Tell Me a Story (about how Strawson gets it wrong about stories)

  Once upon a time I was having dinner at the home of a colleague, a professional philosopher. The conversation took an intriguing turn when my colleague revealed that he had virtually no visual memory. Of course I had known that people remember things and events with varying degrees of vivacity and in different ways. Some folks remember conversations by hearing the voices of the participants. Others focus on the ideas, moods, or visual images. Nevertheless, I was surprised to hear that my colleague could not recollect common objects, except in an almost abstract form. So, for example, if he tried to recall a Coca Cola bottle, the best he could do is see an outline of the shape, a sort of stick figure version of a bottle.   My colleague had no trouble remembering ideas, events, dates, places, etc. He just couldn’t visualize (very well).

If I were inclined to…