Who Will Remem­ber You: A Philo­soph­i­cal Study and The­o­ry of Mem­o­ry and Will

  • From the Publisher
September 1, 2021

Mem­o­ry. A word so often said, often thought of, and con­tin­u­ous­ly stud­ied. Yet, we know rel­a­tive­ly so lit­tle oth­er than how vast and mag­nif­i­cent it is. In Who Will Remem­ber You? A Philo­soph­i­cal His­to­ry and The­o­ry of Mem­o­ry and Will, Israel B. Bit­ton, offers an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary per­spec­tive that uni­fies phi­los­o­phy of mem­o­ry with his­to­ry, neu­ro­science, cul­ture and ethics, yield­ing nov­el insights into the elu­sive phe­nom­e­na of mem­o­ry, name­ly its uni­ver­sal­i­ty. Bit­ton posits that the cur­rent and typ­i­cal mis­un­der­stand­ing of mem­o­ry” stems from over-spe­cial­iza­tion in sci­en­tif­ic research, a com­part­men­tal­iza­tion that does not sup­port reach­ing holis­tic con­clu­sions which are nec­es­sary for ful­ly appre­ci­at­ing the total­i­ty of mem­o­ry phe­nom­e­na. No longer should mem­o­ry be thought of as resid­ing only in the brain, for the body is known to have mem­o­ry too, but nei­ther should it be thought of as exclu­sive­ly human since it inheres in all mat­ter as a phys­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal fact. Indeed, Bit­ton extends the philo­soph­i­cal and prac­ti­cal mean­ings of mem­o­ry fur­thest in great detail, employ­ing the lat­est research in neu­ro­science to sup­port his case.

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