?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Adc&rft.title=Preface+to+Philosophy+and+Memory+Traces%3A+Descartes+to+connectionism&rft.creator=Sutton%2C+John&rft.subject=Philosophy+of+Mind&rft.description=Philosophy+and+Memory+Traces%2C+the+book+to+which+this+is+the+preface%2C+defends+two+theories+of+autobiographical+memory.+One+is+a+bewildering+historical+view+of+memories+as+dynamic+patterns+in+fleeting+animal+spirits%2C+nervous+fluids+which+rummaged+through+the+pores+of+brain+and+body.+The+other+is+new+connectionism%2C+in+which+memories+are+%C2%91stored%C2%92+only+superpositionally%2C+and+are+reconstructed+rather+than+reproduced.+Both+models+depart+from+static+archival+metaphors+by+employing+distributed+representation%2C+which+brings+interference+and+confusion+between+memory+traces.+Both+raise+urgent+issues+about+control+of+the+personal+past%2C+and+about+relations+between+self+and+body.+The+book%C2%92s+historical+argument+is+anchored+by+a+reinterpretation+of+Descartes%C2%92+dynamic+physiology+of+memory+and+strange%0Aphilosophy+of+the+body.+English+critics+of+Descartes%C2%92+view+of+memories+as+motions+complained+that+mechanistic+neurophilosophy+could+not+guarantee+order+in+memory%2C+and+instead+sought+techniques+for+controlling+the+brain.+In+a+new+account+of+18th-century+philosophers%C2%92+fears+of+confusion+in+remembering%2C+the+author+demonstrates+the+role+of+bizarre+body+fluids+in+moral+physiology%2C+as+philosophers+from+Locke+to+Reid+and+Coleridge+struggled+to+control+their+own+innards+and+impose+cognitive+discipline+on+%C2%91the+phantasmal+chaos+of+association%C2%92.+Finally%2C+in+a+defence+of+connectionism+against+Jerry+Fodor+and+against+phenomenological+and+Wittgensteinian+critics+of+passive+mental+representations%2C+the+author+shows+how+problems+of+the+self+are+implicated+in+contemporary+sciences+of+mind.+The+book+is+an+experiment+in+historical+cognitive+science%2C+based+on+a+belief+that+the+interdisciplinary+study+of+memory+can+exemplify+the+simultaneous+attention+to+brain%2C+body%2C+and+culture+towards+which+psychological+sciences+must+aim.+&rft.publisher=Cambridge+University+Press&rft.date=1998&rft.type=Book+Chapter&rft.type=PeerReviewed&rft.format=text%2Fhtml&rft.identifier=http%3A%2F%2Fcogprints.org%2F1362%2F1%2FPAMTpreface.htm&rft.identifier=++Sutton%2C+John++(1998)+Preface+to+Philosophy+and+Memory+Traces%3A+Descartes+to+connectionism.++%5BBook+Chapter%5D+++++&rft.relation=http%3A%2F%2Fcogprints.org%2F1362%2F