SAY WHAT? –
Nov. 17, 2025 – The leading theories of memory describe it as being stored in the brain – similarly, some argue, to the way a computer stores memory. But this assumption relies on materialist assumptions and problematically bypasses the hard problem of consciousness. Memory is not stored in space, but in time, argues philosopher Victoria Trumbull.
From ancient times, philosophers have used the “storage” metaphor to describe the phenomenon of remembering. Memory is often pictured as a vast warehouse or library of experiences. In the past century, this “storage” metaphor has come to be taken literally: neuroscientists today maintain that a “memory” is simply a given pattern or collection of patterns of neural activity. This hypothesis forms a key part of the greater worldview known as “materialism” or “physicalism”: in brief, the idea that reality consists solely in physical stuff, and, correspondingly, that the human mind is reducible or equivalent to the body or the brain.
The central problem with this picture of memory is that, like many descriptions of the mind, the storage metaphor is only a metaphor. It feels intuitive to say that we “store” memories like books in a library or files on a hard drive. While this is a useful metaphor insofar as it helps us to describe and express what it feels like to remember, it cannot be anything more than this.
