Many things throughout someone’s life are forgotten, and many things remembered. How significant is the ability to remember? And remember to what degree?
The meaning of the term “significant” might be relevant and “significant” as to what I’m referring to. For the context of this topic, I’m referring to something being significant as relative to overall life and meaning. Various subjective perspectives could be taken on what makes something significant or not, by these terms, but I’ll try to consider the common perspective.
Perhaps memory is not that significant to life or an individual? But without memory, what makes an individual significant? I questioned what defines someone and what makes someone significant in a post from last year; <I>. From a likely common perspective, it seems someone’s mind is a major part of what makes them significant, and a major and fundamental part of the mind should be memories. Every choice someone makes, and mostly every reaction, is entirely dependent on their memories. After all, without any memories, someone would have no clue what anything is and virtually be in a continuous infant mind-state.
So considering memories overall very significant, then what degree of memory access is significant? The degree of memory access can perhaps be summarized into 2 general categories; conscious, or subconscious. I’ll consider subconscious memory access to be any memory access to which the individual is not aware or comprehending, and conscious to be awareful comprehension of interaction (or cause and effect) involved in the memory (further detail here; Conscious Comprehension).
Are subconscious memories significant, or only conscious memories? This could be very debatable and controversial, as animals’ memory access could be considered subconscious (as I consider it mostly), so if only conscious memory is significant, then animals’ lives would be considered generally insignificant. If subconscious memories were as significant to life and existence as conscious memories, then this would mean all animals are as significant as people. If you believe this, I hope your vegan ;). This would also mean that any person is as significant when they are in a subconscious state, (such as very drunk, dreaming, or simply not paying attention) as they are when conscious.
My opinion is that the degree of conscious memory access is far more significant than subconscious. Perhaps most would agree based on experience, that when someone is awareful of their surroundings, circumstances and existence, and able to make choices and decisions based on awareful comprehension, this seems much more significant. If mainly conscious accessible memories are significant, then to what accuracy and quantity of access of these memories is significant?
Just like the concept of consciousness itself, perhaps the significance does not come from quantity, but from relevant, applicable, and effective combination. If consciousness is significant because the brain accesses memories in an effective and relevant combination of portions and their relativity, then perhaps memories overall which are accessed consciously, are only significant if those memories are relevant in combination with circumstances or other memories. This seems evident to some degree, since if someone (or even an AI in the future) accessed a massive quantity of conscious memories and concepts which are not related to anything within circumstances or other conscious memories, then this seems insignificant. Memory access of a jumble of unrelated data seems irrelevant.
Of course this memory access would be impractical and unproductive, but another question might be; is that what causes our perspective of what is significant or not? Is significance and meaning in life only relative to practical accomplishment? Or causing more order and combinations of smaller portions which are relative to one another? Or something else?
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