On January 17, 2022, the coffee workshop of "Human Enhancement + Memory Philosophy" was held in Shanghai Hongliang Creative Space. The workshop was convened and chaired by Yang Qingfeng of Fudan University. This workshop is the first special workshop activity of the National Social Science Foundation's major project "Humanistic Philosophy Research on the Frontiers of Contemporary Emerging Augmentation Technologies", which mainly provides a basis for the philosophy of memory for the discussion of human enhancement. He pointed out that memory enhancement has become an emerging point in the reflection of human enhancement. The examination of memory enhancement can provide a new path for looking at human enhancement and its technology. Clarifying the status of memory enhancement in the overall philosophy of memory can provide a solid theoretical foundation for understanding memory enhancement. Four teachers, including Lai Changsheng and Yan Hongxiu from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Yu Feng from East China Normal University, and Liu Yougu from Shanghai University, shared their research on memory problems from different perspectives.
Shanghai Jiao Tong University Lai Changsheng
Mr. Lai Changsheng, an assistant professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, is entitled "The Threshold Problem for Memory." In his report, he proposed the "threshold problem of memory" and compared it to the "threshold problem of knowledge" that has been hotly discussed in the field of epistemology in recent years. Lai Changsheng believes that the threshold problem of memory is the same as the threshold problem of knowledge, which is of research significance and difficulty of answering, and the former may even be more difficult than the latter, because the most mature solution to the memory threshold problem, that is, Sven Bernecker's "implication thesis", is too harsh on the one hand, and too loose on the other hand. The threshold problem of memory arises from the authenticity of memory. Authenticity requirements: If someone remembers a fact p, then the belief p she generated in recalling it should have a strong enough content similarity to the belief p* when she first put the fact in her mind. There is no requirement here that the content of beliefs in the two moments is completely consistent, after all, human memory often decays and becomes vague and general, and the forgetting of some details does not hinder the memory of the overall facts. But the content of beliefs in the two moments cannot be so different as to be irrelevant. So the question arises naturally: the content similarity between p and p* is not 1 (exactly the same) nor can it be 0 (irrelevant), so where should the threshold of authenticity be drawn? This is the threshold problem of memory, which is extremely isomorphic to the threshold question of how much knowledge can fallibility, and the solution to them will face the dilemma between "saying something" and "avoiding arbitrariness". The report discusses the inadequacies of Bernecker's solution of "sufficient authenticity i.e., p* to imply p", and concludes by proposing the possibility of resolving the threshold problem with mnemic gradualism. During the report, the participating teachers had a heated discussion on the types of memories, the factuality and authenticity of memories, and analytical memories.
Shanghai University Liu Yougu
Associate Professor Yougu Liu from Shanghai University combined Nobel Laureate Okiffe's theory of memory with a critical analysis of the traditional theory of memory causation. He believes that the theory of memory causation in contemporary philosophy is mainly concerned with the propositional memory type, describing memory as a proposition for the subject to remember P, and based on the interpretation of memory traces, the P is established as a real connection with its past empirical events P', in which the causal connection is used to deduce its true basis, that is, P is the real memory of P'. Thus, what traces are and how they are interpreted become the key to this theory. However, when traces are interpreted as dispositional beliefs or subdoxastic states that have nothing to do with the storage or absence of concepts, traces are assigned a memory content in order to acquire their connotations as propositional memories. In this way, causalists construct the physical and social environmental factors associated with the subject on the connotations characterized by this trace, and resort to the symbolic processing process of neural network records, associating P with P', on the one hand, to explain the causal relationship between the object of memory and the neural network record, and on the other hand to explain how past empirical events P' relate to P's causal relationship. The former describes more physical traces of memory, while the latter places more emphasis on cognitive traces of memory. Therefore, in the view of causalists, traces are not a structurally similar concept of P and P', but a distributed concept, which illustrates the phenomenon of storage, reconciliation, reconstruction or mutation formed by P and P' in the process of characterization, and through the action of neural networks, traces are transferred, copied, awakened or extracted, and if a causal reinforcement condition is satisfied, less clear traces will form a seeming memory. If the truth condition of P and P' alignment is met, then the memory of a subject remembering P is established. Obviously, the distributed trace concept becomes a prerequisite for this causal theory, and memory seems to become a causal inference process for memory traces. But in the study of contemporary memory science, based on the explanation provided by british-American neuroscientist John O'Keefe (1939- in The Hippocapus as a Cognitive Map( 1978), he argues that human memory lies in the locale system providing an objective spatial framework to the taxon system. It is the cognitive map structure that makes the memory of categorical systems possible. The memory in the category system is mainly the memory of time and space about unrelated events such as matters and concepts, which is equivalent to propositional memory in this sense. In this way, the cognitive map structure becomes the driving mechanism of the memory process, rather than distributed traces. If memory is understood from a cognitive map, then memory does not become a causal inference process, but an active control process.
Hongxiu Yan, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Professor Yan Hongxiu of Shanghai Jiao Tong University further explored the new dynamics of memory philosophy from the new background of data technology. For memory, current data science and technology can not only retain memories in the form of data storage, but also enable a truly automatic memory behavior. Memory and recording are even to some extent equivalent. Microsoft's My Life Bits project is one example. In addition, data science and technology can also construct the data natural world while recording everything in humans. This kind of data nature, like the traditional living space of human beings, can also be the place where memories exist. This place is both memory externalization or memory extension, and also makes the externalization of human memory by data to the internalization of human memory. This internalization constitutes an impact on the ontology of memory, which is accompanied by the question of the authenticity of the data and the authenticity of the memory. When discussing the truth value of "I remember I saw Bob picking roses yesterday", the data science and technology (such as cameras) that perfectly record everything and keep everything without omission provides objective confirmation for "I saw yesterday" and "Bob picked roses", ensures the validity of "I remember", and then promotes and completes the discussion on the true value of "I remember I saw Bob picking roses yesterday". Here, the truth of memory is associated with the truth of data. In the correlation between the two, the dimension of memory ethics data cannot be ignored and is increasingly concerned by the academic community. Based on the current three main methods: the background of new technologies, to explore the relevant ethical issues involved in the emerging memory formed by data, the analysis of memory ethics in the context of big data, and the challenge of deeply data-based memory to existing ethical concepts based on the perspective of data ethics, it can be found that the way in memory ethics can be the memory that resides in the data, can be based on data memory, or independent data memory. Thus, the problem of memory ethics can be a data-based memory problem or a new ethic. This requires adjusting the research horizon on the ethical issue of memory, transforming it into the existence field of data as a memory and the shaping of memory by data as the starting point, so as to enter the investigation of the ethical problem of memory.
East China Normal University Yu Feng
Yu Feng, a teacher at East China Normal University, discussed the cognitive virtues of forgetting. In recent years, more and more cognitive scientists and epistemologists have begun to pay attention to the positive role of forgetting in human cognition. Some of them make it clear that forgetting is not only a cognitive virtue, but also plays a positive role in both cognitive content and cognitive defense. In addition, in traditional Chinese Taoism, especially in Zhuangzi philosophy, "forgetting" is a basic concept. In previous literature, the interpretation of Zhuangzi's idea of "forgetting" mainly focuses on its ethical self-cultivation significance, and Yu Feng further explores the influence of Zhuangzi's "forgetting" on contemporary epistemology. Its core content can be extended to sit and forget, forget each other, two forget, two forget. Sitting and forgetting is based on the individual, advocating that the individual get rid of the dilemma of "form" and "knowledge"; forgetting to talk about the relationship between the individual; and forgetting to try to eliminate the difference between objectivity and subject, pointing to the realm of selflessness (forgetting "forgetting"). "Forgetting" is also the way to realize the true self and gain true knowledge and wisdom. In "Zhuangzi, the Great Master", "Those who know what the heavens do, and those who know what people do, are the most important." He who knows what heaven does, heaven is born. He who knows what a man does, with what he knows, who nourishes what he knows, who does not know what he knows, who does not attain the Tao of Heaven all his life, is the one who knows the prosperity of knowledge and "the cognitive virtue of forgetting."
Discussion in the café
The coffee workshop is mainly from the philosophy of memory, condensed in four hours. The overall design of the workshop is to highlight the theoretical dimensions, hot spots, trend dimensions and problem dimensions of the discussion of augmented technology, and ultimately provide "Chinese wisdom" for coping with the social and ethical issues brought about by augmented technology.