(July 16, 2012 at 5:07 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: The experience of the memory. When I experience pain, I know what pain feels like. When I experience a reliable memory, I know for certain that the past occurred by virtue of the experience of the memory.
It doesn't need to be justified by something else. A reliable memory is a reliable experience and informs reliably of the past. I don't need to prove that, the experience proves it.
But you don't have access to past experiences. You only have access to memories of past experiences.
Let's say you experience a memory--that is, you have a recollection of some experience. Your reasoning seems to be, "Well, since I remember it, it must be that the experience actually occurred." That is, that all memories are reliable by definition.
Does this stand to reason? Are we incapable of forming false memories? It seems to lack both a posteriori and a priori support--that you have a memory does not imply that the content of that memory accurately reflects some past state of affairs.
“The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among the infidels if any Catholic, not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false.”
