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Tuesday 12 December 2017

Memory blanks

The other day Mrs H and I were discussing our early reading experiences because Granddaughter is learning to read. Our first introduction to reading in the fifties was the Janet and John series of books which we both remember reading. We also remember the different coloured book covers indicating different reading standards.

What we do not remember is being unable to read. We cannot recall what it was like to gaze at those black marks on the page and not understand their significance. We cannot remember knowing nothing at all about Janet and John and their thrilling world of cats and mats.

One might ascribe this memory blank to the patchy nature of early memories but it may be an example of something far more interesting. Daniel Kahneman says we cannot easily reconstruct past states of knowledge or beliefs that have changed. When there is such a change we immediately lose much of our ability to recall our state of mind before the change. That would include our ability to read – we cannot easily reconstruct a state of mind where we did not have that ability.

To take a related but more obvious example than early reading, I cannot remember my state of mind when I did not know what occurs when a solution of sodium hydroxide is added to a solution of copper sulphate. Yet there certainly was a time when I didn’t know it. I can imagine not knowing it and associate that lack of knowledge with the right time period, but I can’t recall it as an absence of knowledge. Hardly surprising of course - we can't easily reconstruct our own ignorance. For one thing there is too much of it.

Another example is trying to remember what I thought about the surface of Pluto before we found out via those photos from NASA's New Horizons mission. I think I remember not knowing what the surface of Pluto looks like, but as with the copper sulphate example this is merely an absence - there is no particular state of mind to remember as nobody knew what the surface of Pluto looked like anyway. It is the state of not knowing something now known which is so elusive. Presumably it is more efficient that way -  move on and forget. There is no point remembering ignorance. 

Pushing this a little wider, we cannot easily construct a state of knowing something we have no wish to know such as a celebrity career or the latest reality show drama or accusations of ancient sexual misconduct. What is it like to know and value these things? We cannot easily construct the state of mind of someone who is interested and affected by them. We easily lose sympathy with people who have knowledge and opinions we have no wish to share.

How about reconstructing a state of mind before we changed an opinion, belief or assumption? To my mind Monty Python comedy has not worn well although a few sketches I still find amusing. Over the years I have changed, the sketches have not, but do I remember my state of mind when I thought it was all hilarious? I certainly remember thinking it was all hilarious, but I am not able to reconstruct the associated state of mind. I have no real access to that earlier state of mind where Monty Python was almost uniformly hilarious.

Suppose someone ‘knows’ that capitalism is evil. Such a person cannot easily reconstruct a earlier state of mind where he or she did not know that capitalism is evil. It probably follows that the same person cannot easily conceive a state of not knowing such a thing. Especially puzzling is someone who claims to favour capitalism. How does that happen?

The fallback position here is to imagine that the person who fails to ‘know’ that capitalism is evil must be duplicitous in some way. They must be pretending not to know what is surely impossible not to know. Therefore they must be bad.

And so to politics.

6 comments:

Sam Vega said...

Pushing this a little wider, we cannot easily construct a state of knowing something we have no wish to know such as a celebrity career or the latest reality show drama or accusations of ancient sexual misconduct. What is it like to know and value these things?

Equally, we cannot easily reconstruct a state of un-knowing, especially as regards accusations. Can we ever re-think (say) Rolf Harris as a decent bloke? Can people now read about storms or cold snaps without thinking about global warming? Can a black criminal ever get shot without the presumption of police assassination being aired? The narrative, even if partially disseminated, permeates everything and subtly colours it.

Demetrius said...

I put this comment on another site a few minutes ago. Modern capitalism does not work because it is not capitalism. Great grandma’s distant cousin, who was landlord of Karl Marx in the 1850’s, never quite got it through to this Prussian that Engel’s statistics were on the dodgy side, as the inspection of census returns a century later suggests. Our trouble has been sloppy political philosophers, there have been a lot of them, to take words in use to describe systems going through radical change and failing to come up with a concise term that would be rather more accurate.

James Higham said...

Especially puzzling is someone who claims to favour capitalism. How does that happen?

They grow up?

A K Haart said...

Sam - spot on. Kahneman calls it the availability cascade - our immediate impressions are strongly or even wholly influenced by what is available in the public domain.

Demetrius - I agree and we may as well admit that capitalism has become a term of abuse. The distortion of language makes worthwhile analysis far more difficult than it should be.

James - they do grow up, but those who don't cannot envisage what it is to grow up.

Clacket said...

Interesting, as ever. Memory, individual memory particularly or its rougher cousin, family and folk memory, is a tantalising subject.

Your inability to imagine a time when you couldn’t imagine what you imagine as commonplace says maybe more about the deficiencies of your memory. Maybe it is a function of getting older, better at some things than others. More straightened and effective, but less flexible, imaginative and less hopelessly but dangerously open.

I can still remember being in a pram (I think, might have been my younger brother). Just to forestall, not talking about some gruesome saddo latter day wackiness! Can definitely remember crapping myself in baby class at four or five years old and being taken home on the bus by my ashamed elder brother and getting a right, arguably deserved, thumping thereafter (we got over it years later, after I’d set the swine up quite awfully in return; another story).

I remember changing my mind. I remember to my shame haranguing my ‘bourgeois’ Dad (not that he was either too distressed or impressed by his ‘clever’ son) with half baked ‘economic’ bollocks stolen from some fashionable mendacious shyster, all the while helping myself as of right to extra dollops of stuff he had paid for and lovingly provided. Part of the reason I despise teenagers and the cynical culture pandering to the gormless idiots. I changed my mind as a result of experience in what we used to call darkest Africa, and various hellholes (or mini-pots of joy) in the middle and far east and south and central America. I came to love (too strong a word) science and particularly gravity. I sort of grew up. Did, in fact. Dafter people than I call this wisdom, but that’s only because they are fundamentally daft, distracted, confused and desperate for guidance.

It’s kind of embarrassing remembering how conventionally daft one was. But then you get over it, and realise how many daunting legions of fools follow on.

Capitalism, like gravity, is, of course, great and creative, if (like life) cruel. The alternative is eating next year’s seed-corn. We really can’t actually face the truth, though. Which is where the dismal art of politics, climbing the greasy pole and pulling up the ladder comes in.

...And Rising Damp or Bilko were/still are way funnier than erstwhile chuckle-worthy Monty Python. That’s an actual proven incontrovertibly true scientific indisputable historical fact, by the way!

Not at all sure I answered or even addressed your question, though, so sorry for that…

A K Haart said...

Clacket - interesting story - you must have a book in you somewhere about darkest Africa and those assorted hellholes. Whether you could get the flavour of it across to a modern readership I'm not sure.

I never actually harangued my ‘bourgeois’ Dad, but I came close at times. Just as well I suppose, because we always got on well right to the end.

I agree about Rising Damp and Bilko although I haven't watched Bilko for years. Rising Damp shows its era but is still watchable.