Memories: Possible Topic for Dec. 6th

The majority of what I discovered on the subject of memories is based on Book II, Chapter 27 of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke.

Here are a few highlights of what I discovered:

- Memories make the person or the "self."
- Each person is different from another because they do not share the same chain of memories to the same degree or amount as the individual.
- Consciousness, memories, and the body all make up a person. However, consciousnessand memories seemed, according to Locke, to make up more of the person than the physical body.
- Losing and regaining consciousness separates a person.

There have been several times where I have looked into the mirror and thought that I look quite a bit different than I did ten years ago. Sure there is a resemeblance, but if it were not for the memories and knowledge of everything that had happened in between those ten years, it would not be unreasonable to think that I was a different person than I am now. It is my identity that makes me the same person. All the experence that I have engaged in are what make me who I am. I saw a picture of my dad when he was a teenager and he might have looked similar to the picture, but if it were not for my uncle telling me it was my dad, I might not have been sure.

No two people could have the exact same experiences. I have memories of when I was a young child, but not an infant. Even if two twins experience everything side by side after a time when they could remember being conscious and accumlating memories would have slightly or, in the small chance that two people could be brought up side by side for every experience, very slightly different views of the world altering their experience. The angles which we view things can change an experience even if two people were to witness the same event. For example, if there were a car crash and two people saw the whole thing unfold, but one person saw it from on the sidewalk and another person saw it from up in a building, there would be different explanations of the crash.

I think my initial question was: can memories provide existence? Initially I was curious if memories carried existence even if it was about a person who was no longer alive. If I was unable to prove that smeone was still alive after they left a room, I would have to assume that they were still alive. We seem to put a lot of emphasis on a person's positive vital signs or pumping heart and active mind as existing. It seems like in order for smone to prove they exist they would have to recount every experience they had until they could no longer remember anything further and deped on the two people responsible for their birth to fill in the rest all the way to their birth.

This gets further into my question. Do the personal experiences we have with other people spread out existence? I'm not sure that Locke would say that we share existence with another person because we might share the same experience. Like I said earlier, no two people could have the exact same experience. I think this sharing of experiences with another person only influences the identity of the self. Although I have come to this conclusion myself, I am not satisfied with the explanation of: when a person is no longer conscious of their own memories, they no longer exist. I believe that if enough people remember the experiences they had with a particular person, there can be some existence given to that person, even beyond their ability to be conscious. I think people would say that a person in a coma still exists where the deceased do not.

Is it a continuous string of memories, never stopping, that gives existence? A frozen memory like a picture, or even a recout of an experience shared with a person like a recording is not a continuous string of memories, but a single memory. Even a conscious person would be hard-pressed to remember every event to a point of infancy where they were conscious.