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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This 5 page paper examines this issue and then uses Hume's ideas as a springboard for further discussion. The concept of knowledge is also discussed. Bibliography lists 6 sources.
Page Count:
5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: RT13_SA515mem.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
fact, when survivors of a home fire are asked what personal affects they take, it is always pictures. Pictures are irreplaceable and they are really memories captured one frame at
a time. It seems that personhood, or identity, is attached to experiences and memories and not the culmination of a body and a life. Thus, people who are in vegetative
states, or who are retarded, cannot perhaps fully achieve their potential for identity. People with Alzheimers have lost something as well. In embarking on this topic, perhaps the most important
inquiry is into memory itself. What is memory? How does it work? How does it define a human being? Alessi reports that it is known that recall memory does
improve with age and so younger children are more suggestible than adults or older children (398). Still, memory is reconstructive and children as well as adults are likely to report
some misinformation (398). This brings up many problems as it respects the reliability of memory. If memory is who a person is, then erroneous memory does provide some doubt
concerning an individuals identity. Recent research has shown that it is easy to create false memories (Yam 26). Jacquie Pickrell and Elizabeth Loftus report that visitors to Disneyland had come
to the conclusion that they met Bugs Bunny, but the rabbit is actually a Warner Brothers character and would not be found in a Disney environment (26). This was
of course after being subjected to fake Disney ads with Bugs Bunny placed in them (26). Other research has demonstrated that people are able to fabricate false images due to
the phenomenon of "causal inference" (26). That is, viewing the result of an action, people will tend to recall spotting the cause even if they never saw such
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