 
                        20080529.00

               The verbalization of memory.

     It is not at all infrequent that one remembers a
person but cannot think of his/her name; that one
recapitulates a state of mind which one cannot locate on
the map or on the calendar.  One sees images before one can
identify or describe them.  One has memories before one
expresses them in words.

     The force of memory is pre-verbal and is distinct from
the language in which it is subsequently couched; But
issues of truth and falsehood are created only with the
reflection of memory in words.  Arguably, inasmuch as there
is no subjective falsehood, subjective truth is
qualitatively different from objective truth.  When
Kierkegaard wrote that subjectivity is the truth, he was
trying to preempt the term truth, and denigrate
objectivity.  The fact is, that there _is_ something to be
called "objective truth"; but "objective truth" is not
everything.  But what "objective truth" might be, is not at
all apparent.  Objective truth is not all there is about
human experience.  "Man does not live by bread alone."
Still, it is better, not to muddy the waters.  Truth and
falsehood are matters of symbolic congruity and
incongruity; and subjective experience is pre-symbolic.
Hence it is misleading to argue for subjective truth, since
there can be no subjective falsehood.  Where subjective
validity (truth) is absent, it is not falsehood that takes
its place, but nothing.  Subjective validity (truth) is
passion and conviction; it is the emblem of existence
itself.

     Subjective validity (truth) is qualitatively different
from objective truth. The scientist rightly resents having
his word "truth" high-jacked.  When memory, when
subjectivity, subjective validity (truth) is verbalized it
is altered and, in a sense adulterated.  The story which is
told or written or read points to memory, but at the same
time is something different, more than memory in one
respect, less than memory in another.  Only when memory is
verbalized do its vestiges become true or false.  The
verbalization of memory does not add to memory; it detracts
from it.  Thus "objective" historical validity is
invariably weaker than the "subjective" validity of memory
which underlies it.

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Copyright 2008, Ernst Jochen Meyer
