Memory
One view of the Self, following from John Locke, sees it as a product of episodic memory. It has been suggested that transitory mental constructions within episodic memory form a self-memory system that grounds the goals of the working self, but research upon those with amnesia find they have a coherent sense of self based upon preserved conceptual autobiographical knowledge, and semantic facts, and so conceptual knowledge rather than episodic memory.
Both episodic and semantic memory systems have been proposed to generate a sense of self-identity: personal episodic memory enables the phenomenological continuity of identity, while personal semantic memory generates the narrative continuity of identity. "The nature of personal narratives depends on highly conceptual and ‘story-like’ information about one’s life, which resides at the general event level of autobiographical memory and is thus unlikely to rely on more event-specific episodic systems."
Read more about this topic: Psychology Of Self
Famous quotes containing the word memory:
“Within the memory of many of my townsmen the road near which my house stands resounded with the laugh and gossip of inhabitants, and the woods which border it were notched and dotted here and there with their little gardens and dwellings, though it was then much more shut in by the forest than now.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it. The memory of some past moments is more persuasive than the experience of present ones. There have been visions of such breadth and brightness that these motes were invisible in their light.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)