Dear members of the Art of Memory List.
This is an inquiry in order to re-interest myself in "the Art of Memory." My interest lately has been totally absorbed in the concept of "certainty" and, essentially, always has been. My interest in memory altogether is philosophical. Any approach to any subject whatsoever requires a philosophical context of establishing the 'truth' of the matter even if such approach is either, as David Hume would put it, "vulgar understanding" or "religious belief." Now I would like to see a discussion of three interrelated topics from my point of view:

A) Basically and pragmatically it seems each and every "memory technique" devolves primarily on one single process - the establishment of A) key symbols to B) a number of different terms, both set up in the mind in a created purposeful order. Knowing the purpose and knowing the order, one can then go through the filing cabinet of one's mind, just as in school logical reasoning, from the most important prime abstract category, genus, to the specific category, species, one is interested in recalling, but instead of using logical or grammatical connections, one uses one's individually established sybolic structure of relationships in order to recall the specific thing one wants recalled FOR THE CONTEXT ONE WANTS IT RECALLED FOR. Inother words, the desire is motivating, and therefore participating in the the living form of the "memory technique". It is necessarily always re-constructing it each time it is used but not necessarily according to conscious intent. This is specifically made clear in Freud's memory technique of psychoanalysis, i. e., the patient remembers want they want to remember, the analyst must find the key to unlocking the hidden rationality to otherwise irrational symbols (As if a memory system had been forgotten and one had to work backwards to a degree, from a result to the desire that wanted that result.), and so psychoanalytic inquisition works back up the chain of recall to find the originating cause of both symtom (sybolic memory) and desire to remmember and then deliberately forget. Some kind of desire to deliberately forget must always be operational in consciousness because physiologically no memory is ever lost except - possibly - by severe brain damage. And that "possibly" is truly questionable. So essentially the situation is A) each person has a vast resevoir of retained knowledge in perfectly clear and precise detail that is B) almost entirely untappable, and even what is recalled is rarely recalled in clear detail. So if any "memory technique really worked efficiently as to the actual resources at hand one would have to be able to remember a vast amount of material one would rather not in extremity. This seems to imply what is recalled has also been highly 're-interpreted' in a number of conscious, sub-conscious, and unconscious fashions and therefore it is truly questionable that it can be the perfectly 'true' memory. Conclusion: Any recall of memory is logically questionable according to average human physiology and psychology because the context of the desire to recall it, because that desire itself is in the context of the whole personality, perceives that memory in a necessarily altered perspective.

B) Memory can be artificially created and altered by either oneself or others. This has been demonstrated repeatedly on the psychiatrist's couch, the psychiatric institute laboratory (former U. S. S. R.), and the torture chamber (Chile, the Phillipines, Iraq, U. S. S. R.). Combining A and B there would seem to be no "certainty" in memory by any kind of memory technique primarily because it takes only a slight and unnoticed change in one memory to change the context of the fundamental context it was re-called in so there may well be no conflict with 'objective' reality, but how that reality altogether is perceived may have shifted its viewpoint unknowingly.

C) The most disconcerting conclusion I have arrived at from my study of David Hume, John Henry Newman, and Ludwig Wittgenstein is the 'certainty' that the 'certainty' of the definition of 'certainty' is (quote essentially from all three) "Certainty is feeling." The philosophical situation of all three is A) a commitment to a clear rational statement of what they believe and how they came to believe it that is open to 1: examination of experience, sense impressions; 2: examination of definitions and if those definitions contradict the context those definitions are placed within; 3: that once those definitions, premises, axioms are clearly defined in a non mutually contradictory fashion and accepted, WHETHER the further line of reasoning is then faultlessly and honestly carried out regardless of consequences to the bitter or bitter-sweet end. There does not seem to be any realistic alternative to that even for Newman. B) The situation of a honest thinker is that expounded early and often by David Hume in various guises (usually inhibitory to retard extreme reaction from whatever faction) and clearly stated by Father Robert Sokolowski that the philosopher is obligated to beside A) extreme or Pyrronistic Skepticism that denies absolute certainty in absolutely everything including itself thus destroying all grounds for action, choice, morality, etc., and B) "vulgar understanding", i. e., common sense, tradition, accepted custom, law, the true and established Church, etc., which does supply abundent motivation to act and all sorts of conflicting moral categories to choose from. C) Hume's and my decision is to combine the two under the FICTION of "moderate skepticism" which is a logical contradiction fundamentally, but which experience per se not only teaches us but forces us every single moment to act acording to. Ever person to some degree does this, thereby maintaining overt vast contradictions in their lives that not even their ebemies recognize fully and fundamentally because doing so would undermine their own convictions with extreme skepticism (John Henry Newman can use this as a drastic theological technique just as Ayn Rand would say, "What are your premises?" - "Do your conclusions logically match them?" - "Have you fully threaded out the line of logical deduction from axioms to final conclusion, honestly, without fault, without deliberately hiding anything from yourself or others?" which of course has direct relevance to "Do you remember correctly?" and "What are your premises for accepting the validity of the testimony of another witness?" Hobbes, Hume, and Newman go extensively into this regarding miracles but from different premises. Hobbes and Hume would say you believe in the miracles of the apostles because the king tells you to [yes, even Hume]. They would both say, but Hume most precisecely, A) Would the witness have ulterior motives for saying what he does and what reasons do you have to trust him in the first place? B) To truly know something is a revelation from an apostle one would have to have one's own direct revelation from God to know the apostle is not lying. Newman would take a different but interesting approach: If you believe in the BIBLE as revealed scripture from God, is there a rational reason for believing miracles stopped with the end of the age of the apostles as the Anglican Church teaches or has continued and still occurs as the Roman Catholic (and Orthodox?) Church teaches? )

Essentially this comes down to a realization that questions like "Why does one want to remember?" and "What does it mean 'to remember'?" are as basic "Why does the universe exist" or Kant's/Heidegger's four questions in order 1: "What can I know?" 2: "What should I do?" 3: "What can I hope for?" 4: "What is man?" Animals can have memory and rational judgment, but man's memory is vastly extendable because of the inherent memory system of language. This works A) synchronically as in its rational/grammatical (therefore "memory technique") structure, and B) diachronically because all of retained human history in several very different ways is retained in language. Physiologically I do not know how far such an investigation would proceed or could go. Overlying it and confusing it would be the very wonderful and presently vastly expanding study of Indo-European through the earliest poetic creations that scholars have striven to find astounding - sometimes possibly TOO astounding - 'facts' of prehistoric human 'history.' Regardless of the validity of present results, they have demonstrated valid rational techniques of doing so because those epics serve as an archeological dig one has to carefully sort both synchronically and diachronically. One can set up scientific experiment with a valid process that is RE-PEATABLE! As it stands, this method has been most notibly used with the Rg Veda and the Iliad and Odyssey. \ So I sum this up in these questions:

1) What does it mean to remember?

2) What do we know through memory?

3) Does technique for the memory or memory the technique?

4) Are artficial "arts of memory" of great importance philosophically?