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On the Constructive Theory of Memory

  • Chapter
The Structuring of Experience

Abstract

For hundreds of years, psychology has pursued the study of its problems in accordance with a particular view of how the human being obtains and represents knowledge of the world. I refer to the empiricist-associationistic account formulated in the 17th and 18th centuries by Hobbes, Locke, and their peers and developed and maintained by their successors. As Hamlyn (1971) has put it, empiricism “is the thesis that we are ‘given’ items of information in experience, in sense data” (p. 14). The laws of association then work on these items. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss this view in any detail, but it is enough to say that it essentially ignores the problem that to perceive an item of information, it is first necessary to have a conception of what an item is.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA

    Charles N. Cofer

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  1. Charles N. Cofer
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA

    Ina Č. Užgiris

  2. York University, Downsview, Ontario, Canada

    Fredric Weizmann

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© 1977 Plenum Press, New York

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Cofer, C.N. (1977). On the Constructive Theory of Memory. In: Užgiris, I.Č., Weizmann, F. (eds) The Structuring of Experience. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-8786-6_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-8786-6_12

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4615-8788-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4615-8786-6

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