The credibility of claims that memory recollections come from brains is inversely proportional to the speed and capacity and reliability at which things can be recalled. There are numerous signal slowing factors in the brain, such as the relatively slow speed of dendrites, and the cumulative effect of synaptic delays in which signals have to travel over relatively slow chemical synapses (by far the most common type of synapse in the brain). As explained in my post here, such physical factors should cause brain signals to move at a typical speed very many times slower than the often cited figure of 100 meters per second: a sluggish "snail's pace" speed of only about a centimeter per second (about half an inch per second). Ordinary everyday evidence of very fast thinking and instant recall is therefore evidence against claims that memory recall occurs because of brain activity, particularly because the brain is totally lacking in the things humans add to constructed objects to allow fast recall (things such as sorting and addressing and indexes). Chemical synapses in the brain do not even reliably transmit signals. Scientific papers say that each time a signal is transmitted across a chemical synapse, it is transmitted with a reliability of 50% or less. (A paper states, "Several recent studies have documented the unreliability of central nervous system synapses: typically, a postsynaptic response is produced less than half of the time when a presynaptic nerve impulse arrives at a synapse." Another scientific paper says, "In the cortex, individual synapses seem to be extremely unreliable: the probability of transmitter release in response to a single action potential can be as low as 0.1 or lower.") The more evidence we have of very fast and very accurate and very capacious recall (what a computer expert might call high-speed high-throughput retrieval), the stronger is the evidence against the claim that memory recall occurs from brain activity.
It is therefore very important to collect and study all cases of exceptional human memory performance. The more such cases we find, and the more dramatic such cases are, the stronger is the case against the claim that memory is a neural phenomenon. Or to put it another way, the credibility of claims that memory is a brain phenomenon is inversely proportional to the speed and reliability of the best cases of human mental performance. The more cases that can be found of humans that seem to recall too quickly for a noisy address-free brain to do ever do, or humans that seem to recall too well for a noisy, index-free, signal-mangling brain to ever do, the stronger is the case that memory is not a neural phenomenon but instead a spiritual or psychic or metaphysical phenomenon.
In the paper "Remarkable Cases of Memory" by W.D. Henkle in The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. 5, No. 1 (January, 1871), we read many accounts of people with memories far greater than that of the average man. Here is one account:
"Casaubon thus speaks of Joseph Scaliger: 'There was no subject in which any one could desire instruction which he was not capable of giving. He had read nothing (and what had he not read?) which he did not forthwith remember; there was nothing so obscure or obsolete in any ancient author, Greek, Latin, or Hebrew, with regard to which, when interrogated, he could not at once give a reply. He was at home in the history of all nations and all ages, the successions of government, the affairs of the ancient church; the properties, differences, and names, whether ancient or modern, of animals, plants, metals, and all natural objects, he knew accurately. With the situations of places, the boundaries of provinces, and their division at different times, he was perfectly familiar. He had left untouched none of the severer studies or sciences. So extensive and accurate was his acquaintance with languages, that if, during his lifetime, he had made but this single acquirement, it would have appeared miraculous.' He committed [to memory] Homer in twenty-one days, the other Greek writers inside of two years. Sir Wm. Hamilton says, 'taking him all in all, he was the most learned man the world has ever seem. ' "
Henkle then documents in the greatest detail the extraordinary memory and calculation abilities of Daniel McCartney, born in Pennsylvania, USA on September 10, 1817. Henkle gives a transcript of the second interview he had with Daniel McCartney. In the interview Henkle would ask about random dates in the past Henkle had selected. The numbers in parentheses before the answers are how long a delay before the answer was given. We may presume that Henkle knew stenography or had a stenographer with him. Before the advent of tape recording, stenography was a skill allowing you to write down exactly what someone was saying, even if he talked at a normal pace.
Q. October 8,1828?
A. (2 seconds.) Wednesday. It was cloudy and drizzled rain. I carried dinner to my father where he was getting out coal.
Q. February 21, 1829 ?
A. (2 sec.) Saturday. It was cloudy in the morning, and clear in the afternoon ; there was a little snow on the ground. An uncle who lived near sold a horse-beast that day for $35.
Q. October 13,1851 ?
A. (15 sec.) Monday. It was kinder [sic] pleasant-like weather. I stayed all night Sunday night at my brother's, and next day I went to the depot in Cardington to saw wood.
Q. July 1, 1863 ?
A. (1 sec.) Wednesday. Sultry and cloudy. I kept the baby of the family I lived with, while the man and his wife went to Tipton to buy goods. "
All of the days of the week were correct. Below is another section of the interview.
"Q. March 5, 1849?'
A. (2 sec.) Monday. It was a disagreeable sloppy day. Gen. Taylor was inaugurated that day. I heard at the time, that the Bible Washington was sworn in on was carried from New York to Washington to use at Taylor's inauguration.
Q. April 15, 1861 ?
A. (3 sec.) Monday. It was bright and clear. Fort Sumter was taken the Friday before. I was cutting stove wood for a man.
Q. May 8,1846?
A. (2 sec.) Friday. It rained some. The Saturday before, I attended a quarterly meeting in Iberia. [He is a Methodist.]
Q. December 2,1859 ?
A. (2 sec.) Friday. It was very cold and raw. On the Tuesday before, it began to grow very cold, and continued cold until Saturday, when it began to moderate. John Brown was hanged on the 9th, a week later.
Q. Are you certain?
A. I am not positive.
Q. Do you remember anything in particular that occurred that day?
A. Nothing particular. I remember it was pretty cold getting in wood.
Q.. April 12,1861?
A. (2 sec.) Friday. It was pleasant but cloudy. I went from Wilton to my brother's, ten miles away.
Q. What else happened that day ?
A. Fort Sumter was taken
Q. April 9,1865?
A. (5 sec.) Sunday. It was cloudy in the afternoon. Lee surrendered that morning.
The days of the week McCartney gave are all correct. His statements about the inauguration of General Zachary Taylor and the capture of Fort Sumter are correct. The only mistake he made is that when given the date that John Brown was hung, he has mentioned the hanging of John Brown, but incorrectly stated that it was a week later.
Below is another section of the interview:
Q. December 28,1835?
A. (2 sec.) Monday. Cool but pleasant. We were chopping in the clearing, and came near falling [felling] a tree on one of the boys.
Q. June 15,1836?
A. (2 sec.) Wednesday. It was very clear, hot weather. The folks that I lived with had a swarm of bees that day.
Q. December 25, 1837?
A. (2 sec.) Monday, Christmas day. It was raw, but not very cold. My father was buried that day.
Q. April 4,1841 ?
A. (3 sec.) Sunday. It was rainy and muddy. Gen. Harrison died that day.
Q. July 21,1861 ?
A. (2 sec.) Sunday. Very hot and sultry. It was the day of the Battle of Bull Run.
The days of the week given were all correct. April 4, 1841 was the date of the death of General Harrison (US president William Henry Harrison), and July 21, 1861 was the date of the Battle of Bull Run.
Below is another section of the interview:
Q. What is 32 times 45?
A. (2 sec.) 1440. I multiplied by 5 and then by 9.
Q. What is 93 times 97?
A. (12 sec.) 9021. From 9300 I took away 3 times 93.
Q. What is 53 times 84?
A. (8 sec.) 4452. Twice 53 is 106 ; 10 times 106 is 1060 ;
adding 53 gives 1113; multiplying by 4, 4452.
Q. What is 123 times 456 ?
A. (35 sec.) 56,088. Multiply 456 by 100 ; then 23 by 400 ;
then add; multiply 23 by 56 and add.
Q. What is 3756 times 182 ?
A. (4.5 minutes. He became confused.) 683,592.
Q. What is the sum of 26, 67, 43, 38, 54, 62, 87, 65, 53, 44,
77, 33, 84, 56 and 14 ? (One minute occupied in calling the
numbers.)
A. (Instantly.) 803
The answers given are all correct. Later in the interview McCartney is asked "How do you bound Tennessee?" He gives this completely correct answer: "It is bounded on the north by Kentucky and a small part of Virginia, on the east by North Carolina, on the southeast by Georgia, on the south by Alabama and Mississippi, and on the west by Arkansas and a small portion of Missouri." The answer suggests something like a photographic memory.
We then have a transcript of McCartney being asked about many random dates during the past few decades, and in each case he correctly gives the day of the week, and recalls various things about what he was doing on that date. On page 21 we have some more math questions:
- He is asked what is the cube root of 59,319, and in 30 seconds gives the correct answer of 39.
- He is asked the cube root of 76,507, and in 17 seconds gives the correct answer of 43.
- He is asked the cube root of 117,649, and in 5 seconds gives the correct answer of 49, saying that he knew that long ago.
- He is asked the cube root of 571,787, and in 15 seconds gives the correct answer of 83.
- He is asked the cube root of 357,911 and in 15 seconds gives the correct answer of 71.
- He is asked the cube root of 110,592 and in 2 seconds gives the correct answer of 48.
- He is asked the cube root of 389,017 and in 15 seconds gives the correct answer of 73.
- He is asked the cube root of 4,741,632 and in 3.5 minutes gives the correct answer of 265.
Henkle had a third interview with McCartney, and asked him about the same dates that he had previously asked about. This was an excellent way to see whether the claimed recollection of things McCartney did on a day long ago were actual recollections and not confabulations. McCartney passed this test well. Henkle states this:
"In this review Mr. McCartney reproduced his answers as to dates, kind of weather, and circumstances, with the exceptions given below. His description of the weather was in other words, but in every case essentially the same, thus showing that he remembered distinctly the facts but not the words that he had previously used. The same may be said as to his reproduction of circumstances. In some cases he expanded the accounts, and in others he shortened them. Some of the days of the week were given in a shorter time and others after a longer time than on his first examination."
Henkle then discusses some minor differences in the recollections about what the weather was on some particular day and what McCartney was doing, but they seem to be no more than what you would get from a minor narrative variation in what you get from someone with the same memory.
Cases such as the case of Daniel McCartney intensify the explanatory shortfall of "brains make minds" explanation and "brains store memories" explanation. We have here a case of lightning-fast mathematical calculation ability and lightning-fast autobiographical recall stretching back decades. Given the high number of brain physical shortfalls, neural explanations cannot account for the mental abilities of ordinary people. When we look cases such as that of Daniel McCartney, the failure of neural explanations to credibly account for human mental abilities becomes all the more obvious.
The paper discussed above (the paper "Remarkable Cases of Memory" by W.D. Henkle) may have been the first paper ever documenting the phenomenon of Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM, also called hyperthymesia). In recent decades many other cases have been documented of HSAM subjects (such as Jill Price) with the ability to recall almost every day of their adult lives. You can read about some of the cases in my series of posts here. A scientific paper documented the ability of such HSAM subjects to score 25 times higher on a random dates test than control subjects.
In the 1972 book "Coding Processes in Human Memory" we have a chapter entitled "How Good Can Human Memory Be?" written by Earl Hunt and Tom Love of Washington University. Registered users at www.archive.org can read the whole chapter using the link here. The authors start telling us about a subject they studied who they call VP. We are told VP was born in Latvia in 1935, and that by the age of five he had memorized the street map of Riga, a city of 500,000. We are told he could play up to 60 games of chess simultaneously by correspondence, without consulting written records.
At the end of the chapter, we are given the text of the story, VP's first recollection of it, and the recollection six weeks later. The story is about 350 words long. Here is one example of how good the recollection was. The story begins, "One night two young men from Eugulac went down to the river to hunt seals, and while they
No comments:
Post a Comment