Author: Yang Qingfeng
Abstract: With the development of smart drugs, brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) and chip implantation, it has become possible to enhance human cognition and memory. Memory enhancement includes the enhancement of memory capacity, the modification of memory content and the manipulation of memory-related behavior. Scientists are making use of various technologies to realise these forms of intervention. These practices pose a challenge to existing accounts of the nature and categorization of memory. At present, prevailing conceptions of memory are constrained by an “attachment view”, according to which memory is regarded as subordinate to cognition, and memory enhancement is consequently subsumed under cognitive enhancement. To understand and deal with this challenge is to change the notion of memory. One possible approach is to rethink memory from the perspective of states of life. Memory can be divided into two types: dry memory and wet memory. This distinction has the potential to overcome the limitations imposed by the attachment view of memory. It also enables memory to be understood from multiple perspectives, including temporal representation, material traces, behavioral processes, motility emergence, ethical practice, and existential meaning. In this way, the attachment view can be overcome through a transformation of our notion of memory.
Keywords: Memory; Human enhancement; Life attribute
Journal: Journal of Dialectics of Nature,(3).
Publish date：2026/1/28
