In this seminar, I explore implications of a constructivist model of memory for liturgical theology. Recent findings in cognitive neuroscience challenge the classical model of memory in philosophy as a storage device wherein memories are imprinted from experience and reproduced when remembering. It appears, however, that remembering past events consists in active (re)constructions in the present in a similar manner and via the same mechanisms as imagining the future. This means, counterintuitively perhaps, that one can successfully simulate memory of an event without a prior experience of that event. Further, as I argue and drawing on an enactivist theory of cognition, active (re)constructions of the past in memory are generated via an organism’s embodied interactions with, and navigations of, its environment. A constructivist-enactivist model of memory has hitherto unexplored implications for liturgical theology. In exploring these implications, I go on to argue that anamnesis—that is, the liturgical action of celebrating the Eucharist in remembrance of Christ—is better explained by a constructivist enactivist model of memory than by the classical model.
BUKI FATONA is nearing completion of a Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford in Theology (Science and Religion). Her research brings together her degrees in Microbiology (BSc); Theology (BA); and Epistemology, Ethics, Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science (MSc). In her work, she examines memory systems in antiquity (Aristotle) and the medieval period (Augustine and Thomas Aquinas) via the lens of contemporary cognitive neuroscience. It is a work which draws on her knowledge of, and passion for, classics; ancient and medieval science and philosophy of mind; contemporary philosophy of memory and cognitive neuroscience. https://www.theology.ox.ac.uk/people/buki-fatona.
