An Argument For The Logical Notion of A Memory Trace

Abstract

During the past decade there has been a very effective campaign against any explanation of remembering whose basic concept is that of a causally mediating trace. This paper attempts to provide such an explanation by presenting an explicit deductive argument for the existence of the memory trace. The conclusion is shown to follow from reasonable, empirical assumptions of which the most interesting is a spatio-temporal contiguity thesis. Set-theoretic techniques are used to provide a framework of analysis and probabilistic definitions of some causal notions, as that of a causal chain, are presented.