Wednesday 27 February 2013

What we experience versus what we remember …. The two ‘Selfs’


I have Blogged often on reflection, but one aspect continually intrigued me … the relationship between the experiences we have, and the account or story we construct that explains the experience. This is a question about the ‘memory’ that we hold of the experience that then informs our choices and understanding of the world.

We ‘know’ that we have experiences, and we are pretty sure that we process and use those experiences to learn about the world. For example, early in our lives, we learn what is hot and therefore dangerous, and later, more sophisticated self-constructed understanding of more complex knowledge.

But how does experience relate to the memory we construct through the process of reflection?

Nobel laureate and founder of behavioural economics Daniel Kahneman tackles this question in The Riddle of Experience versus Memory.



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3 comments:

  1. Alison Dos Santos1 March 2013 at 15:27

    If a group of people are asked to comment on a set of circumstances, as many variations as there are witnesses can often be recorded. In reflection, it is often possible ourselves to view our own experiences from several perspectives. As experiences amass over time, we surely gain more clarity of our own particular stance and become aware of where we need to change or adapt our view point to suit our environment. Do not most creatures adapt to ensure their most likely path to survival physically, mentally or emotionally? In other words, does it really matter if our perceptions are not strictly speaking the 'actual truth', whatever that may be, so long as they positively support our continued existence? I suppose that all sounds a bit Darwinian!

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  2. Unknown3 March 2013 at 04:46

    Hi Alan,

    Last night I went to see the Pinter play Old Times, which contains the lines,

    "There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened. There are things I remember which may never have happened but as I recall them so they take place."

    I often find myself wondering if the memory I have is of something I have experienced or whether it was part of a dream I once had or a subconscious intergrating of someone else's story...

    There are pictures I have in my mind that I can talk about as events in my life, but I know that several of them are nothing more than photographs I have seen.
    For example, there is a picture in a family album of my grandfather and my dog, taken in the 1970's. It was quite a shock when I saw the picture again a few years ago and realised that what I thought I had remembered I had actually fabricated - a constructed 'memory' from the image in the picture and remembrances of other times spent with them both - a sort of composite memory (part fact, part fiction)...

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  3. Alan/MDX15 March 2013 at 13:10

    Thanks Alison, thanks Sarah.

    Yes Alison, I think that is part of what Kahneman means ... that we construct memories from experiences in order to guide actions and choices. His precise point exactly matches yours, and Sarah's point. That what actually happens and is experienced is lost. It is the memory that survives which may vary from the actual experience but that is necessary to enable us to model workable solutions to our environment.

    Thanks for your comments ... it is such a fascinating area, and has such important implications for learning across all fields.

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