Toward a Metafunctional Theory of Memory: Recursive Triadic Architecture, Temporal Metabinding, and Mnemonic Worldhood

Abstract

This preprint develops the Metafunctional Theory of Memory (MTM) within the broader Brain Metafunction Framework (BMF). The MTM conceptualizes memory as the organism-level metafunction of continuity organization: the process through which past-derived structures remain operative, reconstructible, transformable, and prospectively relevant within present and future organism–world engagement. It proposes a recursive triadic architecture comprising Afferent Mnemonic Differentiation (AMD), Metafunctional Mnemonic Integration (MMI), and Efferent Mnemonic Enactment (EME). Within this architecture, temporal metabinding is proposed as the core recursive integrative operation situated principally within MMI, coordinating heterogeneous mnemonic contributions across systems, domains, timescales, and modes of accessibility. The organism-level achievement of this organization is mnemonic continuity; when phenomenologically expressed, recursively organized mnemonic continuity constitutes mnemonic worldhood, the lived historical depth through which prior experience shapes familiarity, rememberedness, relational continuity, learned practical orientation, expectation, and experienced future possibility. The theory extends beyond explicit recollection and autobiographical memory to include procedural competence, habits, priming, conditioning, affective dispositions, bodily expectations, relational familiarity, semantic structures, and prospective intentions. It integrates cognitive, systems-neuroscientific, clinical, embodied, phenomenological, and philosophical perspectives while distinguishing neural mechanisms from recursive architecture, architecture from organism-level achievement, and mnemonic continuity from its phenomenological expression. The article examines reconstructive memory, prospection, declarative–nondeclarative coordination, distributed cortical–subcortical contributions, clinical and boundary phenomena, empirical expectations and falsification criteria, and the relation of memory to perception, attention, and agency within the BMF.