Memory Architecture: Beyond Mechanism and Reductionism

The article analyzes the problem of reductionism in neuroscience, pointing out that the biological description of the engram is not equivalent to a full explanation of human memory. The author invokes David Marr's model and Craver and Bechtel's concept of nested mechanisms to show that remembering processes should be studied at multiple levels: from molecular and cellular, through cognitive, to autobiographical and cultural. The text argues that although ontogenetic interventions confirm the material substrate of memory, they do not render psychological and social categories redundant. Memory is thus a complex system in which physical implementation coexists with autonomous levels of meaning, creating a mosaic unity of explanation.