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nisms that implement entirely different functions which may or may not
have any semblance to some processes that are subservient to the mainte-
nance of the integrity of the organism as a functioning unit (Maturana,
1969).
Consider the two conceivable definitions for memory:
(a) An organism's potential awareness of past experiences.
(b) An observed change of an organism's response to like sequences of
events.
While definition A postulates a faculty (memory
A
) in an organism whose
inner experience cannot be shared by an outside observer, definition B pos-
tulates the same faculty (memory
A
) to be operative in the observer only—
otherwise he could not have developed the concept of “change”—but
ignores this faculty in the organism under observation, for an observer
cannot “in principle” share the organism's inner experience. From this
follows definition B.
It is definition B which is generally believed to be the one which obeys
the ground rules of “the scientific method,” as if it were impossible to cope
scientifically with self-reference, self-description, and self-explanation, i.e.,
closed logical systems that include the referee in the reference, the descrip-
tor in the description, and the axioms in the explanation.
This belief is unfounded. Not only are such logical systems extensively
studied (e.g., Gunther, 1967; Löfgren, 1968), but also neurophysiologists
(Maturana
et al
., 1968), experimental psychologists (Konorski, 1962), and
others (Pask, 1968; Von Foerster, 1969) have penetrated to such notions.
These preliminaries suggest that the explorer of mechanisms of menta-
tion has to resolve two kinds of problems, only one of which belongs to
physiology or, as it were, to physics; the other one is that of semantics. Con-
sequently, it is proposed to reexamine some present notions of learning and
memory as to the category to which they belong, and to sketch a concep-
tual framework in which these notions may find their proper place.
The next section, “Theory,” reviews and defines concepts associated with
learning and memory in the framework of a unifying mathematical for-
malism. In the Section III various models of interaction of molecules with
functional units of higher organization are discussed.
II. Theory
A. General Remarks
Since we have as yet no comprehensive theory of behavior, we have no
theory of learning and, consequently, no theory of memory. Nevertheless,
there exists today a whole spectrum of conceptual frameworks ranging from
the most naive interpretations of learning to the most sophisticated
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