to return

 
Bergson, Henri, (1859-1941) - Matter and memory, Allen & Unwin, London, 1911.
 
Descartes, R. – Discourse on Method Descartes and the Meditations, (tr. Sutcliffe)- Harmondsworth : Penguin Books, 1968.
 
Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. - Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Continuum International Publishing Group - Athlone Press; 1983
 
Dewey, J. – Art and Experience, Minton Batch, New York, 1934
 
Cassirer, E. – An essay on Man: introduction to a philosophy of human culture, Garden City, New York, 1944
 
Heidegger, M. – Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, ed. Farrell-Krell, D. Routledge, London, 1993
 
Hume, D. - The Cambridge companion to Hume, (ed. Fate Norton) – Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993.
 
Johnson, M. – The Body in The Mind: the bodily basis of meaning, imagination and reason, Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1987
 
Johnson, M. & Lackoff, G. – Metaphors We Live By, Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1980
 
Locke, J, (1632-1704) - An essay concerning human understanding, (ed. Whiton Calkins) Open Court, 1962.
 
Mullarkey, J. (ed.)  - The New Bergson, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1999
 
Nietzsche, F. – The Gay Science, (tr. Kaufmann) Vintage Books, New York, 1974
 
Nietzsche, F. – Basic Writings of Nietzsche, (tr. Kaufmann) Random House, New York, 1992
 
Plato – The Collected Dialogues, (tr. Hamilton), Bollingen Foundation, New York, 1961
 
Russell, B. – A History of Western Philosophy, Unwin Books, London, 1988, (3rd ed.)
 
Sedgewick P. – From Descartes to Derrida, Blackwell, 2001
 
Sartre, J. – Being and Nothingness, (tr. Barnes, H.) Routledge, London, 1966
 
Sartre, J. – Existentialism and Humanism, (tr. Mairet, P.) Methuen, London, 1980
 
Wittgenstein, L. – Philosophical Investigations, Macmillan, New York, 1953
 
Worms, F. – “Matter and Memory on Mind and Body: final statements on new perspectives” in: The New Bergson (ed. Mullarkey, J.) Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1999
 
References:
 
Descartes approaches the nature of knowledge by considering what we can say we “know” and can provide evidence for.  The evidence of the senses is discarded as potentially unreliable and that the only thing we can be sure of is that it is us doing the thinking, hence: “I think therefore I am” (Descartes, Discourse on Method, section 4, part 19, 1968)
 
Knowledge therefore is treated like a building block with reason as our means by which we can “grasp that knowledge in a meaningful way” (Sedgwick, p.7, 2001)
 
“Descartes has formulated the view that not only are we rational beings made of a substance called ‘mind’ but what is also distinctive about us is that we use our reason to gain knowledge.  Reason is the essential tool or ‘instrument’ that can serve us in our search for certain knowledge” (ibid. p.8)
 
Through conscious thought the thinker, or subject, has awareness of his existence or subjectivity: “his philosophy is a philosophy of consciousness.”  Sedgwick is far from persuaded ‘though about Descartes’ explanations concerning the outside world of which our senses report.  Descartes attests that God is responsible since existence is more perfect than the lack of it and God is, after all perfect (ibid, p.8/9)
 
A problem exists between the physical substance of the mind and the conscious being doing the thinking (Descartes, Discourse on Method, section 5, part 32, 1968)
 
Empiricism asserts that our sense experinces must be the source of our ideas/knowledge and when we think: “it is these ideas we think about.  The ideas we have are the result of the qualities bodies have.  And a quality ‘is the power to produce any idea in our mind’ ” (Locke, cited in Sedgwick, p.12, 2001)
 
“The important point to note is that Locke’s central claim about ideas concerns their origin: ideas cannot be claimed to derive from any universal and innate principles which lie ready made within the human mind” (ibid.)
 
“The senses at first let in particular ideas and furnish the as yet empty cabinet: And the mind by degrees growing familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the memory” (ibid.)
 
Locke divide knowledge into two areas
1.        Sensations – knowledge received from the senses
2.        Reflections – knowledge gained or made by the mind thinking about the sensations and clustering, comparing etc. the ideas involved
(Locke, 1962)
 
“We recall our ideas by way of ‘memory and imagination’.  The function of memory, it follows, is to preserve ‘the original form’ in which ideas are presented to the mind in terms of their’order and position’.  Imagination allows us to combine these ideas in new ways…..But does it follow from this that our ideas can be put together in any way that we choose?  Hume thinks not”. (Hume, cited in Sedgwick, p.18, 2001)
 
Ideas (and by implication memories) are linked together by resemblance, contiguity in time and space,and by ‘cause and effect’ – Hume’s big contribution to thought (ibid).  Cause and effect links ‘ideas’ as in fire and heat.  We receive ideas from our senses and “it is on the basis of memory that we draw inferences from the ideas caused by these impressions.  Our beliefs, therefore, are those ideas that which strike us with the greatest force or ‘vivacity’, such that it would be perverse to deny them’ ”. (Hume, cited in Sedgwick, p.22, 2001)
 
Knowledge (and by implication memory) can be defined as “nothing more than this: something strange is to be reduced to something familiar” (Nietzsche, section 355, 1974)
 
Nietzsche questions our understanding of what we know in two ways:
1.        How we know things
2.        How reliable our knowledge is
(ibid.)
 
Henri Bergson defines perception as the internal representation of external objects which contrasts with memory as a process of “preservation of the departed moment” (Mullarkey, p.89, 1999)
 
In Bergson’ view matter “inscribes” itself through our perception, mind then “appropriates” the matter.  Our understanding therefore consists of “planes of consciousness” with perceptions as a surface “carved out against the background of matter” where sense perceptions and memories collide as ideas. (ibid. p.90-95, 1999)
 
Jean-Paul Sartre made clear the connections between our awareness of an “I” ie. our self awareness or consciousness, and our understanding that “I” had existed in the past ie. our ability to store and recollect past experiences (see Being and Nothingness, 1993)