Questions for Brad

From Michael--

You say "Memory, that most frail and forgiving (and perhaps thereby the most human) of all faculties, is itself a curious mélange of facts fused with phantasy, of convoluted imagery and contradictory ideas ordered and disordered at will and for the sake of merest convenience." So how is memory different from perception? Don't the same attributes you use to describe remembering apply to the way people experience cognition in the present, in the living stream of life? Don't we mix facts with fantasy as we encounter everything before us, and don't we, in each present moment, assemble a pretty messy pile of images and ideas mostly intended to help us get from one moment to the next?

It sounds as though, imbedded in what you're saying, there's an accusation: namely, that memory fails in some special way, that there's a kind of collusion between the ego and the process, and that this collusion makes memory stand out in its fundamental erroneousness. If that's true, how does this error distinguish itself from other cognitive processes, all of them beset by contradiction and failings? When, furthermore, does perception become memory? Is my perception of a moment ago already merely a memory? Of an hour ago?

I'm not meaning to find fault; just wanting to talk back to your talk, just keeping the birdie in play.