soc.women

Vandar wrote:
>
> R. Steve Walz wrote:
>
> >>>>>>>The adult notion of poor child memory doesn't withstand honest scrutiny.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>Yeah... "repressed memories" are real reliable.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>------------------
> >>>>>Repressed memories are confabulated or imagined, memories that are
> >>>>>supported by the recollections of family and others are not.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>Anyway, if humans really didn't remember their first year, then how
> >>>>>to they remember how they learned to walk or talk?
> >>>>
> >>>>They don't.
> >>>
> >>>-----------------
> >>>Of course they do, or they COULDN'T walk or talk!
> >>
> >>It's not something that needs to be remembered to be done. Barring
> >>injury, it's not something one forgets.
> >>
> >>
> >>>>>And if humans really didn't remember their first year, then that is
> >>>>>an even stronger argument in favor of fetuses not being human!!
> >>>>
> >>>>Of course they are human. They certainly aren't part of any other
> >>>>species. What they aren't are "persons".
> >>>
> >>>---------------------------
> >>>Absolutely, but because they can't recall being BEINGS!
> >>
> >>They aren't human beings, but they do belong to the human species.
> >>
> >>
> >>>>>It suggests that if we had been killed the first year, we would
> >>>>>never have even known it! Thus it wouldn't actually happen to
> >>>>>"anybody".
> >>>>
> >>>>Riiiiight. Infants are conscious. That doesn't mean that we remember
> >>>>what it was to be one. Even you don't remember your first year. No one does.
> >>>
> >>>----------------------
> >>>No, that's NOT true. Congitive research proves that we recall great
> >>>portions of the first year, and the things we learned there, they just
> >>>aren't indexed for easy retrieval as well, is all.
> >>
> >>"We now know that infantile amnesia is a true amnesia, and the memories
> >>were never stored in the first place. It's not that they are there and
> >>can't be retrieved." - Dr. Lise Eliot, Chicago School of Medicine
> >> /tools/sci_tech/biotek/
> >
> > -------------------------------
> > You're misinterpeting her.
>
> I quoted her.
>
> > She said:
> >
> > Memory is processed in a portion of the brain called the
> > hippocampus. Eliot said the hippocampus is the like the
> > brain’s “tape recorder” – the first part of the brain that
> > processes memory before it goes to the cortex for
> > long-term storage.
> >
> > The hippocampus is not well developed in infants, which is
> > why most people cannot remember early life events. “The
> > hippocampus is just not mature enough to store those
> > conscious memories,” she said.
> > ------------------------
> > If it were so that the hippocampus was not functional in infancy, then
> > no one could learn to walk or learn spatial abilities. She said "not
> > well developed", which is true of the entire brain, but because
> > of plasticity and the "synaptical exurberance" she mentioned earlier.
> > In other words, it is QUITE functional, just not as complexly so.
>
> "Babies learn implicit memories, not explicit, conscious memories. They
> learn through conditioning and association."
>
> > Understanding of the development of the brain’s memory
> > system has shed some light on old psychological debates,
> > such as the Freudian notion that all of a person’s early
> > experiences are stored, but repressed.
> > -------------------------
> > Nobody has believed that in 50 years.
>
> They said it was an "old psychological debate", but you claimed that the
> memories are there but aren't indexed for easy retrieval. She, an
> Associate Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the Chicago
> Medical School who has published over 40 works on brain development in
> children, says that they aren't stored at all.
-------------------------
You're trying to use what she said to deny that ANY memories are there,
but given the well-known indexing problem AND the much less complex
nature of early human memories, I'm sure she would add that what is
often taken for a lack of memories is simply the slow early development
of the brain's personal memory facility. Obviously memory doesn't start
instantly at an adult personalized level, it does so gradually, as she
would invariably admit.

As I said, you're misinterpreting her. She would say that the ones
before the personal awareness arises are not "there", but that those
after that are "there", but more vague and less intellectual, just
not nearly as "there" as in their later developed complexity.


> > “We now know that infantile amnesia is a true amnesia,
> > and the memories were never stored in the first place. It’s
> > not that they are there and can’t be retrieved,” Eliot said.
> > “Babies learn implicit memories, not explicit, conscious
> > memories. They learn through conditioning and
> > association.”
> > -----------------------------
> > Not quite. These "implicit" memories of which she speaks:
> >
> > 1) Are NOT the kind of non-personal memories that squirrels have that
> > tell them, ., where nuts were buried last year, which are of a kind
> > where the animal knows, but doesn't recall how they know, or even
> > recall any incident, they simply know where from their impression.
> > They do not even recollect these from the standpoint of a personality,
> > but they neither know nor bother to want to know where they originate,
> > they are simply capable of them, unconsciously, as a machine might do.
> >
> > 2) Instead are just very simple and primitive sense impressions, but
> > which ARE a part of the remembered personal life story of the infant
> > which are later recalled by the more developed person and these
> > memories are enhanced and embellished over time and repeated access
> > and modification.
> >
> > So CAN we remember our first year of life? Yes,
>
> No.
> "...the memories were never stored in the first place..."
-------------------------
Nonsense, memory doesn't just start up instantaneously! The ones she
is talking about are the VERY early ones that the pre-conscious baby
(before 4-6 weeks acording to congitive scientists) doesn't even lay
down!


> > but just not with
> > crisp adult detail or understanding of what we perceived, and not
> > well-indexed for access by temporality, and not with adult perceptive
> > abilities. But yes, we can indeed!
> >
> > But no person recalls what it was like to be a fetus, nor can or do
> > they ever retrieve or recall and embellish any such memory as theirs,
> > as the property of their personality, as a personal memory! Those would
> > be non-personal functional memory, which is not claimed as personal
> > history, and which has nothing personal associated with it. A fetus
> > may learn to find its thumb to suck,
>
> Impossible. A fetus is incapable of learning anything.
--------------------------
It can learn to suck its thumb, and a few other things, any living
machine can do that. It just can't be a conscious person!


> > but it will never remember or
> > even think it remembers sucking on it.
> > --
> >
> > Now:
> > Much of what an adult would identify as "personal memories" are of
> > such a level of complexity that those of a child are not at all at
> > a similar level, and not as easily remembered anyway, because of the
> > less than fully systematic indexing of them of which only persons
> > nearly pebescent are capable. But memories of scenes, identities of
> > others, previous appearances of the environment, even some susprising
> > events, are memories that even an infant of only a few weeks lays down
> > and can be retrieved later through simple directed memory exercises.
>
> "the memories were never stored in the first place. It’s not that they
> are there and can’t be retrieved"
-------------------------------
Nonsense, memory doesn't just start up instantaneously! The ones she
is talking about are the VERY early ones that the pre-conscious baby
(before 4-6 weeks acording to congitive scientists) doesn't even lay
down!

You're trying to use what she said to deny that ANY memories are there,
but given the well-known indexing problem AND the much less complex
nature of early human memories, I'm sure she would add that what is
often taken for a lack of memories is simply the slow early development
of the brain's personal memory facility. Obviously memory doesn't start
instantly at an adult personalized level, it does so gradually, as she
would invariably admit.

As I said, you're misinterpreting her. She would say that the ones
before the personal awareness arises are not "there", but that those
after that are "there", but more vague and less intellectual, just
not nearly as "there" as in their later developed complexity.



> > But these memories of appearance and surrounding and the identities
> > of others, and surprising or formative experiences can be recalled
> > from memory only a couple months after birth, and certainly by later
> > the first year, when the most precicious say their first few words.
> >
> > The eveidence for this comes from Cognitive Science experimentation
> > with adults recollecting very early settings and changes in their
> > surroundings, and first surprising experiences from that time, and
> > which were supported by family recollections that paralleled them.
> >
> > In one case, a woman recalled a big dark room that smelled funny,
> > and had light shining into it from the other end, and how the floor
> > felt dusty and how there were things she remembering hearing her
> > mother say were "very old" in there, and this became the woman's
> > lifelong memory hook and touchstone for understanding old things,
> > antiques, and even that musty smell found in many attics. This
> > woman had believed this was merely an image her imagination had
> > confabulated from her mother's telling her about old things. But,
> > as happened, that upstairs apartement was that of her grandparents'
> > house, where they lived for the first year of her life, and the
> > unfinished attic, which was in the other end of the apartment, and
> > connected by a door, was rarely opened and never discussed later in
> > her life because the upstairs apartment was removed when she was
> > ten months old in the renovation of the house into a single level
> > house after they moved into their own home. She didn't know where
> > they were living during her first year, until she related these
> > images to her mother and grandmother, who were totally shocked
> > that she could remember something like that, and it was then that
> > they informed her what it was that she had seen, that it was an
> > attic, and that it was unfinished and always smelled musty like the
> > old unfinished wood rafters that were almost a century old, and
> > that the door did enter onto their apartment, but that it was behind
> > where a dresser stood, and so they seldom went into it, except to
> > place something in storage or retrieve it. They even recalled what
> > they hqad gone into that attic for, and they had placed her early
> > memory at about six months old!!! Now this all is not to demonstrate
> > that 6 month old children can understand lots of english words and
> > concepts like age that are foreign to them, these impressions were
> > surely modified by later learning and remanufactured in the woman's
> > mind continuously over time into her adult version of that memory,
> > anotated with concepts and added material at higher levels, but it
> > does indicate there is PERSONAL MEMORY at that age and before. In
> > the long article I read on the subject they gave one after another
> > similar story of very early memory that was supported by family
> > recollections without having been the topic of any previous family
> > discussion.
>
> And John Edward is getting a message from someone with a "G" sounding
> name... is it George?... Gerry?...
-------------------------------
You know better than that.


> > I have identified a few of those myself from experience fairly early
> > in an my first year of life, and before I brought them up were NOT
> > family lore that I might have just heard. I won't go into details,
> > but trust that they were even more persuasive than the incident above.
> >
> >
> >
> >>>But before the 4 to 6 week mark after birth, they find there is nothing
> >>>more that is attributable. And experiment with infants shows they learn
> >>>nothing before that which evidences a personality, they cannot find
> >>>themselves in a mirror, understsnd humor, or anticipate a conditioned
> >>>response as a personalized being does.
> >>
> >>Terry Schiavo couldn't do those things either, but she was a person.
> >
> > ---------------
> > As it turned out, they discovered at autopsy that SHE WASN'T,
>
> Autopsies don't determine whether someone is a person.
--------------------------
Since with their brain sectioned they hardly can be, I know. But it
CAN show whether they WERE a person or not, after they suffered a
devastating brain injury, as Schiavo did. She seemed to the wishful
like she was looking about, but the spine and medulla can do that
and run the other cranial nerves all by itself, without anybody
actually being "home". The lights weren't even on when they got in
there.


> Personhood is a
> legal status with a criteria of "born, human, and alive", nothing more.
-------------------------------
Until they suffer a devastating brain injury or suffer a more easily
understood form of death. Then the law allows us to disconnect and
bury them so they don't stink.


> > and prove the surmise and disagnosis of vegtative brain death. She had
> > literally virtually NO blood flow to her cerebrum, and thus no thought
> > or even function was possible. If you mean she was a legal "person",
> > that is because she had once been such, but that she had not yet then
> > been shown not to be.
>
> If she were born in that condition, she would have been a person
> immediately after birth.
------------------------------
Nope. Total and complete nonsense. They turn off babies born with
that kind of devastating brain injury, and they don't even fill out
a certificate of live birth anymore. For instance, anencephalic babies
are born without most of their brain. They will not survive as a human
person, so they turn them off. Most so-called "partial birth abortions"
were done to manage their disposal without disturbing the family with
a seeming live baby that won't ever be a person or survive.


> > We give other previously alive/self-aware
> > humans the benefit of the doubt, such as wehn sleeping or in coma.
>
> Ridiculous.
--------------------
It is what we do, and why we are not allowed to kill sleeping persons.
The law in that regard is a pact of protection between us, but one
which we suspend when either a body without a being is still living,
whether a fetus or a brain-dead human former being.


> >>As
> >>I said previously, state of consciousness is irrelevant. Born, human,
> >>and alive is all that matters.
> > -------------------
> > If THAT was true
>
> Which it is.
---------------------
Bullshit. Live meat is not a human being.


> > then we'd have brain-dead all over the place kept
> > alive by expensive machines
>
> They are.
-------------------
No, once officially brain-dead, they can be turned-off!


> > while the rest of us ACTUALLY living people starved!!!
>
> Why would living people starve? Did we run out of Pringles?
----------------------
No, we'd run out of everything else paying for more heart-lung
machines!! Dumbshit! (See below!:)


> > And we'd have tons of miscarried live fetuses
--------------------
Repost:
And we'd have tons of miscarried live fetuses being caredfor by
vast numbers of us, and some few would become the unlucky damaged
children who suffer horribly from crippling debilitations and
retardation.


The ignorant assertion that fetuses are persons actually carries FAR
MORE social disruption and difficulty than the Fundies would ever lead
us to imagine.


> > And we'd have tons of miscarried live fetuses
--------------------------
> There is no such thing as a miscarried live fetus. That's like saying a
> rocketship is "manned unmanned".
----------------------
Moron. I guess you never worked in an ER as I did. Lots of miscarried
fetuses are alive, they just die because nobody tries to use any
extraordinary measures! We could keep lots of them "alive" with lots
of heart-lung machines in a desperate quest for more profound retards,
but we DON'T because it would mean monopolizing much of the GDI for
that!!
Steve