ABSTRACT
Today I speak of mental processes, most especially of the interaction between knowledge and processing structures. My charge was to speak of “memory and perception,” not of these other things; but I will try to show you that it is not possible to limit the task, for I do not believe that the human mind takes much note of the distinctions made by psychologists. I cannot believe that the human mind is divided up into little compartments—this one doing perception, that one memory, this one emotional, that one rational. We are integrated, wholistic organisms, functioning in a complex, diverse environment. Of course it is impossible to speak of everything at once, even if we had sufficient knowledge to do so. So it does make sense to take a particular view of mental processing and to speak of mental processes from the perspective of perception or from the perspective of memory. The mental structures do look different when viewed with different perspectives.
