Formation of the Inner Object

Hello,

OK for the 'art of memory" - though I'll make some comments at the end of this message about the 'communication challenge'.

>...the mnemonic models thus showing the
>deep roots of our technology in the tradition.

and
>The connection back to Simonides I had not realized,
>even though it was probably mentioned by Yates.

Yes, if our technology can find these roots - I believe that reciprocally, it will benefit from its sap. This is why I suggest PLAN for industry. An industry without sap dies.. doesn't it?

Yes it is mentioned by Yates - It makes the opening of her book "The Art of Memory" - and she explain that she exercised herself the method at the level of Bruno's development. It is at that level that Yates understood the Art of Memory as the prefiguration of what she called 'electronic brains".

[NOTE: the excerpt from Yates quoting Cicero in THe_Art_of_Memory at
http://www.dnafoundation.com/priv/yatoplan.htm]

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I agree when you say :

>However I have some reservations about mnemonics in the sense
>that it is a technique. Technique is what produces nihilism.

Yet I don't think that a technique ALWAYS produces nihilism - precisely, I believe it produces so, when it has lost its roots, lack of sap. Nietzsche is a very good example, when he wrote, in the most arid phase of the repression of Trismegistus' memory, for Zoroaster/Zarathoustra - as Psychoanalysis make notice, since the repressed has to come back, even in an hallucinated manner.

All the opposite, when the Primal Scene is remembered, the technique becomes the tree of life.

I would add another comment regarding the mnemonics as a technique:

As Yates began to suggest, the mnemonics aspect of the Art-of-Memory may have been a very limited - and even resistant - part of it. At one point, "memory became a rhetorical skill, an aid at cueing orators in the vocal interpretations of texts." - perhaps do you know the wonderful following pages:

VICO
http://cadre.sjsu.edu/switch/sound/articles/wendt/folder6/ng6212v.htm

BRUNO
http://cadre.sjsu.edu/switch/sound/articles/wendt/folder6/ng6212.htm

CAMILLO
http://cadre.sjsu.edu/switch/sound/articles/wendt/folder6/ng6211.htm

ART OF MEMORY
http://cadre.sjsu.edu/switch/sound/articles/wendt/folder6/ng621.htm

In one of them, the author confesses his surprise :

Curiously, the use of memory systems did not become immediately obsolete with the invention of printing,..
and he continues :
...but instead became elaborated into yet another form as a complex, Neoplatonic magic which would have a far reaching, though somewhat obscured, influence.


In a sketch I would say that, after Cicero's execution, the AOM remained in cyst form, until the Printed Culture released it again (Bruno); then during two/three centuries it could live by itself, until it needed to grow/find roots (Nietzsche).

I think that I understand - a little - what you say by learning by heart ; heart and sap share the same blood I guess.

You see... we can make good use of the Lacanian model here:

pic.10 (clik on pic to visit other text where inserted)

 

 

The only Lacanians who would oppose to this illustration would be those who have never read that the concave mirror represents the neural system - they are many, though it is clearly written in Lacan's description of his model. This is the problem with rhetoricians - they ignore what's clear.
Anyhow, here we have a good base to discuss about heart and sap - especially since this 'drive' pulses towards existence (whose place is designated by the eye - e.g., the perspective point of view ; and by the crossed-out letter- which means that the Subject has ex-ited).

What is Theauxian {..how far can I go with such a name!..}is the strong emphasis on the fact that there would have no flux, in the heartbeat, if there were not a Cybernetic machine in the black box, beyond the mirror. To continue the metaphor, the system would not work without an income of the venous corrupted blood.

{..sometimes I am amazed how all this is frightening..}

So you say:
>Since mnemonics is a technique we would expect it to have
>the same aspects as Being, i.e. the kinds of Being.

In my view, the Being that you describe is the space beyond the mirror. It is where the Pure Presence is idealized (is represented there as S,I - aka Idealized Subject).
I am still working on your Process Being and Hyper Being (with symbols and places) - that probably matches with the Freudo-Lacanian process of Displacement (Metonymic) and Condensation (Metaphor), and are illustrated in the graph as the collusion between the vase and the bunch.

Certainly, it is worth to try to reciprocally contribute - as you say : >>my real contribution to your path of thinking might lie, merely in pointing out how the kinds of being inform the mnemonic technique.
This may take time - a day or two, a year or two. I am looking forward to seeing the light on cybernetics processes as you have approached them probably more in detail than I have.

From my side, at that point, I can feed-back my feeling. I wonder if you do not tend to dichotomize too rigidly the process of the heart (left in the graph) from the mechanical mnemonic (right side of the graph). For instance, you write :

>For that person who has memorized by heart either what he has worked to absorb
>exists in him or not, and he has no defensive technique to protect him if his memory
>fails. This person is continually facing oblivion while the person using mnemonics
>attempts to protect himself from oblivion by placing a saving technique between
>himself and what he is remembering.

I believe that - since every person has an heart - the person using mnemonics is (on the left side) facing the mirror at an angle. This is described as the line [ y to i'(a)] where i'(a) represents image & place (vase/bunch). In this direction, this person puts indeed the saving technique (the virtual bunch in vase) between him/herself and what is remembered (in red).

So what/where is the person who has memorized by heart - by rote as a machine...?
I guess that his un-natural thriving has moved him physically, really, in this impossible place which is Ideal ; this can only happen if it is the mirror which moves with him - and this is why Lacan presents a second phase in his model. It presents the person (who has moved at the former S,I place) facing oblivion - that is is real image AND his virtual image...
I don't know if you'd agree that this may represent facing oblivion. Anyhow, it is the psychoanalytical situation (indeed a memory process where one faces one's repression).

I hope that this will make another step.



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