(Search & Sitemap)
> Writing >
An Abstract Art of Memory
Previous
1
2
3
4
5
Next
Printer-Friendly Version
The below passages refer to pp. 68-70:
Kant's arguments that space is an a priori concept can be framed as showing that there exists a chicken-and-egg or bootstrapping gap between them and sense data.
What is a chicken-and-egg/bootstrapping gap? In assisting with English as a Second Language instruction, I was faced with a difficulty in explanation. Assuming certain background, it is possible for a person not to know something while there is a straightforward way of explaining--perhaps a very long way of explaining, but it's obvious enough how to explain it in terms of communicable concepts. Then there is the case where there is no direct way to explain something: one example is how to explain to a small child what air is. One can point to water, wood, metal, stone, food, and a great many other things, but the same procedure may not yield understanding of air. It may be possible with a Zen-like cleverness to circumvent it--in saying, for example, that air is what presses on your skin on a windy day--but it is not as straightforward as even an involved and difficult explanation where you know how to use the other person's concepts to build the one you want.
In English as a Second Language instruction, this kind of gap is a significant phenomenon in dealing with students who have no beginning English knowledge, and in dealing with concepts that cannot obviously be demonstrated: 'sister' and 'woman', when both terms refer to an adult, differ in a way that is almost certainly understood in the student's native tongue but is nonetheless extremely difficult to explain. When I first made the musing, I envisioned a Zen-like solution. Koans immortalize incidents in which Zen masters bypassed chicken-and-egg gaps in trying to convey enlightenment that cannot be straightforwardly explained, and therefore show a powerful kind of communication. That is what I envisioned, but it is not how English is taught to speakers of other languages. What happens in ESL classes, and with younger children, is a gradual emergence that is difficult to account for in the terms of analytic philosophy--a straightforward explanation sounds like hand-waving and sloppy thinking--but with enough repetition, material is picked up. It may have something to do with a mechanism of learning outlined in Polanyi's Personal Knowledge, which talks about how i.e. swimmers learn from coaches to inhale more air and exhale less completely so that their lungs act more as a flotation device than a non-swimmers, even though neither swimmer nor coach is likely aware of what is going on on any conscious level. People pick things up through at least one route besides grasping a concept consciously synthesized from sense data.
Kant's proof that a given concept is a priori essentially consists of argument that the concept that cannot be synthesized from sense data through the obvious means of central route processing. He is probably right in that the concepts he classifies as a priori, and presumably others as well, cannot just be synthesized from sense data through central route processing. It does not follow that a concept must be a priori: there are other possibilities besides the route Kant investigates that one can acquire a belief. I do believe, though, that we come with some kind of innate or a priori knowledge: the difficulties experienced in visualizing four dimensional objects suggest that our dealing with three-dimensional space is not simply the result of a completely amorphous central nervous system which we happen to condition to deal with three dimensions; there is something of substance, comparable in character to a psychologist's broader understanding of memory, that we are born to. An investigation of that would take me too far afield.
P. 87. "Now a thing in itself cannot be known throu[g]h mere relations; and we may therefore conclude that since outer science gives us nothing but mere relations, this sense can contain in its representation only the relation of an object to the subject, and not the inner properties of the object in itself."
There is a near-compatibility between this and realist philosophy of science. How?
Recall my observation about chicken-and-egg gaps and how they may be surmounted (here I think of Zenlike short-circuiting of the gap rather than the vaguely indicated gradual emergence of concepts which haven't been subject to a detailed and understood explanation). What goes on in a physics experiment? The truly famous ones since 1900--I think of the Millikin oil-drop experiment--include a very clever hack that tricks nature into revealing herself. People, not even experimental physicists, can grab a handful of household items and prove that electric charge is quantized.[22] Perhaps that was possible in Galileo's day, but a groundbreaking experiment involves a brilliant, clever, unexpected trickery of nature that is isomorphic to a Zen short-circuiting in a chicken-and-egg gap, or a clever hack, and so on and so forth. Even a routine classroom experiment uses technology that is the fruit of this kind of resourcefulness. People do something they "shouldn't" be able to do. This is possibly how we might learn intuitions Kant classifies as a priori, and how experimental scientists cleverly circumvent the roadblock Kant describes here. It might be said that understanding this basic problem is prerequisite to a good realist philosophy of science.
'Hack', in this context, refers to the programming cleverness described in Programming Pearls[23]. I analyzed that fundamental mode of problem solving and compared it with its counterpart in "Of Technology, Magic, and Channels"[24]. There are other observations and interactions with the text, but I believe these should adequately make the point.
I chose Kant because of his reputation as an impenetrable analytic philosopher. With the aid of a good translation and these principles, I was at times surprised at how easy it was to read. By the end of the week, I had another surprise when I decided to reread George MacDonald's Phantastes[25], a work which I have greatly enjoyed. This time, my experience was different. I felt my mind working differently despite a high degree of mental fatigue. The evocative metaphor fell dead, and I found myself reading the text as I would read Kant, thinking in a manner deeply influenced by reading Kant, and in the end setting it down because my mind had shifted deeply into a mode quite different from what allows me to enjoy Phantastes. I was surprised at how deeply using abstract memory to read Kant had affected not only conscious recall of ideas but also ways of thought itself.
I do not consider my recorded observations to be in any sense a rigorous experiment, but I believe the experience suggests it's interesting enough to be worth a good experiment.
Here are twelve proposed principles, or rules of thumb, of abstract memory:
Be wholly present. Want to know the material. Make it emotionally relevant and connected to something that concerns you. Don't take notes[26].
Encode material in multiple ways. Some different ways to encode are: analogies to different abstractions, list distinctions from similar abstractions, paraphrase, search for isomorphisms, use the concepts, and create visual symbols.[27]
At least in the beginning, mix a little bit of reading material with a lot of processing. Don't plough through anything you want to remember. Work on drawing a lot of mist in, not pounding with heavy drops that will create a beaten shield.
Don't read out of a desire to finish reading a text. Read to draw the materials through processed thought.
Process in a way that is striking, stunning, novel, and counter-intuitive: in a word, memorable.
Process material on as deep a level as you can.[28]
Search for subtle distinctions between a concept under study and its near neighbors.
Converse, interact with, and respond to the abstractions. What would you say if an acquaintance said that in a discussion? What questions would you ask? Write it down.
Know how much mental energy you have, and choose battles wisely. Given a limited amount of energy, it is better to fully remember a smaller number of critical abstractions than to have diffuse knowledge of many random ideas.
Guard your emotions. Be aware of what emotional states you learn well in, and put being in those states before passing your eyes over such-and-such many pages of reading material.
Review material after study, seeking to find a different way of putting it.
Metacogitate. Be your own coach.
Committing these principles to memory is left as an exercise to the reader.
What can I say to conclude this monograph? I can think of one or two brief addenda, such as the programmer's virtue of laziness[29], but in a very real sense I can't conclude now. I can sketch out a couple of critiques that may be of interest. Jerry Mander[30] critiques the artificial unusuality of television and especially advertising, in a way that has direct bearing on traditional mnemotechnics. He suggests that giving otherwise uninteresting sensation a strained and artificial unusuality has undesirable impact on how people perceive life as seen outside of TV, and the angle of his critique is the main reason why I was hesitant to learn artificial memory. There may be room for similar critiques about why making ridiculous comparisons to remember ideas creates a bad habit for someone who wishes to think rigorously. There is also the cognitive critique that the search for isomorphisms will introduce unnoted distortion. One thinks of the person who says, "All the religions in the world say the same thing." There is a common and problematic tendency to be astute in perceiving substantial similarities among world religions and all but blind in perceiving even more substantial differences. That is why I suggest comparing with multiple and different familiar concepts, rather than one. I could give other thoughts about critiques, but I'm trying to explain an art of memory, not especially to defend it.My intention here is not to settle all questions, but open the biggest one and suggest a direction of inquiry by which an emerging investigation may find a more powerful way to learn abstractions.[31]
(Search & Sitemap)
> Writing >
An Abstract Art of Memory
Previous
1
2
3
4
5
Next
Printer-Friendly Version