Philosophy and Memory Traces: Descartes to Connectionism

by John Sutton

Overview

Philosophy and Memory Traces defends two theories of autobiographical memory. One is a bewildering historical view of memories as dynamic patterns in fleeting animal spirits, nervous fluids that rummaged through the pores of brain and body. The other is new connectionism, in which memories are "stored" only superpositionally, and reconstructed rather than reproduced. John Sutton juxtaposes historical and contemporary debates to show that psychology can attend to culture, complexity, self, and history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521039376
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	08/16/2007
Pages:	392
Product dimensions:	6.02(w) x 8.98(h) x 0.87(d)

Table of Contents

List of figures; Preface; List of abbreviations; 1. Introduction: traces, brains and history; Part I. Animal Spirits and Memory Traces: Introduction; 2. Wriggle-work: the quick and nimble animal spirits; 3. Memory and 'the Cartesian philosophy of the brain'; Part II. Inner Discipline: Introduction; 4. Spirit sciences, memory motions; 5. Cognition, chaos and control in English responses to Descartes' theory of memory; 6. Local and distributed representations; 7. John Locke and the neurophilosophy of self; 8. The puzzle of survival; 9. Spirits, body and self; 10. The puzzle of elimination; Part III. 'The Phantasmal Chaos of Association': Introduction; 11. Fodor, connectionism and cognitive discipline; 12. Associationism and neo-associationism; 13. Hartley's distributed model of memory; 14. Attacks on neurophilosophy: Reid and Coleridge; Part IV. Connectionism and the Philosophy of Memory: Introduction; 15. Representations, realism and history; 16. Attacks on traces; 17. Order, confusion, remembering; References; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"This is a somewhat unusual book. [Sutton's] discussion of historical materials is for the most part judicious and sensitive to context...this book does suggest a range of avenues for further research: the discussion of John Locke's theory of personal identity is especially stimulating." Bull. Hist. Med.

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