Concept Formation, Remembering, and Understanding: Dynamic Conceptual Semantics and Proust’s A la Recherche du Temps Perdu

i Preface This study presents a theory and model of memory and remembrance, which is a further explication of the theory of Dynamic Conceptual Semantics and of the Unconscious and Conscious, which has been developed in Bartsch 1998 Dynamic Conceptual Semantic: A Logic-Philosophical Investigation into Concept Formation and Understanding and in it is pointed out how phenomenological data and dynamic conceptual semantics have a correspondence in neurological structures and processes, which provide the capacity to concept formation and understanding. The neurological architecture has to consist of circuit activation along connections between groups of neurons, which is capable of generating semantically directed binding of concepts in constituent structures of situational concepts and sentences, namely types of utterances representing situations. On the neuronal level we have groups of neurones that function as conceptual indicators, which together form the general memory. When these conceptual indicators activate via their connections certain phenomenally dedicated neurones on the sensorial and motor fields, the circuit activation between the conceptual indicators on the conceptual fields with the phenomenally dedicated neurones on the sensorial and motor fields gives rise to conscious representations, being perceptions and imaginations of situations and utterances, or productions of actions and utterances. In the second chapter, the memory of episodes and facts is presented as a capacity for construing remembrances. Remembrances are not stored as ready-made representations or images in a kind of large library or box. Rather they are generated. In order to generate remembrances with the right situational constituent structure, the specific memory must consist of groups of neurones that function as indices for specific episodes and individuals, and that direct the construction of the remembrance. It is shown in a model how the specific memory can work as a capacity for constructing remembrances by connecting from out the indices and in a structured fashion to the general memory ii (consisting of conceptual indicators and their inter-connections) and to emotional, sensorial, and motor fields. The specific memory works in an unconscious mode as long as the circuit activation between conceptual indicators initiated and directed by the memory indices does not involve the sensorial and motor fields. As soon as these fields are involved in the circuit activation, a conscious representation is achieved in the form of an imagination grounded in the indices of the specific memory. This then is a remembrance. Our capacity of understanding a new situations consists of the working of …