Can our memory be trusted with absolute certainty?

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Often times we have false memories, but, then again, “I had a false memory” also requires the use of my memory, which I presuppose to be true.

In fact, all the knowledge we have is derived from memory…but memory can also fail.
 
Memory is a pretty quirky thing. It’s as good as the last time you recall something.
 
Nothing with a physical component can be trusted 100%. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle demonstrates this. If that’s too complex, just think back to when you were a child and first discovered that someone thought it was cute to put walnuts in fudge. 🤬
 
I’ve read that we tend to think of our memory as playing back a video…but it really doesn’t work that way. It’s more like a few snapshots with a lot of filling in the story in between. Often people are very surprised when remembering some occasion that they are sure they remember correctly, only to learn how inaccurate their memory was!

It seems our brains do quite a bit of, often falsely, filling in the “facts”!
 
Relevant article
http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6976&context=penn_law_review

“…However, findings from basic psychological research and neuroscience studies indicate that memory is a reconstructive process that is susceptible to distortion. In the courtroom, even minor memory distortions can have severe consequences that are in part driven by common misunderstandings about memory, e.g. expecting memory to be more veridical than it may actually be.”
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The psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has done a ton of research on the inaccuracy of eyewitness testimony. But the notion of reconstructive memory goes all the way back to William James in the 1800’s. We know that memory is faulty, especially for details of events and knowledge, which is exactly what courtroom testimony demands. The memory for the main idea may be fine, but, as they say, the devil is in the details.
 
A crude example would be how you can have an original Microsoft Word document and then you save the document, but then when you reload the document it saves whatever changes are made and the original copy is edited.

This is believed to be part of why PTSD seems to take time to fully set in but soldiers (or other people in traumatic situations) can often maintain mental clarity for a few months. In the aftermath, the painful memories are revisited again and again, and each time the pain is recalled the memory becomes worse than the original memory.
 
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Two types of memory do stay with us quite accurately. One is skill memory: once you fully learn a skill, you don’t forget it. If you don’t use the skill much, you may be rusty, but you can pick it up again rather easily. The other type of memory of which we don’t lose the details is called flashbulb memory. This is a subtype of episodic memory, that involves personal experiences which have a great deal of emotion (usually painful emotion) attached to them. People who have experienced a natural disaster, for example, do not usually forget most of the details of the experience. But being a witness to a crime is different in that we forget more and more of the specifics as time passes.
 
Anybody who’s been to a class reunion knows it is impossible that memory is certain.
WannabeSaint said:
Often times we have false memories, but, then again, “I had a false memory” also requires the use of my memory, which I presuppose to be true.
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No, actually, it does not require the use of your memory. Sometimes, it is independent facts that show you’re not remembering accurately: you run across your diary or a receipt or a newspaper clipping or a photograph, and you see that you have formed a memory that lacks accuracy.

That is the most common problem, after all: not that our memories are totally false, but that they’re less precise than we realize. We fill in the “fuzzy parts” without knowing it.
 
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meltzerboy2 said:
This is a subtype of episodic memory, that involves personal experiences which have a great deal of emotion (usually painful emotion) attached to them. People who have experienced a natural disaster, for example, do not usually forget most of the details of the experience. But being a witness to a crime is different in that we forget more and more of the specifics as time passes.
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Is this to say that most of us do not find murder shocking enough to allow it to enter flashtub memory? Because morally speaking, just witnessing a murder should be bad enough for us to be a traumatic memory.
 
I am with you on skill memory. I have read that recent studies question the reliability of “flashbulb” memory. As I recall, the gist is that the flashbulb is pretty reliable at keeping hold of the emotions you felt at that time, but less reliable at facts.
 
I see that you’re up-to-date on the current research. It is true that the factual details of flashbulb memory are not quite as accurate as previously believed.
 
I meant a typical crime or accident, such as burglary or theft or a car accident in which no one is seriously hurt. Murder may indeed become a flashbulb memory and so most of the details are probably well-stored and retrieved even over time, although not all of them according to current research.
 
I think it depends for what purpose you are asking this question. Are you thinking about it in terms of epistemology (i.e. as an abstract philosophical question), psychology/neuroscience (i.e. as a scientific question), or some practical application such as the reliability of eyewitness accounts as historical evidence or legal testimony?
 
WannabeSaint said:
In fact, all the knowledge we have is derived from memory…but memory can also fail.
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VIa Faith …
we can receive Capital K Knowledge from God’s Holy Spirit

Memories can fail … yet what went from the Mind to the Heart remains
 
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