Many people have many thoughts, some of which they bother to determine
as words that they then transmit in some way to someone and/or thing.
Such thoughts might be like cans of fish in a supermarket - discernibly
different but undistinguishable in the cubits of cans.
Other thoughts have an impact - they stick out for one quality or
another (including absence).
It is these impacts that fascinate me, as one who is impacted on by
thoughts, both my own and those I receive from others and then make my
own.
In this context I would reference Piaget and his childhood memory that
turned out to be false. The discovery, by Piaget, that he held a strong,
indeed eidetic memory of something that had only happened as a story
told to him, impacted on Piaget in ways that motivated his work. The
thought that memory might be faulty became vital to Piaget - it was not
simply another can of fish to select or not as he might take a fancy.
Perhaps I am a philosophical vultuptarian, but I prefer thoughts that
have an impact on me (an affect) to correctness, neatness, history.
Koans are more to my liking which does not mean I don't ponder the whole
library - it means I often have an urgent need to act.
I've given a quote below for the Piaget reference.
Cheers on Australia Day
Keith Russell
OZ Newcastle
>>>>>>>>
<http://comp.uark.edu/~lampinen/Piaget.html>
Piaget's Memory
Piaget (1951) in his book Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood,
provides a provocative example of what seems to be a reconstructed
memory based on postevent suggestion. Piaget had a memory for being
kidnapped at age 2 which he maintained until he learned that it was
false when he was fifteen. It turned out that Piaget's nanny had
concocted the whole story of the kidnapping in order to get a reward.
What's striking about Piaget's memory is the vividness of it. The memory
contained vivid visual imagery. Piaget writes,
"I can still see, most clearly, the following scene, in which I
believed until I was about fifteen. I was sitting in my pram, which my
nurse was pushing in the Champs Elysees, when a man tried to kidnap me.
I was held in by the strap fastened round me while my nurse bravely
tried to stand between me and the thief. She received various scratches
and I can still see vaguely those on her face. Then a crowd gathered, a
policeman with a cloak and a white baton came up, and the man took to
his heels. I can still see the whole scene, and can even place it near
the tube station. [p. 188]"
Piaget himself accounted for this as a reconstruction and added, "Many
real memories are doubtless of the same order."
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