Wittgenstein and the memory debate

Original article can be found at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0732118X Copyright Elsevier Ltd. DOI: 10.1016/j.newideapsych.2008.04.015In this paper, I survey the impact on neuropsychology of Wittgenstein’s elucidations of memory. Wittgenstein discredited the storage and imprint models of memory, dissolved the conceptual link between memory and mental images or representations and, upholding the context-sensitivity of memory, made room for a family resemblance concept of memory, where remembering can also amount to doing or saying something. While neuropsychology is still generally under the spell of archival and physiological notions of memory, Wittgenstein's reconceptions can be seen at work in its leading-edge practitioners. However, neuroscientists, generally, are finding memory difficult to demarcate from other cognitive and noncognitive processes, and I suggest this is largely due to their considering automatic responses as part of memory, termed nondeclarative or implicit memory. Taking my lead from Wittgenstein's On Certainty, I argue that there is only remembering where there is also some kind of mnemonic effort or attention, and therefore that so-called implicit memory is not memory at all, but a basic, noncognitive certainty.Peer reviewe

Logic in Action: Wittgenstein's Logical Pragmatism and the Impotence of Scepticism

‘The definitive version is available at www3.interscience.wiley.com '. Copyright Blackwell Publishing. DOI: 10.1111/1467-9205.00291Peer reviewe

D. H. Lawrence and the Truth of Literature

We first clarify that what Lawrence means by truth is moral truth, and that the novel is for him the best vehicle to communicate with the “subtle interrelatedness” without which morality is merely moralism. We then examine his view that “art speech is the only truth” and his distinction between the artist and the man. We make this distinction with the help of F. R. Leavis’s understanding of the artist as great psychologist whose suppression of ego allows the power of reality-soaked language to guide the creative flow. This, according to both, is where art reclaims truth.Peer reviewe