Supernatural Fiction Readers discussion

Trying to work out the dialogue for an argument in a WIP; characters are debating memories.

One character (earlier in the series) lost half their brain, then regenerated it. For awhile, they were missing some of their memories.

Duirng the current adventure, the group encounter ghosts and the subject comes up about how ghosts remember. The debate centers around brains.

Side 1 of the argument is that brains don't contain memories, they are just the interface for souls to control the body, and interact with the world. This side will point that ghosts don't have corporeal brains, so how would they remember their previous lives if memories were purely a function of the brain

Side 2 argues that science has proven that memories are formed by clusters of neurons in the brain- they point out the regenerated character themselves lost memories when their brain was damaged and didn't get them all back,


Curious if this argument has come up before in anything. Not that long of a scene, I'd just like to have some clever arguments. Memories and the past, and ghosts of the past play an integral role in the plot of this one.

Part of the underpinnings of my own series is that memories are stored as patterns in the soul, which get returned to the well from which all soul stuff springs. The business of life is to generate experiences which become these patterns which are stored in the mind of God. What the person can remember of their lives before they die is only a fraction of what they have actually done.On the other side is the often-made point that ghosts themselves don't remember all of their own lives, just the part they are fixated upon. I've only seen one book present the ghosts of the past as vital continuing presences in the world.
I also have in mind a prequel for St. Martin's Moon called A Box of Soul, which will use the idea that the recording of memories is the recording of souls.

Memories could be formed by clusters of neurons, but not all memories are all that important. They fade through disuse. Important memories or very vivid ones get more of a charge, become more deeply ingrained, & form an actual pattern around the physical portions, an aura or soul.

Perhaps the soul (aura) is simply an electrical field - a cohesive cloud. Maybe it slowly shreds with time, the less important bits dissipating into static. Maybe death causes a deeply ingrained 'memory' in the cloud, but the trauma of death disturbs the cohesion. Some stabilize over time, others don't do as well or dissipate.

Just some thoughts...

In Will Self's How the Dead Live ghosts are accompanied by all the parts of their former selves, so they are reborn as ghosts with all the teeth they lost as an old person, along with any spirits of miscarried foetus amd most intriguingly the 'fats', who are fat ghosts made of any weight they have dieted or exercised away.

I don't know if that is any help, but I would have imagined that since ghost have no corporial body, physical damage sustained to the physical body prior to death would only be carried through to the ghostly body if there is some kind of external reason as to why they are manifested as a spirit, such as say the headless horseman or the beheaded ghost who carries his head under his arm.

I was thinking more of the idea that memories are physical- for example in Fringe they injected memories, in the form of a fluid into Olivi Dunham, to make her think she was the alternate Olivia Dunham.

How the Dead Live sounds very cool. Wish I had more time to read!