Seeing red

[emjay]

About 7 +/- 2, I don't think it's about "contexts."  I'm pretty sure it's how many separate entities or bits of information your mind can track at one time.  And then, there's chunking, which I guess you mean by context, though I don't think you mentioned learning as the binding force of a given context.  Maybe I'm not understanding you, and for sure I forget a lot from my psych courses 20 years ago.

As for your biggest context being the present, that I'm not sure about.  I think the idea of self is the biggest context, and then the world view.  That's why things like self-generation of ideas lead to better recall, perhaps: it connects say a new word you're learning in a language to the narrative of the self.

Just being argumentative here.  You said SO many things that were right on and interesting, but those are the thigns I arbitrarily picked to engage on.

I never learnt about 7 +/- 2 in the context of contexts either But in my understanding of contexts since then, I started to see the two could be related, but it's just a theory. My psych courses were about 15 years ago and I've forgotten all about chunking. But yes I have mentioned that learning is the binding force of contexts (in fact it's my mantra )... associative learning... that's what contexts are... collections of self-sustaining and related associations. So not just a tree of associations but a tree that relies on a tree that relies on a tree that feeds back into the first one etc and therefore can maintain activation just by network dynamics even when it's no longer receiving input.

No, I'm not sure about that either, especially after this thread where I've come to a new understanding of the self. So I'll give you that one... the biggest context could be the present in the sense of sensory awareness or it could be the self, or both, with self as one more object but that's a bit confusing... so I think for my own sanity I'll keep talking and thinking in the first person

Thank you And no problem... let the arguments... discussions... commence I've missed you