Campbell, Sue - Our Faithfulness to the Past: Reconstructing Memory Value

09/07/2007

Philosophical Psychology Vol 19 No 3 June 2006

Author begins by noting the common distinction between memory and imagination, the former being concerned with accuracy or truth. However, author wants to expand what it means to remember properly: not only must memory be faithful but remembering should also get right the significance of the past in relation to the present. Because meaning and significance is often contextual and also brought out and interpreted in social settings, remembering can be affected and perhaps constituted by a 'varied set of human activities' (pg362).

Author gives examples of the intricate functions of auto-biographical memory: a single composite memory formed from repeated similar events, or of using objects or talismans to remember a loss or grief-ridden memory but it changes over time as they come to accept and move past what happened. (pg363-4) The main thesis is that construing memory as solely archival and that accuracy to an original scene is the only important value of memory will miss much of the other important personal aspects of memory (pg365). In particular, author argues for using 'accuracy' as opposed to 'truth' or even 'detail'. Adam Morton in dealing with the possibility of having accurate but not true emotions, argues that accuracy as not reducible to truth (pg366); author takes this line of argument up and applies it to memory, though author argues that detail isn't always preferable (for instance, you can have irrelevant detail, or fail to get the overall themes right). (pg367-8)

With the accuracy of memory as an analog of the accuracy of emotion, author focuses on two issues: how faithful memory can be considered appropriate, rather than straightforwardly true (pg369-70), and how accurate memories can have different significance and different pieces recalled based on present contexts (pg370). Next, author deals with 'integrity' of memory, which she re-frames from being a solely personal characteristic to being a 'personal/social virtue' (pg373). The idea here is that public memory can shape one's own memory, like the public memory of 9/11 versus the personal thoughts and feelings that one might have been having at the time. Thus there is a decision about how and whether to integrate your memories into the public one, changing the public sphere but also perhaps changing your own. (pg374-5) Author's case is that the two virtues in 'reconstructive' memory is not faithfulness and truth, but accuracy and integrity. (pg377)