Common wisdom, philosophical analysis and psychological research share the view that memory is subjectively positioned toward the past: Specifically, memory enables one to become re-acquainted with the objects and events of his or her past. In this paper I call this assumption into question. As I hope to show, memory has been designed by natural selection not to relive the past, but rather to anticipate and plan for future contingencies -- a decidedly future-oriented mode of subjective temporality. This is not (...) to say memory makes no reference to the past. But, I argue, past-oriented subjectivity is a by-product of a system designed by natural selection to help us face and respond to the "now and the next". I discuss the implications of the proposed temporal realignment for research agendas as well as the potential limitations of measures designed to explore memory by focusing on its retentive capabilities. (shrink)

After defining various aspects of memory, this paper has sought to outline the phenomenology of memory developed by Erwin Straus and his effort to refute the trace or engram theory of memory storage. We found Straus proposing some major insights : that human experience has its own structure of lived time, that this experience transcends the realm of physical events, and that the suchness of past experiences is preserved, and can be reactivated, in lived time. Straus's approach repudiates the conventional (...) reductionistic wisdom about memory. That wisdom has some powerful support, both ideological and experimental. However, other evidence taken from physiological, neurological, clinical and psychological observations lends weight to Straus's views. The final answer is not in, but it seems plausible that Straus was on the right track toward a framework for human memory. We concluded with a brief broadening out of the Straus framework into the whole realm of lived time or temporality. (shrink)