Elsevier

Consciousness and Cognition

Volume 21, Issue 3, September 2012, Pages 1154-1165
Consciousness and Cognition

Is external memory memory? Biological memory and extended mind☆

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2012.04.008Get rights and content

Abstract

Clark and Chalmers (1998) claim that an external resource satisfying the following criteria counts as a memory: (1) the agent has constant access to the resource; (2) the information in the resource is directly available; (3) retrieved information is automatically endorsed; (4) information is stored as a consequence of past endorsement. Research on forgetting and metamemory shows that most of these criteria are not satisfied by biological memory, so they are inadequate. More psychologically realistic criteria generate a similar classification of standard putative external memories, but the criteria still do not capture the function of memory. An adequate account of memory function, compatible with its evolution and its roles in prospection and imagination, suggests that external memory performs a function not performed by biological memory systems. External memory is thus not memory. This has implications for: extended mind theorizing, ecological validity of memory research, the causal theory of memory.

Highlights

► Clark and Chalmers’ criteria for memory are not satisfied by biological memory. ► A more psychologically realistic account of memory function is needed. ► A more realistic account implies that external memory is not a type of memory. ► Implications for memory research in philosophy, psychology, cognitive science.

Section snippets

Clark and Chalmers’ criteria for memory

The core case discussed by Clark and Chalmers in their original argument for the extended mind hypothesis is that of Otto, a fictional Alzheimer’s patient:

Otto suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, and like many Alzheimer’s patients, he relies on information in the environment to help structure his life. Otto caries a notebook around with him everywhere he goes. When he learns new information, he writes it down. When he needs some old information, he looks it up. For Otto, his notebook plays the

The function of memory

Given that the simple picture is adequate with respect to typical putative external memories, and given the deep differences between it and the more realistic picture, it should be suspected that external memory performs a function very different from that of biological memory. Any discussion of the function of memory will inevitably be somewhat speculative, since explicit discussions of the function of memory are rare in psychology (as Boyer points out (Boyer, 2009)). But the standard view in

Conclusions

We can thus conclude that biological memory and external memory (not all possible external memories, but existing external memories) have different functions.16 If so, then by the standard employed by extended mind

References (89)

  • William A. Roberts et al.

    The comparative study of mental time travel

    Trends in Cognitive Sciences

    (2009)
  • T. Suddendorf

    Mental time travel in animals?

    Trends in Cognitive Sciences

    (2003)
  • Marie Vandekerckhove et al.

    The flow of anoetic to noetic and autonoetic consciousness: A vision of unknowing (anoetic) and knowing (noetic) consciousness in the remembrance of things past and imagined futures

    Consciousness and Cognition

    (2009)
  • Gottfried Vosgerau

    Memory and content?

    Consciousness and Cognition

    (2010)
  • Miranka Wirth et al.

    Semantic memory involvement in the default mode network: A functional neuroimaging study using independent component analysis

    NeuroImage

    (2011)
  • Fred Adams et al.

    The bounds of cognition

    Philosophical Psychology

    (2001)
  • F. Adams et al.

    The bounds of cognition

    (2010)
  • J.R. Anderson

    The adaptive character of thought

    (1990)
  • J.R. Anderson

    Is human cognition adaptive?

    Behavioral and Brain Sciences

    (1991)
  • J.R. Anderson et al.

    The adaptive nature of memory

  • Santiago Arango-Muñoz

    Two levels of metacognition

    Philosophia

    (2011)
  • S. Bernecker

    The metaphysics of memory

    (2008)
  • S. Bernecker

    Memory: A philosophical study

    (2010)
  • Bjork, R. A. (1989). Retrieval inhibition as an adaptive mechanism in human memory. In H. L. Roediger & F. I. M. Craik...
  • E.L. Bjork et al.

    On the adaptive aspects of retrieval failure in autobiographical memory

  • P. Boyer

    What are memories for? functions of recall in cognition and culture

  • Tyler Burge

    Content preservation

    The Philosophical Review

    (1993)
  • C. Cherniak

    Minimal rationality

    (1986)
  • Clark, A. (2008). Supersizing the mind. Oxford...
  • A. Clark

    Memento’s revenge: The extended mind, extended

  • N.S. Clayton et al.

    Elements of episodiclike memory in animals

    Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences

    (2001)
  • Andy Clark et al.

    The extended mind

    Analysis

    (1998)
  • Fergus I. Craik

    Levels of processing: Past, present … and future?

    Memory

    (2002)
  • J. DEESE

    On the prediction of occurrence of particular verbal intrusions in immediate recall

    Journal of Experimental Psychology

    (1959)
  • M. Donald

    Origins of the modern mind

    (1991)
  • Yadin Dudai

    The neurobiology of consolidations, or, how stable is the engram?

    Annual Review of Psychology

    (2004)
  • J. Dunlosky et al.

    Metacognition

    (2008)
  • David A. Gallo

    False memories and fantastic beliefs: 15 years of the DRM illusion

    Memory & Cognition

    (2010)
  • Stephen J. Gould et al.

    Exaptation – A missing term in the science of form

    Paleobiology

    (1982)
  • G. Harman

    Change in view

    (1986)
  • Demis Hassabis et al.

    The construction system of the brain

    Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

    (2009)
  • Ralph Hertwig et al.

    Fluency heuristic: A model of how the mind exploits a by-product of information retrieval

    Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, memory, and cognition

    (2008)
  • Stanley B. Klein et al.

    Decisions and the evolution of memory: Multiple systems, multiple functions

    Psychological Review

    (2002)

    • Cited by (0)

    ☆

    Thanks for comments and discussion to Santiago Arango Muñoz, Marco Fenici, Markus Kneer, Joëlle Proust, Lucas Thorpe, John Sutton, Bill Wringe, an anonymous reviewer, and audiences at the 2011 International Conference on Memory (University of York) and a workshop at Bogˇaziçi Üniversitesi.

    View full text
    Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.