What Is Memory that It May Have Hindsight and Foresight as well? - Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition - page 101

3 What Is Memory that It May Have
Hindsight and Foresight as well?*
HEINZ vON FOERSTER
“What is Time?” According to Legend, Augustine's reply to this question
was: “If no one asks me, I know: but if I wish to explain it to one that asketh,
I know not.” Memory has a similar quality, for if not asked, we all know what
memory is, but when asked, we have to call for an International Conference
on the Future of Brain Sciences. However, with a minimal change of the ques-
tion, we could have made it much easier for Augustine. If asked “What's the
time?” he may have observed the position of the sun and replied: “Since it
grazes the horizon in the west, it is about the sixth hour after noon.”
A theory of memory that is worth its name must not only be able to
account for Augustine's or anybody else's intelligent conduct in response
to these questions, moreover, it also must be able to account for the recog-
nition of the subtle but fundamental difference in meaning of the two ques-
tions regarding time or memory of before, a distinction that is achieved
by merely inserting a syntactic “operator”—the definite article “the”—at a
strategic point in the otherwise unchanged string of symbols. At first glance
it seems that to aim at a theory of memory which accounts for such
subtle distinctions is overambitious and preposterous. On second thought,
however, we shall see that models of mentation that ignore such aims and
merely account for a hypothetical mapping of sensations into indelible
representations on higher levels within the neural fabric of the brain or—
slightly less naively—account for habituation, adaptation and conditioning
by replacing “indelibility” by “plasticity”, do not only fall pitiably short of
explaining anything that may go on at the semantic level or, to put it dif-
ferently, that is associated with “information” in the dictionary sense, i.e.,
“ knowledge acquired in any manner”, 1 but also appear to inhibit the
development of notions that will eventually account for these so-called
“higher functions” of cerebral activity.