The determinable indeterminacy of our past
Daniel Gyollai (University of Copenhagen)
A few months ago, my sister surprised me with a gift. Unwrapping the box, I first spotted a tiny toy train which made me think it was a keychain from their merch shop: she works for National Rail. When it was freed from the packaging, I realised it was only the train on its own made of rubber with no chain or ring attached to it. Then I thought she must have been hit by some sort of nostalgia about those train-shaped erasers we used to have as kids at school (no, our parents did not work for National Rail). So, I asked her awkwardly: “What is it? An eraser?” Then she grabbed it from my hand and pulled it apart to reveal its secret. “No”, she said, “it’s a memory stick, you muppet.”
Consider how my experience developed step by step as more and more details were disclosed, all serving as a new clue. In fact, I could have ‘investigated’ further and asked what type of train it was, if I collected them, or about the storage capacity, were I to use it as a memory stick. I am not a collector and always end up forgetting memory sticks in conference rooms, so the train joined some other souvenirs on the mantelpiece in the living room.
What would a guest make of it without knowing this whole background story?
Phenomenologists have pointed out that what is intended is always more than what is directly given in perception: objects appear as something meaningful, rather than as a scattered mass of information. In very broad terms, Husserl argued that meaning is constituted in a “motivational” or “practical attitude”: it depends on how the object is useful or otherwise relevant for me (1989, pp. 197-199).
Everything carries a horizon of associated meanings based on our contextually relevant past experiences. Such pregiven, sedimented meanings automatically (passively) prefigure the way in which we make sense of things in the form of anticipations. This associative “blending” or “fusion” necessarily entails a risk of error because there is always room for different but equally plausible possibilities (Husserl, 1973, pp. 72-76; 2001, pp. 39-47).
Depending on how the situation progresses and how one navigates the horizon, an anticipation may only be fulfilled provisionally, like the keychain and eraser in my case. Every experience is ultimately a determinable x, and every fulfilment opens up new horizons of possibilities (what kind of train it is, what make it is, storage capacity, etc.)
Now, suppose that my sister did not say a word and let me figure out the ‘true nature’ of her gift myself, the first time I attempt to use my brand new eraser.
It feels natural that the revelation would also update my original attitude towards the object in recall, no matter how convinced I was at the time. Another example of this form of attitudinal modification is how couples, after an acrimonious separation with their feelings changing, tend to remember ‘red flags’ in their relationship which they would not otherwise have remembered as such, if at all.
Isn’t it fascinating, in a way, that learning something in the present, our horizon expanding, we feel ‘enlightened’, and when the same knowledge is applied retrospectively, we tend to feel ‘delusional’ or even ‘paranoid’?
We can see similar effects also in collective memory. As a collective, we feel perfectly comfortable reinterpreting our entire history upon new discoveries, or even simply when it suits us based on a change of interest. Conversely, memory changes that occur when remembering with others and sharing perspectives on the past is viewed, more often than not, to be the result of negative influences, if not ‘contamination’.
If we acknowledge that perception is no less constructive than episodic memory, the latter may no longer appear so frustrating, and the errors associated with it become less of a mystery.
As we all mix things up sometimes, so could my sister ask next Christmas: “Have you still got the memory stick I gave you last year?” Me: “Sure, I do but you gave it for my birthday.” She: “Yeah, whatever, just asking because I remember you saying that you always lose them”. Then our brother could chip in, laughing: “No, it was me and you still haven’t got me one”.
Would that be my sister’s imagination tricking her? Husserl would disagree. According to him, when revisiting a memory, it is intended in an “empty manner”; the content of memories undergo a new process of determination, whereby the associative fusion of the anticipatory phase might mingle similar horizonal material from different past episodes (Husserl, 2001, pp. 249-251, 461).
Because the content of memories cannot be touched or walked around, nor can such fulfilments be as easily frustrated as my perception of the keychain. Further, the more time passes since the original experience and the older we get, the more populated the horizon of the object becomes with more possibilities available for interpretation. Multiple relevant memories compete for fulfilment, whereby some come to “repress” others.
The way in which Husserl uses the term “repression” is different from how it has been understood by psychoanalysts. For him, a memory that represses another has a stronger “affective force” in the given present context, which “motivates” us to prioritise certain possibilities over others (Husserl, 2001, pp. 90-91, 248-250).
In fact, just as I recognise something as something, so can the situation, person, object, etc. that reminds me of an episode merge with it in my memory. In both cases, the past is selectively filtered from the vantage point of the present with my current motivations and interests at play: the affective associative fusion may not only blend similar elements of different past events, but the past may also get confused with the present.
Consider how often we remember doing things with our current partner which turns out to be something we did with our ex, but never the other way around.
Is that some sort of embarrassment, something we should worry about? Or, on the contrary, does that happen because as soon as we move on to another relationship, the memory of our ex becomes less relevant?
Although Husserl is not specific about it, as Eldridge (2021) notes, this process is not only operational during the constitution of false memories but also true ones. If I try to remember my sister’s gift on the mantelpiece now while I am writing this blog post in my study, I cannot be one hundred percent sure that the memory representation of it would originate from this morning, when I was still sipping my coffee in the living room, or from two weeks ago when I was having the same coffee from the same cup. Analogously, if I try to recall the day when I placed it on the mantelpiece, the memory that comes to me may be naturally pieced together from later encounters.
Would that be some sort of ‘veridical confabulation’ (Michaelian 2016)? Considering that the original experience was already constituted (and always is) based on various memories, most phenomenologists would probably disagree. In fact, from a phenomenological perspective, there is no need to bring imagination, simulation, or even counterfactuals into the equation; the constructive nature of memory and most forms of everyday misremembering can be accounted for by the very structure of perceptual consciousness.
