Copper and the Cognitive realm

[Gasper he/him]

So I has been reading the forums for the last two weeks and reading Mistborn: Secret History. The cognitive realm got me thinking about copper minds, does the coppermind store a portion of your cognitive self? 

[Weltall]

Memory seems to be more of a Spiritual aspect, to judge by what Brandon had to say about Lightsong recovering his pre-Returned memories.

Quote

Argent

When you say that the Returned are cognitive shadows, are they shadows of the people they were pre-death? In other words, is Lightsong Llarimar's cognitive shadow stapled to his body with a Divine Breath?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, they are. (The evidence in the books is Lightsong obtaining some of the memories his pre-death soul had.)

Footnote: It’s likely that “Llarimar” is supposed to be “Stennimar”
source

Emphasis on the linking of memory and soul.

[Calderis he/him]

@Weltall I have been frustrated at times with Brandon's loose usage of the word soul. Sometimes he appears to use it for the Spiritual, and often (especially in the case of Cognitive Shadows) to refer to the Cognitive.

This could easily be me reading too much into things... I find it very hard to credit memory being a Spiritual property though. Memory is a purely mental function and the Cognitive is the Realm of the mind. 

[continuumg]

@Calderis

I was under the impression that the soul is the innate Investiture of an individual, which resides in all three realms; primarily the physical during life, and that it then sort of drains into the spiritual realm via the cognitive upon death.

Edited April 7, 2018 by continuumg

[The One Who Connects he/him]

On 4/6/2018 at 7:53 PM, Calderis said:

I find it very hard to credit memory being a Spiritual property though. Memory is a purely mental function and the Cognitive is the Realm of the mind. 

Guess it depends on how you look at it. Personally, I see memories as connections to past people/places and past events/other.

Or at least, memory is how those spiritual connections manifest in the PR.

Edited April 9, 2018 by The One Who Connects

[Calderis he/him]

44 minutes ago, The One Who Connects said:

Guess it depends on how you look at it. Personally, I see memories as connections to past people/places and past events/other.

Or at least, memory is how those spiritual connections manifest in the PR.

I don't see those as the same thing. The connection is probably there due to the interactions that resulted in the memory, but I see the memory itself as a Cognitive record that would coincide with the spiritual force of Connection to the target. Brandon has compared Connection to gravity, so I see it working on both things that are connected. The memory is internal to one party. 

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

On 4/6/2018 at 6:59 PM, Gasper said:

So I has been reading the forums for the last two weeks and reading Mistborn: Secret History. The cognitive realm got me thinking about copper minds, does the coppermind store a portion of your cognitive self? 

I would answer this as: "not directly." Storing/tapping memories, or tapping someone else's memories for that matter, could seriously alter your cognitive and spiritual self, but I don't think you're storing your cognitive self, which would make you more vulnerable to certain types of foreign Investiture. One practical example: if two people stored all of their memories in identityless metalminds and traded them, they would both be radically altered, but I wouldn't say they had literally swapped or merged Identities (capitalized). If they made keyed metalminds before/after the swap, I imagine those would still be keyed to their physical, spiritual, and by extension, cognitive self.