15 - Perception is to self as memory is to selves

Summary

Dualities in experience have a way of becoming dichotomies in psychological theory. What nature has linked, usually in an intricate and marvelous pattern of covariation, science often rends asunder. Scientists then find themselves deeply perplexed over problems of their own creation.

The greatest mistake in modern psychology is to treat the self-in-its-world as a self separated from its surroundings. Cognitivism, with its allegiance to the representational theory of the mind and its focus on the metaphor of mental states as internal to the mind, is particularly susceptible to this dualistic separation of self from environment. Almost all modern accounts of cognitions simply assume that cognition is a process within individuals, a process that may or may not represent the world adequately. Modern theories of memory have been affiliated with this internalist school, treating remembering as the registering, maintenance, and retrieval of internalized states. These naive assumptions not only lead to problems in understanding cognition and memory, but also tend to prevent theorists from forming an adequate conception of the individual self who is the cognizer or rememberer.

The ecological approach to cognition which I have been developing treats cognition as a process in which the individual self encounters and maintains contact with the surrounding environment, including other individuals in that environment (Reed, 1987, 1988, 1991, 1993). From this ecological point of view, memory is not just a rearousal of internal states, but is a special form of encountering the environment. Through memory, we not only encounter the past environment, but more importantly, we keep in contact with our past selves in their surroundings.