Don't be sorry. Life is short.

I am trying to represent a point of view I don't hear in yours. That is all. Maybe I am wrong. But I would only know an argument was taking my point of view seriously if I saw it in the rebuttal.

So, therefore and so forth.

Here's a nice song about memory by Ysaye M. Barnwell sung by Cantus, a Minneapolis male choir, one of my favorites, both choir and song.

I am sitting here wanting memories to teach me
to see the beauty in the world through my own eyes.
I am sitting here wanting memories to teach me
To see the beauty in the world through my own eyes.

You said you'd rock me in the cradle of your arms.
You said you'd hold me ‘til the storms of life were gone.
You said you'd comfort me in times like these and now I need you.
Now I need you...
And you are -
gone.

Something to be cherished.

our collective consciousness — Wallows

I have consciousness; you have consciousness; we do not have consciousness. Not as far as I know, anyway.

Walpurgisnacht doesn't have many connotations; mostly just denotations (the night of April 30). St. Walpurgis specialized in protecting people from pestilence, rabies and whooping cough, as well as witchcraft. She has been oozing oil from her bones for... 800 years or so. Actually the oil is water, but... even so... Apparently she is still i business; she died in 777.

Christmas on the other hand is so loaded with connotations one can't even get close to what it denotes. (denote = factual attachments; connote = affective attachments)

Christmas on the other hand is so loaded with connotations one can't even get close to what it denotes. (denote = factual attachments; connote = affective attachments) — Bitter Crank

What's the difference between connnatations and denotation? How do they exist mutually independent of one abother?

One word used in two ways; denote means to use a word for factual communication. In the sentence, "I have ten marbles." "marbles" denotes small round glass objects that are used in games. In this sentence, "She has lost her marbles." marble connotes the sanity or good sense that she has lost. "He still has all his marbles." connotes that he is still high functioning.

If I say "The right wing of the bird is crooked." I am using "crooked" to objectively describe a broken wing. If, on the other hand, I say "The right wing of the Republican party is crooked." I am making a value judgement, I am connoting wickedness. Some would say that I am denoting wickedness because it is a plain fact that the right wing of the Republican party is wicked. So the difference between denote and connote is a bit fuzzy. But the Republican right wing is definitely crooked, no matter how you slice it.

When you start walking, you might find the map is not quite right, bears may attack you without warning, there was no mention of the swamp you will have to circumvent.

If you survive, you might want to make a new map. — Valentinus

I like this, and this is itself a map to aid us in the journey or our map making on its journey into its blindness.

First, memories do not refer to anything if they're not present-to-mind.

When they're present-to-mind, they only refer to a "where" when the individual in question takes some part of the memory, or the whole thing, to "point to" a location.

First, memories do not refer to anything if they're not present-to-mind. — Terrapin Station

What does that even mean?

So, let me posit some thoughts. Idealism is true.

Namely, those memories occupy no spatiotemporal location. They exist in the mind. Whatever that denotes.

The problem with memory is that we have other memories that are influencing our interpretation of the memory we want to decipher.

No memory is without a context of another memory, thus, all memory is not factual, but abstract and based on our interpretation before we speak it as fact. Memory is a false truth about past events and actual truths that gets corrupted by emotion and biological processes as a veil in front of the real truth.

Memory defines us as a person but is merely an illusion of the actual truth about us.

Good, so memories are metaphysical?

I would say so. Memory is nothing magical, it's a physical process of a biological mind that is interpreting data as it is playing back data. A computer that is playing back memory does it with perfect data recovery, but a human mind is scrambling everything and mixing it together with other memories. It's basically not a tool for playing back information, but playing back identity and the aspects of a human intellect. Memory is playing back data and mixing it with new information in order to further the development of that human intellect.

Compared to animals, who remember things as both memories and instinct, we have a far more advanced form of memory which is forming how we behave. We can interpret memory and make choices based on it. But it's still mixed with emotion that is changing how we remember things, which means we have memories to be able to function through our intellect, not just remember because we can. We remember something, just like other animals, but we can interpret it to change behavior in order to change outcomes in natural situations.

This means that we don't have memories to be able to record history and remember the actual truth about something, but to evolve behavior within a life instead of within lifetimes through changed instincts. The basic difference between us humans and other animals is that we have the ability to change within a life and not between generations. Biologically, it seems that we are the first species to be able to change before generational shifts or biological shifts. We control the biology of ourselves with how we adapt to reality.

Memory as we define it seems to be pretty simply defined through biology, but corrupted by our ways of interpreting it as more magical and mysterious than it actually is. If we observe ourselves as a species through the lens of us being just another animal on this planet, we might more clearly see how our abilities as an animal are working. I think it's arrogant to believe that we are more advanced than we actually are, thinking our intelligence is the product of something mystical rather than accepting that the byproduct of our intelligence is trying to wrap our heads around that we are intelligent. Is the ouroboros of our intelligence.

Whoa. Let me think over this. Preliminarily, what does a memory denote then?

I'd advise you to search on Hume and Reference and on Hume and contingency.

Material conservation permits for the conservation of memory and what it references.