Because of my ongoing work on an essay tentatively titled Endless Horizons: Theories of the End of Time in a Multiverse of Block Universes, I woke early this morning with a question about the nature of memory and whether it, like physical systems, is subject to entropy. To deepen my understanding of this topic, I decided to engage ChatGPT in a research query. This also presented an opportunity to demonstrate how I ethically use ChatGPT as a research tool.
The experiment was straightforward: I formulated a fairly simple (complex?) philosophical and scientific question and asked ChatGPT for a response. ChatGPT, as previously instructed, provided authoritative sources to accompany its answer. This approach allowed me to gain immediate, well-rounded insights while ensuring I had reliable sources for further book research, should I choose to explore the topic more deeply. In addition to my own well-stocked library, I have access to resources through the local city and county libraries, as well as one of the local universities, where I am an alumnus. I also have access to other libraries associated with organizations of which I am a longstanding member. Moreover, through these libraries and their subscription databases, I have online access to a wide range of books and scholarly materials.
This process reflects my commitment to using AI as a tool to aid my scholarly inquiries—never as a replacement for rigorous research, but rather as a way to generate new questions, gather preliminary information, and identify potential sources for more thorough study.
Below is the question I posed and the response ChatGPT provided. It provides ample information for me to reflect upon and good sources for follow-up if I wanted to pursue the topic further.
My Question To ChatGPT:
Is memory merely the present attempting to retrieve the past, albeit fragmentally? This retrieval process, often redundant and incomplete, may not capture the same fragments of the past on each attempt. Alarmingly, the mind can create new memory fragments to bridge gaps, make sense of discontinuities, or even improve or alter alienating memories. However, might the past itself—the objective past we are striving to retrieve—be subject to its own form of deterioration or entropy over time, making it inherently more difficult to access as time flows forward?
ChatGPT’s Response:
The notion that memory is a fragmented, partial reconstruction of the past has long been recognized in cognitive science and philosophy. Memory, by its nature, is fallible, prone to alteration with each retrieval, and influenced by present emotions and experiences. As you rightly point out, the process of memory retrieval is often redundant, incomplete, and subject to creative interpolations by the mind to make sense of what is forgotten or unclear. This invites the deeper inquiry: Is the “objective past” itself subject to entropy, rendering it less retrievable over time?
To explore this question, we must examine both subjective memory—the internal representation of past events—and the objective past—the events themselves as they occurred in time.
Memory and Reconstruction:
Cognitive science has demonstrated that human memory is reconstructive rather than reproductive. Each retrieval is a dynamic process, during which the brain reassembles fragments of stored information to form a coherent narrative of the past. This phenomenon is supported by work from Elizabeth Loftus, a pioneer in the study of false memories, who demonstrated how suggestibility and the passage of time can alter or create new memories. Her research suggests that memory is not merely a passive storage but an active process subject to distortion (Loftus, 1997).
The brain’s capacity to fill gaps in memory, to “improve” or distort unpleasant recollections, can be seen as a kind of psychological entropy, where the once-clear memory of an event becomes increasingly disordered with each retrieval. As you suggest, this process can indeed make it difficult to capture the same fragment of the past with each attempt.
The Objective Past and Entropy:
Your inquiry into whether the “objective past” itself is subject to entropy requires an exploration of philosophical and scientific thought. In one sense, the past, as it existed in time, is immutable. It has occurred and is fixed in the timeline of the universe. This perspective aligns with the Block Universe theory in physics, where all points in time—past, present, and future—exist simultaneously in a four-dimensional spacetime continuum. Under this model, the past is not subject to degradation; it simply is (Callender, 2010).
However, while the objective past may remain fixed, our access to it is mediated by subjective memory, which is indeed subject to entropy. Neurological studies, such as those by Karl Lashley in his research on engrams, suggest that memory retrieval is dependent on the integrity of neural circuits. Over time, these circuits degrade due to aging, injury, or disease, making it more difficult to retrieve specific memories (Lashley, 1950).
This entropic degradation in the brain mirrors the second law of thermodynamics, which states that systems naturally progress toward disorder. Just as physical systems decay, so too do the biological systems that support memory, causing retrieval to become more fragmented, incomplete, and distorted over time.
Philosophical Considerations on Memory and Entropy:
Philosophically, the question of whether the past itself is subject to entropy touches on deep metaphysical issues. The philosopher Henri Bergson proposed that memory is not a simple retrieval of static information but an active synthesis of the past and present. Bergson argued that our experience of time is fluid, and memory plays an essential role in shaping that experience. As such, memory’s entropic decay may reflect our subjective relationship with time rather than any inherent deterioration in the past itself (Bergson, 1896).
In cognitive psychology, Daniel Schacter explored the “seven sins of memory,” one of which is transience—the natural decay of memory over time. Schacter’s work highlights how memories fade and distort as they become more distant from the present. While the events of the past remain fixed, our mental representation of them becomes increasingly subject to entropy, making retrieval more challenging as time passes (Schacter, 2001).
Conclusion:
In conclusion, while the objective past may remain untouched by time’s passage, existing as a fixed point in the spacetime continuum, our access to it through memory is undeniably subject to entropy. Neurological and cognitive processes that support memory deteriorate over time, rendering our recollections increasingly fragmentary, incomplete, and prone to distortion. Memory’s entropic nature reflects the broader theme of disorder and decay that governs all physical systems. Thus, while the past itself remains fixed, our ability to access it diminishes with time—a poignant reminder of the impermanence of human cognition.
References:
Bergson, H. (1896). Matter and Memory. Swan Sonnenschein & Co.
Callender, C. (2010). The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Time. Oxford University Press.
Lashley, K. (1950). In Search of the Engram. Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology, 15, 1-24.
Loftus, E. (1997). Creating False Memories. Scientific American, 277(3), 70-75.
Schacter, D. L. (2001). The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Northcoast Antiquarian 