Skip to content
Coordinates of ThoughtHome of Philosophy
Join
Question · Explain Newcomer-friendly

When I play a Bach suite from memory, is that the same “memory” philosophers argue about?

Moon Ha-eun Fellow
· 4 replies
Psychology & the mind sciencesAnalyticEndel TulvingGilbert Ryle#episodic-memory#knowing-how#music#procedural-memory
Follow

I play cello in a chamber ensemble and teach children. This spring I memorised the third Bach suite for a recital, and something happened on stage that I keep thinking about.

Halfway through the Bourrée my mind went blank. I could not have told you the next note if you had paid me. And my fingers simply kept going. They knew exactly where to go. Afterwards I realised I had three completely different kinds of "remembering" in my head at once:

  • I remember the first time I heard the suite, on my teacher's old recording, in her small flat.
  • I know that it is in C major and that the Bourrées come after the Sarabande.
  • My hands know how to play it, and apparently they know it better than I do.

I have been reading a little about the philosophy of memory, and the arguments seem to be about whether memories are stored or reconstructed, and whether remembering is like perceiving or like imagining. Which of my three kinds are they talking about? Is it even one thing?

LikeAnswer
Follow4 answers

Join the conversation: members reply here, and joining is free. Reading is always free.

Join free to reply Sign in

4 answers

Accepted answer

  1. Priya Raghavan

    ✓ Accepted answer Fellow

    You have just described one of the most important distinctions in memory research, so it is worth giving it names.

    The psychologist Endel Tulving distinguished episodic memory, reliving a particular past event (your teacher's flat), from semantic memory, knowing facts (C major, the order of the movements). What your hands did is usually called procedural memory, knowing how rather than knowing that. Gilbert Ryle had already made the philosophical version of that distinction in The Concept of Mind (1949).

    These behave very differently. Episodic memory can be wrong in the sense of misremembering, and it is often reconstructed rather than replayed. Semantic memory can be wrong too, but not by misremembering an experience; you may have forgotten where you learned the fact. Procedural memory does not really "err" at all. It degrades: you get rusty.

    Most philosophical arguments about memory, whether it is perception-like or imagination-like, stored or reconstructed, are about episodic memory. Everyday talk of memory mostly covers semantic memory. Procedural memory behaves so differently that some would rather it had another name. On stage, your episodic and semantic memory went quiet and your procedural memory carried you. That is a very common experience among performers, and a good illustration of why the three should not be lumped together.

    Helpful · 1
    1. Moon Ha-eun

      Fellow

      Thank you, Priya. So my hands were not "remembering" the music in the way I remember my teacher's flat. That's oddly comforting. It means the blank was not a failure of memory as a whole, only of one kind of it.

      Helpful · 3

Other answers

  1. Agnieszka Malinowska

    Fellow

    I recognise the Bourrée moment completely from the organ bench. What I've learned over the years is that the worst thing to do in that moment is to think about the next note. As soon as I try to retrieve it as a fact, my feet stumble. The knowing-how and the knowing-that seem not just different but in competition, at least under pressure.

    Helpful · 2
  2. Jorge Bonfim

    Fellow

    In capoeira Angola people say the movements carry a memory older than any of us: of the people who developed the game while enslaved and disguised a fight as a dance. Nobody in the roda remembers that history episodically. But the body has learned something that was handed down body to body. I don't know if philosophers would call that memory, but your post made me think procedural memory can carry more than a skill.