Memory, reality and the value of the past

dc.contributor.author Mitias, Lara M.
dc.date.accessioned 2011-07-22T00:10:39Z
dc.date.available 2011-07-22T00:10:39Z
dc.date.issued 2008
dc.description Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2008.
dc.description As fascinating neuroscientific studies tempt us to take our remembered past as spread out in the brain---a view Henri Bergson had meticulously argued against, hard questions about felt duration, and the role of memory in perception of time and space, remain.
dc.description Complex argumentation from Classical Indian, Western analytic and Continental philosophical original sources lead this work to a surprising tilt towards a realist panpsychist ontology of the immaterial but objective past. Genuinely tensed "prior" times, transcending actual individual minds, is seen to be embedded in impersonal Consciousness, as Abhinavagupta and Bergson had both concluded. Is this what young Wittgenstein was remembering when he wrote: "Only remember that the spirit of the snake, of the lion, is your spirit....the same with the elephant, the fly, the wasp" (Notebooks-1914-1916, p 85e)?
dc.description From such ontological complexities we are led, in the third part, to axiological questions of moral, aesthetic and spiritual evaluation of the past to which we belong.
dc.description Memory is philosophically puzzling. It is prone to errors of undetectable deletion and embellishment, and seems too derivative to deserve the status of knowledge. Yet it is the enabling condition for other means of knowing like perceiving, inferring, and testimony. In the first part of this work we show that correct memory is an independent means of knowing the past, directly and non-representationally. Not only does it generate and regenerate knowledge, but it also makes us who and what we are.
dc.description What and where is the past that we happen to recall or forget? Can we call it real without reducing it to the present? Is the past simply what is made of it at present? Could it be permanent yet changeable? These difficult ontological issues are explored in the second part. Since we are directly acquainted with the past which remains 'back there/then' inside what stands 'out here' now), the past cannot be something extended in an inaccessibly remote space-time. Our epistemically accessible past must stay open to the revisions and transformations by our present and future actions adding to its value. This value-added past is nothing but what it could have been.
dc.description Includes bibliographical references (leaves xxx-xxx).
dc.description Also available by subscription via World Wide Web
dc.description 479 leaves, bound 29 cm
dc.identifier.isbn 9780549780830
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10125/20825
dc.language.iso en-US
dc.relation Theses for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (University of Hawaii at Manoa). Philosophy; no. 5112
dc.rights All UHM dissertations and theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission from the copyright owner.
dc.title Memory, reality and the value of the past
dc.type Thesis
dc.type.dcmi Text
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