REMI: So just to add to your questions an other, imho very important (and very philosophical!) it is: how to make something new with something old? or, in other words, how can I create new ideas and experiences when I have just "old" memories in the beginning?

GCM: That is a basic problem. If all the basic forms of non-experiential knowledge are in question, then memory - which is put into question constantly in daily life (eye witnesses, now, in court proove to be the WORST!) - 'memory' has nothingwhat so ever to differentiate itself from imagination. One might propose imagination is intentive or purposive creation whereas our impression of memory is not. But Hume demonstrates that imagination is THE SINGULAR TOOL in creating all abstract knowledge so  99% of the operation of imagination, a every moment affair, goes completely unnoticed. Hume's ONLY distinction between imagination and 'real' knowledge is the amount of emotion, "vivacity", backing it up. "Certainty is a feeling."

But you feel intensely that Khrisna is your saviour so that not only do you 'know' Khrisna exists but is ultimately good and you must worship him. Wittgenstein once said, "Before I can believe, I must be redeemed." On the one hand, the problem seems simple. "Jesus has redeemed you, so believe!" But it doesn't work that way. You must have a tremendous, divine feeling of redemption or they are just words. Now, what is shocking is not only that a truly great thinker said this but that it is logically valid according -- PURELY and STRICTLY and OUTSIDE THE CONTEXT OF HIS WHOLE PHILOSOPHY -- to Hume's thinking. Hume's context cannot judge Wittgestein's context and they in turn cannot judge Heidegger's context ignoring the context of one's own character and preferences.

As Jacques Derrida, culturally a French Jew, said of Heidegger's Nazism, How can we judge Heidegger when the whole ground of ethics as universal judgment is totally in question? If you are a German raised under Wilhelm II "Certainty is a feeling" means one thing. If you are a Scot raised in the age of reason and disconcerted by English prejudice against Scots, "Certainty is a feeling" means another thing. If you are an Austrian Jew raised by a major steel industrialist and considered the idiot in the family, "Certainty is a feeling" means something else again. All use reason very well, but they use reason to extremely different ends.

The distinction between "new" and "old" then at the very least would be extremely compromise. Every 'old' memory would necessarily have significant elements of 'newness' -- but simply as a re-combination of elements one already has, never creation ex nihilo. The "present" is the ONLY REAL SENSE IMPRESSION CATEGORY. But it has the tremendous disadvantage of not itself being able to be compared to another sense impression of the present because any past s'present' would be purely an abstraction whose only validity would be "vivacity." But no one wants to or even can literally live for the present. It is merely the grounding and jumping point of expectation which is the overwheening, most powerful desire in human nature, the future -- which, of course, literally cannot exist. It is a pure figment of imagination.

You recall the past into the work area of the present solely for a future purpose. It is therefore FORMED AND CREATED by that action and purpose. Its only judgement of validity is that it works to solve a specific situation and in turn the more memories you 'recall', that are validated just so, cause greater and greater pleasure to continually motivate the actions of the mnemotechnician as Doctor Voigt says somewhere. So all recall of memory by whatever system is formed pragmatically for the motivation of pleasure. You do not want to recall 'incorrect' memories (but remember what the standard of validity is!) because they do not fit and cause displeasure. And you do not want to recall memories that are in themselves painful, so even if they do 'fit', they do not add to the pleasure.

REMI: There are two schools there : one I would call the "mystical school", exemplified by Krishnamurti and some western interpretation of Zen (I suspect real Zen to be much more complex).

GCM: The complexity of Zen (or, I prefer Ch'an) is the same as the complexity of David Hume. They deal with ideas so simple people cannot fit them together with all the bumbling abstractions of daily life. It is like playing chess with only one piece on each side. There is far too much room to play in (Heidegger's "raumspiel"). For instance, gaining satori from contemplating a wooden bowl. Human beings made it for human purposes. It has absoluly no reason to exist as a bowl except by human agency. But the bowl just sits there in your perception and, in a real sense, 'lives' completely seperated from and indifferent to all your intentions, responsibilities, and emotions. In a sense, it tells you you do not exist to me. A fictitious experiment, for sure, but perfectly valid in David Hume's sceme of things. For you do not exist to David Hume either. David Hume does not exist to David Hume.

One needs the fiction of the self to act, but, none the less, the literal truth of the matter is you have no sense impression of the self. Your aspect of self changes from moment to moment even as a fiction. It ceases to exist altogether quite often. Here we have the original Rg Veda notion of reincarnation. "The sun rises. And the sun also sets. All is vanity beneath the sun." The image from ECCESIASTES is perfect for the original notion of reincarnation in the Rg Veda to which even the gods were subject and had no moral connotations. Like GROUNDHOG DAY, every day is the same day but new and complete in itself but with an imaginary continuity of memory that slightly changes the aspect of that same day everyday over and over again. One is alive when the sun shines, one is erased by sleep until to wake again to exactly the same situation before. Nothing of real importance changes from day to day. When you think you have changed something in an important fashion after a number of exactly the same days over and over again it ceases to be important and becomes one more item in the background. Both men and gods are set in a fundamentally unchanging and meaningless destiny. Did you notice how the gods of the ILIAD whinned about the boredom of their immortality? So "They killed men for their sport." The only real temporal category is the present. The present is always just the present, the way things are and have to be. Nothing is "good" or "evil" or "better" or "worse". Those categories only arise in the imagination to make oneself miserable comparing the present to the past or the future and thus motivate you to act. But the pleasure of accomplishment only lives and thrives as future project. It lies neutral and stillborn in the present as you contemplate it - like the Ch'an monk contemplates his bowl. The present negates the importance of your self. At most it sometimes says, "O! Are you there? All this time? I hadn't noticed." And then, guess what -- you're forgotten again.

REMI: The basic idea is that we can disregards all constructs, all memories from the past to reach a state when the "reality" can be seen without any interpretation, "directly". The other school is that human brain is nothing else, and for ever, than a simulation generator, and that we are forever condemned to understand reality through lens of intepretative grids. We cannot access to direct reality, only to "shadows of Ideas".the only method to create new experience is therefore to constantly reshuflle our deck of cards, reorganize our memories, in order to provoke an "aha" experience which may or may not help us to discover indirectly some new aspects of our external world.

GCM: David Hume would say this is the basic form of all human cigitation (he will not speak for the mind of God).

REMI: This is where Art of Memory, especially its combinatory aspect (Lull, Bruno), becomes interesting. By helping us to reorganize our memories, it helps us to redefine ourselves and the world. It is less "creating new memories" as you mention in your post than "rewiring" the actual contents in order to give them new values and meaning. although those kinds of "recombination" can be pushed so far than one can be convinced to have gained really new memories in the process: this is imho, the process behind the psychic phenomena of "revelation" or "channelling".

GCM: Therefore it is all pure imagination.