European Journal of Parapsychology c © 2006 European Journal of Parapsychology Volume 21.2, Special Issue, pages 182–202 ISSN: 0168-7263 Memory Without a Trace

Ever since Plato proposed that memories are analogous to im-pressions in wax, many have suggested that memories are formed through the creation of traces, representations of the things remem-bered. That is still the received view among most cognitive scientists, who believe the remaining challenge is simply to determine the pre-cise physical nature of memory traces. However, there are compelling reasons for thinking that this standard view of memory is profoundly wrongheaded — in fact, disguised nonsense. This paper considers, firstly, what those reasons are in detail. Secondly and more briefly, it considers how trace-like constructs have undermined various areas of parapsychological theorizing, especially in connection with the evi-dence for postmortem survival-for example, speculations about cellu-lar memory in transplant cases and genetic memory in reincarnation cases. Similar problems also emerge in areas often related to para-psychology — for example, Sheldrake’s (1981) account of morphic resonance