The Cognitive Thread: 4 Memory Without Storage — Horizon-Binding as Ecological Scaffolding

Memory is the most misleading word in cognitive science.

It smuggles in an ontology: something must be stored, kept inside, retrieved later, accessed by a system that contains items representing prior experience.

This picture is not merely wrong — it is impossible once relation is primary.

Nothing in the relational field is stored.

Nothing is retrieved.

Nothing is kept “in mind.”

A living system does not operate by inventory.

It operates by maintaining potentials long enough to stabilise a construal or action.

Memory — especially so-called working memory — is not a workspace, not a buffer, not a scratchpad.

Memory is horizon-binding: the temporary stabilisation of a subset of potential so it does not collapse under competing gradients.

Memory is ecological scaffolding.

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1. The Ontological Error: Treating Possibility as Content

All storage metaphors depend on a representational ontology:

• information must reside somewhere

• cognitive items must persist

• the mind must have an inner container

• retrieval must access a stored trace

But in a relational ontology:

• nothing is represented

• phenomena are actualised, not encoded

• potential is structured, not stored

• readiness is metabolic, not symbolic

• construal produces the phenomenon, not its copy

Thus memory cannot be the preservation of a past state.

It can only be the stabilisation of relational potential in the present.

“Remembering” is the system holding open a readiness pattern that would otherwise collapse.

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2. What Working Memory Actually Is

Working memory — the so-called focus of the current cognitive task — is the clearest case of horizon-binding.

Instead of a workspace with items, it is:

the active maintenance of a local construal-ready horizon pocket.

This pocket:

• sustains a small cluster of potential states

• inhibits competing gradients

• prevents horizon drift

• aligns metabolic readiness toward a specific pattern

• holds a relational configuration open long enough for sequential actualisation

The organism is not maintaining content.

It is maintaining possibility.

Working memory is the tensioned scaffolding around a narrow horizon groove.

When this scaffolding relaxes, the groove collapses, and “forgetting” occurs — not because information is lost, but because the readiness pattern is no longer sustained.

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3. Forgetting Is the Default, Not a Failure

In mainstream psychology, forgetting is a deficit.

In a relational model, forgetting is simply the horizon returning to its natural elasticity.

A potential that is not actively bound dissolves back into the wider readiness field.

Nothing lost.

Nothing deleted.

Just released.

This means:

• memory is effort

• forgetting is relaxation

• recall is re-binding

• rumination is involuntary sustained binding

• distraction is horizon re-expansion overpowering the binding scaffold

Memory and forgetting become dynamic properties of horizon shape, not the presence or absence of content.

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4. Ecological Scaffolding: How the Environment Holds Potential for Us

Because memory is horizon-binding, not storage, the environment becomes part of the memory system — not metaphorically, but literally.

A notebook line, a gesture, a visual anchor, a rhythmic beat: these are not external aids.

They are gradient stabilisers that reduce the metabolic cost of holding potentials open.

Writing something “down so you don’t forget” is not outsourcing content.

It is using the environment to maintain a readiness pattern the organism cannot metabolically sustain alone.

This reframes extended cognition without importing representation:

The environment is not a repository.

It is part of the scaffolding that stabilises relational potential.

Memory is ecological.

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5. Long-Term Memory Without Storage

If nothing is stored, what is long-term memory?

Long-term memory is stabilised patterning of readiness — the durable reorganisation of the relational field.

Learning is not the encoding of information but:

• changes in baseline readiness

• shifts in horizon elasticity

• altered gradient sensitivity

• new inclination patterns

• reorganised coupling relations

A scar is not stored pain, yet it alters future gradients of sensitivity.

Likewise, long-term memory alters the system’s future horizon shape.

Long-term memory is the sedimentation of relational change.

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6. Why This Recut Matters

This model resolves every longstanding puzzle without invoking mechanism:

• the capacity limit of working memory → the metabolic cost of maintaining narrow horizon scaffolding

• the fragility of memory under distraction → horizon re-expansion collapsing the bound pocket

• the difficulty of multitasking → competing horizon bindings destabilise each other

• the role of environment in cognition → gradient scaffolding, not information storage

• the continuity of long-term memory → stable shifts in readiness, not preserved representations

• the phenomenology of remembering → the re-actualisation of a readiness field, not retrieval of content

Memory is no longer a mysterious internal archive.

It is the behaviour of horizons in time.

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7. Memory as a Condition for Construal

Memory provides the scaffolding that lets construal become stable:

• working memory stabilises potentials

• emotion modulates the cost and elasticity of the scaffold

• attention narrows the horizon so the bound potentials can actualise

• construal cuts the phenomenon itself

Memory is the ongoing holding-open that makes meaning possible.

It is not storage.

It is the maintenance of relational potential.

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Next: Post 5 — Construal as the Actualisation Cut