How do we know through memory? Can we know things which are beyond our personal present experience?
Is eyewitness testimony a reliable source of evidence? Can our beliefs contaminate our memory?
Is eyewitness testimony a reliable source of evidence? Can our beliefs contaminate our memory?
ACTIVITY
Read the following words. You will have one minute to memorize them and write them down on a piece of paper.
plane
flower picture book phone hat pancakes plant basil baseball |
shoe
pen red silver document glasses chocolate sun television lightbulb |
THE MIND PALACE
The Method of Loci
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MEMORY IN TOK
Many discussions of knowledge tend to focus on how beliefs and knowledge are formed rather than on how they are remembered by the individual. However, most of the knowledge that individuals have is in the form of memory and therefore how we retain information and how past events and experiences are reconstructed is an important aspect of how personal knowledge is formed.
Memory, and particularly habit, has a strong link to procedural knowledge and remembering how to perform actions. In contrast to perception, memory refers to things which are not currently happening. And in contrast to imagination, memory refers to things which we believe really happened. Some would argue that memory is not itself a source of knowledge, but instead is a process which we use to recall knowledge gained in the past. However, although memory refers to knowledge gained in the past, it can be argued that even new knowledge is dependent on and influenced by memory. For example, how we interpret new situations can be heavily influenced by experience and previous events. In this way, apart from being a “storage unit” for existing knowledge, memory can also be a mechanism that allows us to process new and unique situations. The importance of memory can be highlighted by imagining the challenges that would be presented by losing our memory. Because so much of our personal knowledge is in the form of memory, issues surrounding the reliability of memory are also crucial. Memory retrieval is often regarded as unreliable, for example, because it is seen to be subjective or heavily influenced by emotion. However, we rely on our memory every day and because many of our memories seem to be reliable, this gives us confidence that our other memories are reliable. TOK Guide 2015 |
DA: It's time to test your memory again. Write down everything you remember from today's lesson about the concept of memory.
PAY ATTENTION
CATEGORIES OF MEMORY
MODELS OF MEMORY
ACTIVITY
1. Step outside with your camera.
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THE PROBLEM WITH MEMORY
Is eyewitness testimony a reliable source of evidence?
How can memory be disrupted according to Loftus?
What other problems can interfere with memory formation or retrieval?
How can memory be disrupted according to Loftus?
What other problems can interfere with memory formation or retrieval?
"Nearly two decades of research on memory distortion leaves no doubt that memory can be altered via suggestion. People can be led to remember their past in different ways, and they even can be led to remember entire events that never actually happened to them. When theese sorts of distortions occur, people are sometimees confident in their distorted or false memories, and often go on to desscribe the pseudomemories in substantial detail. These findings shed light on casees in which false memories are fervently held- as in when people remember things that are biologically or geographically impossible. The findings do not, however, give us the ability to reliably distinguish between real and false memories, ofr without independent corroboration, such distinctions are generally not possible."
http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Papers/Py104/loftus.mem.html
http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Papers/Py104/loftus.mem.html