无内容的记忆:维特根斯坦记忆理论探析

Contentless Memory:an Analysis of Wittgenstein’s Memory Theory

激进能动论和分布式认知生态学是当代认知科学理论中两条富有影响力的认知进路,它们广泛借鉴维特根斯坦关于记忆富有创见的评论。这两条路径相互借鉴、相互交织,都强调记忆概念的实践特性。记忆是可以被情景化、语境化和在行动的东西,它具有动态性、建构性和具身性。然而,分布式认知理论根本上从认知科学的立场来解读维特根斯坦,激进能动论的解读则更加贴近维特根斯坦的看法。当代认知科学中延展认知和激进能动论,以及维特根斯坦都直接挑战我们的直觉,即认知和心灵都完全发生在大脑中。同时,也直接挑战“编码—储存—提取”这一神经科学式的记忆模式。我们最终论证指出,维特根斯坦关于记忆本质的根本洞见是:记忆及其相关的认知活动都并完全发生在大脑中;记忆意象对记忆而言是不必要的;记忆不是一种内在的活动和心理过程。记忆是无内容的,记忆本质上是内在心灵的一种能力。总之,维特根斯坦对记忆问题的评论与当代认知科学中的延展认知论题具有某种内在的契合性。

Radical activism and distributed cognitive ecology are two influential cognitive approaches in contemporary cognitive theory.They draw extensively on Wittgenstein’s creative comments on memory.These two approaches draw lessons from each other and interweave mutually,emphasizing the practical characteristics of the memory concept.Memory is something that can be situationism,contextualization and in action,and it is dynamic,constructive and embodied.But the distributed cognitive theory fundamentally interprets Wittgenstein from the perspective of cognitive science,and the interpretation of radical activism is closer to Wittgenstein’s view.Extended cognition and radical activism in contemporary cognitive science,as well as Wittgenstein,directly challenge our intuition that both cognition and mind occur entirely in the brain.At the same time,Wittgenstein also challenged the neural scientific memory model of“encoding-storage-rerieval”.Therefore,Wittgenstein’s fundamental insight on the nature of memory is that memory and its related cognitive activities do not occur completely in the brain;memory images are unnecessary for memory;memory is not an internal activity and psychological process.Memory is contentless and memory is essentially an ability of the inner mind.In a word,Wittgenstein's discussion on memory has some internal consistency with the extended cognition thesis in contemporary cognitive science.