve a systematic view of the phenomenal realm but learn nothing of the noumenal realm. Math and science are certainly true of the phenomena; only metaphysics claims to instruct us about the noumena.

By the nature of reason itself, we are required to suppose our own existence as substantial beings and the possibility of our free action in a world of causal regularity. The absence of any formal justification for these notions makes it impossible for us to claim that we know them to be true, but it can in no way diminish the depth of our belief that they are.”

There is a metric boatload of misapprehension in the above in your claimed transformation of metaphysical quandaries into material certainties. It doesn't work that way. Your "nothing of the noumenal realm", and "absence of any formal justification" use completely unjustifiable superlatives to assert total severance of the phenomenal and noumenal as an incontrovertible and absolute fact rather than what they really are: philosophical misgivings on the limits of epistemology.

Let us then offer a formal justification and proof of the knowability of one thing about the noumenal which will completely falsify your certitude of complete severability:

Operationally, we simply have no reason to care about any "real" properties of the noumenal which never manifest as the phenomenal. If my coffee cup mimsies all its borogroves I simply have no reason to care if mimsying and borogroves never affect my ability to use it to drink coffee. Likewise if boron atoms fornicate with iodine in some unknown realm we simply don't care so long as mass/energy, charge, spin etc are conserved and the various descriptive equations and predictions continue to work in this realm.

And we have a consistent epistemological methodology which provides measurable surety about some aspects of the noumenal: induction. So long as induction works, we have "true" knowledge in our heads that the "real" properties of an entity give rise to the phenomenal properties we observe. And that isometric relation between the noumenal and phenomenal is itself a "real" property of the entity and other entities involved in that transform. And we know that to be "true" to exactly the same surety that we know the observed phenomenal properties to be true.

So there you have it. Some justification of some knowledge of the noumenal and its relation to the phenomenal. Your declaration of absolute certainty of absolute severability is falsified. Defunct.

-- TWZ