Memory

Sometimes I loose my PIN, but always when I’m standing before the cash machine, I remember it. This code not only exists in digits in my memory, but in the movements of typing as well. I can memorize how I have to move my fingers and if I do so I feel: yes, that’s correct!

If I know how to move my fingers, from this I can deduct what my PIN is. En vice versa: if I know my PIN, I type it and then I experience how I have to move my fingers, as I did when I first had to type in a new code. The information, PIN, is retrievable from my memory in more than one way: visual or motoric. But how is the PIN represented in my head? Visual? Then I can deduct the movements. But if I forgot the visual code, then my motoric memory still is available. And even more memories are possible. I could explain to you my PIN is built up by the keys: left up, right up, right down, left down. Exactly forming a square. This is easier to memorize than  1 3 9 7.

Apparently there is a multiple representation of the code. There is a visual representation stored in memory, a motoric representation and perhaps others as well. The action that retrieves the PIN from the memory can do with one representation, but can also use more than one.

This shows that the representation of the outer world is formed by the actions needed to get out this information. Thus the information in memory is part of this action. See for instance the motoric memory. Actions we often have performed we can perform again, which shows we remember them in a motoric way. Not a verbal way. Ask a soccer player how he manages to keep the ball up and you get a very uncomplete answer. However the motoric memory does form a representation of the outer world, as we saw in the PIN example.

Memory cannot be seen apart from the process of retrieving data. However we tend to think that way: we imagine memory as being a bin, and a skill to read it. Like a computer: if my hard disk has been broken, I cannot read the memory anymore, but unmistakably the information still is there and can be read by a specialist. Or like a book: if I should turn blind, I cannot read a book anymore, but the information in the book still is there.

Memory would be useless without the actions using the stored information, memory cannot be seen apart from those actions. My conclusion is: those actions are the memory. The memory is not a static file, but the memory consists of stored actions.

Dutch version / Nederlandse versie