MEMORY AND MIND:
                AN INTRODUCTION TO AUGUSTINE'S EPISTEMOLOGY
                                Sheri Katz
                            Spring Hill College

1.         INTRODUCTION

     The central point of this paper is to elucidate Augustine's
notion of memory found in Augustine's *Confessions 10*.<<1>>  The
topic is far too complex to do it justice in an hour.  Also, the
Augustinian corpus is vast, so of necessity the talk will involve
some oversimplification and glossing.  I focus on several themes
Augustine pursues:  the imagistic nature of memory, how knowledge
is sometimes achieved without images, the relationship of memory
to mind, skeptical problems that lead to a Christian
epistemology.   Along the way I compare, very briefly,
Augustine's views with those of his philosophical ancestors and
with a recent philosopher of mind.
     Throughout *Confessions*, Augustine relies on memory; the
work is an example of the functioning of memory.  *Confessions*
can be understood as an epistemologically oriented text.<<2>>  
Knowledge of God is sought, and the ostensible route to this goal
is through self-knowledge.  The book opens with its author
seeking God and wondering whether God can be sought if God is not
already known.  The answer to this initial and central question
of how a mere human can know God lies in memory.  That is,
Augustine will find God (and himself), and the answers to all of
his questions, and the font and guarantee of all knowledge by
turning inward and reflecting on his own memory.  He writes:

     Great is the power of memory, an awe-inspiring mystery,
     my God, a power of profound and infinite multiplicity.
     . . .  So great is the power of memory, so great is the
     force of life in a human being whose life is mortal
     (*Conf. *10.17.26).

Or similarly:

     The power of memory is great, very great, my God.  It
     is a vast and infinite profundity.  Who has plumbed its
     bottom?  This power is that of my mind and is a natural
     endowment, but I myself cannot grasp the totality of
     what I am (*Conf.  *10.8.15).

Leaving aside Augustine's rhetoric of self-effacement and
intentional irony, it is patent that he knows a great deal about
memory and its power.   
     The faculty of memory in Augustine's broad usage is more
than just the ability to remember or the act of remembering.  It
encompasses all cognitive capacities.<<3>>   Memory is the
repository of all of a person's experiences and knowledge. 
Memory includes sensations and perceptions, imaginations and
dreams, hopes and fears, emotions and awareness of self.<<4>>  
Memory is the locus of personal identity.  Owing to the
transience and mutability of the present, memory is the focal
point of any sense of continuity experienced.  Through memory the
past and future both become present.  Knowledge resides in
memory.  In short, memory is mind.<<5>>
     In his early writings, where his interest is more like what
we today consider purely philosophical, Augustine discourses on
the nature of memory, its role in the acquisition of knowledge,
and the relationship of memory to the mind as a whole.  But even
after his conversion and his elevation to the position of Bishop
of Hippo, when he presumably had quieted some of the (what he
considers to be) vain intellectual curiosity of his youth
(10.35.54), he returns to discussions of the nature of memory.
     
2.         AUGUSTINE THE NATURALIST

2.1.       Platonist or  Aristotelian?

     Memory is a philosophically important notion for Augustine
owing to his Platonic heritage.  The Platonic doctrine of
recollection and the Platonic notion of the transmigration of
souls figure prominently in his conceptual background as he
develops his epistemology.  But Aristotle's explanations of the
nature of the soul and its relationship to mind, and of how
memory proceeds are important for him too.<<6>>   Augustine does
not denigrate sense perception or the physical world as a source
of knowledge.<<7>>  The world is an absolutely beautiful place,
bearing loads of important, interesting, valuable information. 
Not only is the ordinary world good, it is intrinsically good and
exactly as good as it ought to be.  Things in themselves are not
deceptive.  Ultimately, the message Augustine thinks persons
should get from the physical world is an indication that there is
something else.  So although sense perception is a valuable tool
for the attainment of knowledge, because Augustine believes in
the existence of immaterial entities, eventually sense perception
must yield to an extra-ordinary form of experience (*Conf.
*3.7.12).<<8>>  The transition occurs in memory, thus memory is
theologically fundamental. 
      I must cartoon for a minute and ask whether Augustine's
epistemology Neoplatonic or Aristotelian.  If the epistemology is
primarily Platonic then there will be a tendency to downplay the
empirical; if it is Aristotelian there will be the denial of
otherworldly transcendent reality.  Plato believes that knowledge
is recollection of another plane of reality, owing to the
imagistic nature of the physical world.  Plato, however, fails to
recognize that while recollection may provide a type of
transcendence of the physical, it is itself imagistic, and hence
subject (in principle) to the errors associated with sense
perception.  Also, Platonic epistemology tends to be combined
with a low opinion of what the unaided intellect can do.  Owing
to the other worldly object of knowledge, the exalted status of
the goal, it is difficult to get things right, to achieve
certainty.  So a potential knower requires assistance or
transcendence of natural abilities. 
     Aristotelians on the other hand emphasize the adequacy of
the unaided intellect, owing to the immanence in the world of the
object of knowledge.  Knowers need not transcend their own
abilities to know in order to know.  Aristotelian epistemology,
being basically an empiricist outlook, eliminates the
unbridgeable gulf between a knower and a thing known.  Even in
the absence of divine grace, for an Aristotelian there is no
reason to fear skepticism.  We shall see that Augustine
incorporates elements of both Platonic and Aristotelian
philosophy into his theory of knowledge.  What is distinctive
about Augustine's epistemology in contrast to that of his
philosophical predecessors is its incarnational essence.  We will
explore below what the incarnational nature of reality means, and
the attendant implication that epistemology too is incarnational. 


2.2.       The defeat of skepticism

     In brief, Augustine maintains that the very possibility of
knowledge requires something in addition to persons and the
world.  Yet, frequently, both in *Confessions* and elsewhere,
Augustine nearly ignores the role of God in knowledge
acquisition.  Or at least he makes no particular mention of God,
even if he is always bearing in mind his reliance on God. 
Without special divine assistance speaking from within a person,
nonsensory knowledge is possible.  We know our own existence by
ourselves:

     I asked him:  "Do you a least know you are alive?"
     "Yes," he answered (*DBV *2.7).<<9>>

Also we know the principles of logic:

     Truly I know more about dialectic than about any other
     part of philosophy.   In the first place, as regards
     all the propositions that I have enunciated just now,
     it is dialectic that has taught me that they are true. 
     Furthermore, through it I have learned many other
     truths as well (*CA* 3.13.29).

He also maintains, especially *Contra Academicos*, that many
other aspects of learning are perfectly natural processes.  It
would seem we do not need divine assistance to know the content
of our perceptions, that they are veridical for the most part
(*CA* 3.9.21), or that we are persons and not insects (*CA*
3.10.22).  In attempting (and succeeding, in my view) to defeat
the academic skeptics , Augustine argues for natural abilities to
acquire probable truth.  We know the difference between dream
states and waking states; we do not satiate our hunger by repasts
consumed in our dreams.  We see large objects accurately;  we
walk down the street without running into things.  Faced with
actual opponents, Augustine concedes that we have the knowledge
required for survival.  Like other animals, we regularly and
successfully engage in pain avoidance behavior.  The skeptics are
wrong because their claims run into problems with consistency. 
Augustine also defeats the skeptics on the grounds of the greater
explanatory value of his hypotheses.  He points out to his
interlocutors that he can do a much better job of explaining the
past and predicting the future; it is more coherent; the ontology
implied by his view is more parsimonious than that of the
skeptics. 
     But Augustine goes further in his naturalism in *Confessions
*10.  Our epistemic capabilities are on a continuum with those of
animals.  The main difference between persons' minds and (higher)
animals' minds is that the former can achieve knowledge of God. 
He writes:

     In recalling you I rose above those parts of the memory
     which animals also share, because I did not find you
     among the images of physical objects (*Conf.*
     10.25.36).

Animals see the good and value in the world.  They are incapable
of making rational judgments to that effect, of course, but that
is simply because they are incapable of making any rational
judgments at all (*Conf. *10.6.10).  Unlike Descartes, he
believes that animals have memory and thus some form of mind. 
Augustine says:

     Beasts and birds also have a memory.  Otherwise they
     could not rediscover their dens and nests, and much
     else they are habitually accustomed to.  Habit could
     have no influence on them in any respect  except by
     memory (*Conf*. 10.7.26).

Any creature of habit is a creature with a memory and hence? a
creature with a mind.  Augustine does not suggest that for
animals:  "Without you I could discern none of these things. ...
I listened to you teaching me and giving instructions" (*Conf.
*10.40.65).  Their knowledge is natural.<<10>>  It would seem
that insofar as much human knowledge is analogous to that of
animals, special divine assistance is not always an epistemic
necessity.

3.         IMAGES AND THINGS THEMSELVES

3.1.       Images
     Augustine claims that memory contains only images:   of
things in the world, of the self remembering, and of God. 
*Confessions *10 describes the workings of memory as a form of
representative realism.  That the mind contains only images or
representations and not things themselves in part dictates his
incarnational epistemology (although of course his religious
commitments require the same conclusions.)  He maintains that
while

     the treasuries of innumerable images of all kinds of
     objects brought in by sense-perception (*Conf.
     *10.8.12),
might be perfectly detailed and completely accurate, they are
still images.  Everything that passes through the sense organs is
stored in memory as an image.   Images can be conjured in memory
while the objects themselves are absent.  Memory can distinguish
among various sensory images, or among the images created by a
single sense even when no object is present (*Conf. *10.8.13). 
Yet he notes limits to the number of images produced by memory.  
Iterated memories exist--one can remember that one remembers
(*Conf. *10.13.20)--but not ad infinitum:

     I mention the image of the sun, and this is present in
     my memory.  I recall not the image of its image, but
     the image of itself (*Conf.  *10.15.23).

Memory can discriminate among different things, prefer one type
of object over another, desire one sensory experience as opposed
to another without apparent or obvious external stimuli. But he
is not consistent in maintaining that all memories are
representational.

3.2.       Objects themselves in memory
     In contrast to learning, recognizing and remembering sensory
particulars, learning, remembering or acquiring more abstract
pieces of information does not involve images.  Augustine writes:

     For all that we contemplate we either perceive through
     cogitation, or through a sense or through the
     intellect.  But those things which are perceived
     through sense we also sense to be outside us, ... . 
     But those things which are thought are not thought as
     being in another place other than the very mind which
     thinks them ... (*DIA* 6.10).

Memory's understanding of itself cannot be imagistic, lest a
regress of images or of memories or of faculties of memory arise
(*Conf. *10.15.23).<<11>>  Since God cannot be represented,
whatever is understood of God in memory must not be imagistic. 
The division of what is known via images and what is known in
itself has to do with whether or not there is at least a
potential physical object corresponding to the content of the
mental state.
     Augustine gives three examples of skills which, unlike
ordinary empirical knowledge, leave no object outside the mind
when they are learned.  He says that the skill or idea of what
constitutes literature, the art of dialectical debate, and how
many kinds of questions there are reside in memory in this
distinctive manner (*Conf. *10.9.16).  It is not the case with
the liberal arts that a memory trace inferior to the thing itself
is retained (*Conf. *10.12.19).<<12>>   He writes:  "it is clear
not only that an art is in the mind of the artist, but also that
it is nowhere else except in the mind" (*DIA* 4.5).  Although
with regard to the liberal arts, we discover things that exist
"nowhere else but in the mind," the objects are indeed discovered
and not made by the mind (*DIA *4.6).  
     The sounds used to designate these concepts are mere signs
and not the principles themselves.  The mental numbers stored in
memory are really numbers, while numbers used for counting are
mere signs (*Conf. *10.12.19).  Neither the arts nor number
theory are learned from sense perception.  He writes:

     I retain images of the sounds which constitute these
     words.  I know they have passed through the air as a
     noise, and that they no longer exist.  Moreover, the
     ideas signified by those sounds I have not touched by
     sense-perception, nor have I seen them independently of
     my mind.  I hid in my memory not the images but the
     realities (*Conf.* 10.10.17).

Sometimes then, memory can bring back exactly (or seemingly so)
what was learned, the object itself, unenhanced, undiminished,
unchanged (*non imagines earum, sed ipsas*).  Whereas in knowing
external objects we change them, in knowing the arts (number
theory) we do not transform the object of knowledge.  There is no
external object to be changed into an image (or a brain process).
     Augustine says that memory is the stomach of the mind.  It
can store things without itself tasting them (*Conf. *10.14.21). 
He compares remembering to rumination:

     just as food is brought from the stomach . . . so also
     by recollection these things are brought up from the
     memory (*Conf. *10.14.22). 

If his physicalistic metaphor is played out, what is brought
forth from memory is never the same as what entered originally. 
So with respect to the arts, if the object is not external, and
thus not put in in the first place, when it is brought forth, it
can be exactly the same object time and again.  Memory holds the
realities themselves.  But then one wonders how those realities
got there.  

3.2.1.     Learning, remembering, and forgetting

     For these abstract skills Augustine presents something very
much like the story of the slave boy Plato uses to solve the
heuristic paradox in the  *Meno*.<<13>>  The paradox lies in the
supposed impossibility of searching for something one does not
already know, because unless the object sought is in memory, it
cannot be recognized and hence it cannot be found.  But Augustine
knows that it can be found, thus the object thought must lie in
memory.  Anything found is recognized by comparison with the
image within (*Conf. *10.18.26).  He says:

     So they were there even before I had learnt them, but
     were not in my memory.  Accordingly, when they were
     formulated, how and why did I recognize them and
     say,'Yes, that is true'?  The answer must be that they
     were already in the memory, but so remote and pushed
     into the background, as if in most secret caverns, that
     unless they were dug out by someone drawing attention
     to them, perhaps I could not have thought of them
     (*Conf. *10.10.17).

Since this information does not come from sense, Augustine claims
he does not know how they entered memory in the first
place.<<14>>  We discern the ideas inwardly as they really are,
through the concepts themselves (*per se ipsa intus cernimus*).
     The words, the physical expressions, by which we learn the
liberal arts or other nonsensory ideas are but signs.  The ideas,
the things themselves have not resided in memory for centuries of
Platonic past lives.  Rather, Augustine says, in learning the
liberal arts:   

     We find that the process of learning is simply this: 
     by thinking we, as it were, gather together ideas which
     the memory contains in a dispersed and disordered way,
     and by concentrating our attention we arrange them in
     order as if ready to hand, stored in the very memory
     where previously they lay hidden, scattered and
     neglected.  Now they easily come forward under the
     direction of the mind familiar with them (*Conf.
     *10.11.18).

I am afraid the passage does not answer the question of how these
ideas got into the mind initially, regardless of their scattered
state to the unsophisticated.  It is entirely possible, and
consistent with what Augustine says, that the ideas corresponding
to the liberal arts were learned by ordinary processes, owing to
their evolutionary utility, in the first place.
     In fact his words are compatible with the notion that these
words are heard or read, yet their significance or signification
(that for which they are signs) may not be comprehended on first
hearing.  And what is not understood is most often forgotten.   
Augustine notes that once something enters the senses it is there
forever; it is imprinted indelibly (*Conf. *10.18.27, 10.19.28). 
It is well known that in order to remember something one must
think of it often.  Dennett (1991) is helpful here:<<15>>

     this practice of rehearsal creates a memory of the
     route by which we have arrived at where we are (what
     psychologists call *episodic* memory), so that we can
     explain to ourselves ... just what errors we made. ...
     mutual accessibility of contents provides the context
     without which events occurring "in consciousness" would
     not--*could  not*--make sense to the subject.  The
     contents that compose the surrounding context are not
     themselves always conscious--in fact, in general they
     are not accessible at all ...(p. 278).

     Any of the things you have learned can contribute to
     any of the things you are currently confronting (p.
     279).

Recollection and knowledge involve repeated thought.  So what
happens is that an idea is learned, not fully understood, and so
forgotten.  Somehow, it is recalled, or relearned, and when it is
recognized, it seems to have been hidden.  In this case,
appearance is reality.  It seems to have been hidden because it
was hidden, but just because it was lost does not imply that it
was gone forever.  Forgetting has a long history of problems. 
One must remember that one has forgotten in the first place
(*Conf. *10.16.24).  Forgetfulness itself cannot be remembered at
all!<<16>>  Since one cannot remember what one does not remember,
forgetfulness itself cannot reside in memory.  Nor can the image
of forgetfulness be in memory, for the only way for an image to
get impressed on memory is for the object to be present itself--
internally or externally--in the first place (*Conf. *10.16.24-
25).
     We can arrange our ideas because they have been latent in
memory, and those mysterious processes of which Augustine
frequently writes usually have been working on them in their
spare time, so to speak, getting ready for the moment the
conscious mind wants to say, "Eureka!  Now I get it!" or "I
remember!"  Augustine had said of memory:

     Hidden there is whatever we think about, a process
     which may increase or diminish or in some way alter the
     deliverance of the senses *and whatever else* has been
     deposited or placed on reserve and has not been
     swallowed up and buried in oblivion.  When I am in this
     storehouse, I ask that it produce what I want to
     recall, and immediately certain things come out; some
     things require a longer search, and have to drawn out
     as it were from more recondite receptacles.  Some
     memories pour out to crowd the mind, and when one is
     searching and asking for something quite different,
     leap forward into the center . . ..  . . .Until what I
     want is freed of mist and emerges from its hiding
     places.  Other memories come before me on demand with
     ease and without any confusion of order (*Conf.
     *10.8.12, emphasis mine).

Compare Dennett (1991):

     These [processes] yield, over the course of time,
     something *rather like* a narrative stream or sequence,
     which can be thought of as subject to continual editing
     by many processes distributed around in the brain, and
     continuing indefinitely into the future.  Contents
     arise, get revised, contribute to the interpretation of
     other contents or to the modulation of behavior (verbal
     and otherwise), and in the process leave their traces
     in memory, which then eventually decay or get
     incorporated into or overwritten by later contents,
     wholly or in part. ... While some of the contents in
     these drafts will make their brief contributions and
     fade without further effect--and some will make no
     contribution at all--others will persist to play a
     variety of roles in the further modulation of internal
     state and behavior ... (p. 135).

If we keep in mind Augustine's rejection of the transmigration or
preexistence of souls, and its implication that all knowledge
begins with birth (or at least at some point in utero), in true
empiricist fashion, we can see that Augustine has an answer to
where the ideas of the liberal arts come from, despite his
protests to the contrary.  He says of concepts or ideas that do
not come straightforwardly from the senses that minds familiar
with them have no problem finding them, as we saw.  But they
easily can sink into the deeper recesses of memory, where

     they have to be thought out *as if* they were quite
     new, drawn again from the same store (*Conf. *10.11.18,
     emphasis mine).

So there need be no implication that they are remembered from a
hidden past life.  Nor should he need to invoke an incarnational
epistemology or an inner teacher to confirm these perfectly
natural processes.
     In fact, Augustine does similar reconstruction of both
ordinary events from his past life as well as knowledge of the
sort now under discussion throughout the *Confessions*.  For
instance, at the beginning of the work when enquiring whence he
came, and dismissing the notion that his source is merely his
earthly mother, he contends that he has an intellectual source as
well, a source of his soul or his very being.  Surely these are
not ideas learned by the senses.  Yet as he first asks the
question he answers himself "I do not remember" (*Conf. *1.6.7). 
After denying that he has any memories of the events of his
infancy or of the answers to his more abstract questions, he
proceeds to tell the story of his infancy, and to answer *all* of
the questions concerning which he had claimed to lack knowledge. 
We must remember that he also maintains that *everything* ever
thought about is found in memory:  "In the vast palaces of memory
. . . is whatever we think about . . ." (*Conf.* 10.8.12).  No
doubt the irony is intentional; he has some rhetorical, rather
than philosophical, strategy in mind.

3.3.       Remembering feelings

     In addition to memories of sense perceptions, real or
imagined, and abstract concepts, in *Confessions *10 Augustine
discusses memories of emotions.  He notes how emotions are
remembered in a different way from that in which they were
originally experienced.  The memory of an emotion does not bring
with it the experience of the emotion.  He contends that the same
is true of physical pain; it can be remembered without being re-
felt (*Conf. *10.14.21).<<17>>  Since remembered emotions and
pains operate differently from remembered physical objects,
according to Augustine they must be implanted in memory
differently.  When we imagine a purple cow it really looks
purple; we seem to be seeing purple.  We can sing a song in our
heads, imagining all of the nuances of melody, or the lyrics. 
But we can remember having been happy or hungry without re-
experiencing any of the original feelings.  And fortunately
remembered pains do not hurt (*Conf. *10.14.22, 10.15.23).
     From the differences between remembered perceptions and
remembered emotions, Augustine concludes that knowledge of things
such as happiness does not come through the senses (*Conf.
*10.15.23).  As with abstract objects, the thing itself must be
present to the memory (*Conf. *10.20.29, 10.21.31).<<18>>  I
think it is not inappropriate to suggest that Augustine is
getting at the notion that there is a built in, innate or genetic
ability to react in specified ways to pain without direct
recourse to particular sensory experiences.  Of course Augustine
does not have the vocabulary, or rather, the conceptual
machinery, to talk of evolutionary advantages, central nervous
systems, and DNA.  But I think it is helpful to compare what he
says on this topic with what someone who does have our conceptual
tools says.
     From these same differences, Dennett (1991) concludes that
there must be survival value to our capability to re-experience
in full detail some things but not others.<<19>>  He says:

     the way a brain represents hunger must differ,
     physically, from how it represents thirst--since it
     must govern different behavior depending on which is
     represented.  There must also ... be a difference
     between the way a particular adult human brain
     represents Paris and Atlantis, for thinking of one is
     not thinking of the other.  How can a particular state
     or event in the brain represent one feature of the
     world rather than another?  (The matter is) settled by
     evolutionary processes:  some elements of the system of
     representation can be--indeed must be--innately fixed,
     and the rest must be "learned."  While some of the
     categories in life that matter (like hunger and thirst)
     are no doubt "given" to us in the way we are wired up
     at birth, others we have to develop on our own (p.
     192).

4.   THE RELATIONSHIP OF MEMORY TO MIND:  AUGUSTINIAN DUALISM?

     In *Confessions* 10 Augustine claims that memory is the part
of the soul which enables us to have knowledge of any sort
whatsoever, be it perceptual knowledge, self-knowledge, or
knowledge of God.  But also he claims that memory encompasses the
mind or soul or is identical with the mind or soul.   Memory is
both a part or aspect of the self and at the same time
constitutive of that very entity of which it is a part.  Memory
is that by which we call ourselves I.  He says:

     I who act through these diverse functions am one mind
     (*Conf. *10.8.12).
     [In memory] also I meet myself and recall what I am,
     what I have done, and when and where and how I was
     affected (*Conf. *10.8.14).

     It is I who remember, I who am mind (*Conf. *10.16.25).
While the soul is like that of animals in that it animates the
physical body, it is more than the force that binds the self to
the body.  Augustine says that for persons:

     There exists another power(*vis*), not only that by
     which I give life to my body but also that by which I
     enable the senses to perceive (*Conf. *10.7.11).

This "I" that enables the sense to perceive is the intellect or
memory.  Physical things are:

     reported to the mind which presides and judges of the
     responses.  ... the inner man knows this--I, the mind
     through the sense-perception of my body (*Conf.
     *10.6.9).

The blurring of the concepts memory, soul, self and mind is
complicated further by *De libero arbitrio*'s faculty of "inner
sense."  A faculty shared with animals, the inner sense presides
over and judges the information received from the bodily senses
(*DLA* 2.3-2.7). 
     We must be careful, I contend, not to take the "inner man"
language literally.  Augustine does not exhibit dualism of the
sort posed by Descartes.  I think Augustine sees what Hume later
observes, that whenever he looks inside himself he only catches
himself thinking, or rather, he only catches the thinking and
never the self that does it.  He says:

     I run through all these things, I fly here and there,
     and penetrate their working as far as I can.  But I
     never reach the end" (*Conf *10.17.26).

Memory as a present tense phenomenon, not simply a storehouse of
the past, is not an enduring substance. Memory only *appears*
independent.<<20>>  

     Is the mind, then too restricted to compass itself, so
     that we have to ask what is that element of itself
     which it fails to grasp?  Surely that cannot be
     external to itself; it must be within the mind  (*Conf.
     *10.8.15).

This "*thing*" memory or  the self, that Augustine is looking for
may be tied (in his mind) with his immortal soul.  But note that
he acknowledges that everything "in memory" changes, in Humean
fashion.
     He inherits in part the Aristotelian tradition of soul as
life force, and mind as the thinking faculty in those living
things which can think.  Thus all living things have souls, but
only some living things also have minds.  Augustine does not have
the carefully defined technical terminology to which philosophers
with analytic training are accustomed.  Reflection on one's own
nature, even if it is under the guise of reflection on the
species, is replete with difficulty, prone to paradox self-
deception and even self-contradiction.<<21>>  Compare Dennett
(1991):

     A self, according to my theory is not any old
     mathematical point, but an abstraction defined by the
     myriads of attributions and interpretations (including
     self-attributions and self-interpretations) that have
     composed the biography of the living body whose Center
     of Narrative Gravity it is.  As such, it plays a
     singularly important role in the ongoing cognitive
     economy of that living body (pp. 426-427).

     If you think of yourself as a center of narrative
     gravity . . . your existence depends on the persistence
     of that narrative (p. 430).

This center of narrative gravity of which Dennett speaks seems to
me to be analogous to Augustine's concept of memory, and not any
more clear.
     It comes as no surprise that Augustine could not describe in
further detail the workings of memory.  Progress in untangling
the relationship between the soul, the memory, the self, and the
mind does not occur at a rapid rate.  Indeed contemporary
philosophers argue over the same processes and many use
metaphors, often the same metaphors Augustine used.<<22>>  Some
dualist philosophers argue from the imagisitc nature of the
workings of the mind in a Cartesian vein.  These fuzzy
explanations claim that it *seems* that there are content-laden
images in memory, but that brain processes not only cannot be
identical with these images, but also brain processes cannot
produce or contain these images in any way.  Thus a mind brain
dualism is reached.<<23>>   Once one is immersed in qualia talk
or image talk, the tendency towards Cartesian dualism is
seemingly irrepressible.  Reified qualia or substantive images in
the mind defy explanation.  How then do we create the images of
the things we see?  Perhaps we do no such thing, regardless of
how it *seems*.  Images are not seen; objects are seen.  We do
not see the results of our brain processes.  Seeing is a brain
process.  What we call "seeing images" is a process; and it is
not a process that involves two *things* the seeing and the
image.   Why do some people think there *are* images, that images
are real things?  Language tends to reify.  Traditions and
manners of speech die hard.  I do not think that  Augustine
offers *this* sort of dualistic argument at all.  I am not at all
sure what he would do with an argument from qualia.  
     Augustine often describes the process of memory acquisition,
storage and retrieval in a phenomenological manner.  Descriptions
of these processes have not changed in 1600 years.  That is, he
writes of how things *appear* to him, now that he is thinking
about it.  He uses dualistic language, with its tendency to reify
processes.  He writes of what is "found in memory," suggesting
that memory is a place-like entity, containing real things.  He
even calls memory "a storehouse."  But such language must not be
taken in the literal manner the dualist tends toward.  Memory is
not really a storehouse, and Augustine recognizes that it does
not really work in the manner of a storehouse.  (For instance
some items in storage disappear, and others pop right into
existence.)  We are left with the question of to what his
descriptions apply.  I claim that Augustine's descriptions of the
workings of mind are ontologically underdetermined.  For we have
seen that Augustine's writings also recognize that "memory" is an
abstraction.  He realizes that remembering is a present tense
activity, that each time he remembers what he conveniently calls
the "same thing," a new unique event, takes place, a new memory
is created.
     The dualism in Augustine's philosophy is between the
divinely created immortal soul, which may be immutable and not
identical with the changing mind or memory, and the divinely
created mortal corruptible body.  It is not a Cartesian mind
brain dualism.  At times, however, he does offer Platonic style
arguments against the materiality of the soul.  He argues that
the soul cannot take up space and similar a priori
arguments.<<24>>   I note that in these arguments, although he
sometimes intersperses "mind" with "soul," it is not obvious that
he is talking about the same functions he talks about in
*Confessions 10*:  mind as memory, mind as process, mind as an
abstract word used to describe the activities of a functioning
brain.  He may have, and here I am extending myself quite a bit,
a two-tiered view of mind and soul such as that of Aristotle in
*De anima*.  And as Aristotle's view about the relationship
between these, and which part is immortal, is not very well
worked out either.  Augustine could as easily be talking about
the workings of the brain as about the workings of the soul.  I
am sure that he is (talking about the workings of the brain
(although he might not have the conceptual machinery to report it
in that way)).

5.         EPISTEMOLOGY UNNATURALIZED:  THE NEED FOR A MEDIATOR

5.1.       Paul: incarnational epistemology

     Augustine inherits a position in which Platonic (although
Christian) forms in the *logos* are the intelligibles, "that
truth by which all things are true" (*Conf*. 10.23.34).  Since he
also inherits the Aristotelian (although also Neoplatonic and
Christian) notion of the immanence of these intelligibles, there
are two kinds of truth: ordinary true things, or truth, and that
which makes them true, or Truth.  Some things we are able to
learn and to know unaided. This doctrine, especially when taken
together with the Pauline emphasis on the abilities of natural
reason to figure *everything* out from nature, also makes
empirical knowledge reliable in a manner in which it could never
be for Plato.  On the one hand, Augustine takes Paul's line to
heart:  
     Ever since the world began his invisible attributes,
     that is to say his everlasting power and deity, have
     been visible to the eye of reason, in the things he has
     made.  Their conduct, therefore, is indefensible
     (Romans 1:20).

He believes that we are supposed to be able to figure out at
least the truth.  The world ought to be transparent to us, but
owing to our stupidity, which is indefensible, it remains opaque.
     The incarnation is necessary for knowledge in this sense
because the objects of knowledge are simply incarnational in
nature.  Since anyone, whether or not she is a Christian, can
achieve knowledge, Augustine upholds the Parmenidean dictum that
reality is intelligible.  The world, as it were, wears its
knowability on its sleeve.  But on the other hand, Augustine,
again following Paul, but also following the Platonic tradition,
believes that objects of knowledge may be too exalted for us
paltry humans to grasp.  Here the objects of knowledge are
incarnational as the *logos* or Truth.  To know these things
requires something beyond ordinary natural abilities.  This sort
of knowledge animals could never have.  Augustine upholds the
essential necessity of the incarnation for knowledge as well as
for salvation.
     Grant that we need the incarnation or some form of grace to
know Truth.  One might wonder why Augustine disparages knowledge
of truth.   Augustine says that no aspect of reality lies within
our grasp if you are thinking of us as unadulterated 
evolutionary beasts. (It is not clear whether it is possible to
perform this thought experiment for Augustine, but never mind.) 
He writes: "Without you I could discern none of these things [in
the external world, my body, my senses]" (*Conf* 10.40.65).  All
learning, both of Truth and of truth, comes from the true
teacher, Jesus.  We need grace, or at least some form of divine
assistance, to know anything whatsoever.  But if we need all of
this help, how are we to interpret Paul?  What invisible
attributes are supposed to be visible to the eye of reason by
itself?  If natural powers are not sufficient to know the
operations of nature to the extent that these are natural,
natural powers are certainly not going to be sufficient to know
the divine attributes contained in the operations of nature.
     Seeking (any) truth on one's own is not only vainglory, but
also it is an impossible task (*Conf. *10.42.43).  In fact he
often says that learning and knowledge for their own sakes, the
"disease of curiosity" is a more dangerous temptation than any
associated with sensory pleasure (*Conf. *10.35.54). He berates
those who:

     study the operations of nature which lie beyond our
     grasp, when there is no advantage in knowing and
     investigators simply desire knowledge for its own sake
     (*Conf. *10.35.55).

Again it is not clear, other than as a matter of rhetoric, why he
insists there is no advantage to knowing "operations of nature." 
and surely these count as truth, and they should be know*able*,
not beyond our grasp.
     Augustine's response is that if reality (including us) were
not incarnational, and if we did not have divine assistance,
there would be no knowledge at all. He says:

     By means of words, therefore, we learn only words or
     rather the sound and vibration of words . . ..  
     Moreover, He who is consulted teaches; for He who is
     said to reside in the interior man is Christ, that is,
     the unchangeable excellence of God and His everlasting
     wisdom, which every rational soul does indeed consult
     (*DM*, 11.36 and 37).

And:

     Indeed when things are discussed which we perceive
     through the mind, that is by means of intellect and
     reason, these are said to be things which we see
     immediately in that interior light of truth by virtue
     of which he himself who is called the interior man is
     illumined ... Accordingly, even though I speak about
     true things, I still do not teach him who beholds the
     true things, for he is taught not through my words but
     by means of the things themselves which God reveals
     within the soul (*DM* 12.40).  

     A tension persists throughout Augustine's epistemological
ruminations concerning the source of knowledge.  Often he implies
that true learning comes exclusively from within the soul, so
that some form of memory is not only necessary but also
sufficient for knowledge.  Sometimes, following Paul and common
sense, he allows that the source of knowledge resides outside the
soul where the things that God made for our benefit are found. 
The tension is due in part to the dual nature of God; the
doctrine of the incarnation is pivotal.  (Another producer of
this sort of tension is straight out (pagan) Neoplatonism.)
     O'Donnell's (1985) understanding of the incarnational nature
of Augustine's philosophy is worth quoting at length:

     Augustine was never concerned with demonstrating the
     truth of the Christian religion entirely on the basis
     of principles accessible to the unaided human reason. 
     As *Christian Doctrine* makes clear, divine revelation,
     that is to say, intervention in human affairs by a
     power anterior to all human reasoning, is the necessary
     condition of Christian theology.  Perhaps when that
     revelation has done its work well, it might be possible
     to reconstruct the doctrines of Christianity as they
     would appear if the unaided human reason were in fact
     capable of devising them, but even in that case, only
     faith would make it possible to assent to that exercise
     of the rational faculty (p. 16).

At one level Augustine *knew* the answers to the problems of the
philosophers, and even knew that he knew the answers.  Yet at
another level he remained bothered by or at least intrigued by
deeper philosophical questions, questions which (to the present)
resist solution or are not readily amenable to Pauline solutions. 
Even if we allow that the incarnation is necessary for knowledge,
we can still wonder whether it is sufficient.  Does Augustine
really believe the incarnation will solve the problems Plato left
behind, or dealt with inadequately via his doctrine of
recollection?
     A preliminary response would be to point out that Augustine
does not think the incarnation is sufficient for anything--he
believes that grace is also required.  Yet given the
epistemological problematic Augustine has set up grace probably
will not suffice either.  Augustine is keenly aware of a
multiplicity of philosophical problems.  Some say he rested
content having found theological solutions to those problems. 
But I am not so certain that that is the case. 

5.2.       Things and Signs

     Augustine's incarnational epistemology grows out of, at
least in part or philosophically speaking, his views on
language.<<25>>  The insufficiency of our natural abilities for
knowledge extends to all communication. This skepticism derives
from his distinction between a sign and the thing for which it is
a sign.  He says:

     All doctrine concerns either things or signs, but
     things are learned by signs (*DDC* 1.2.2).
     A sign is a thing which causes us to think of something
     beyond the impression the thing itself makes upon the
     senses (*DDC* 2.1.1).<<26>>

He opens *Confessions* with a diatribe concerning the gulf
between speaker and hearer.  He says:

     which comes first--to call upon you or to praise you,
     and whether knowing you precedes calling upon you.  But
     who calls upon you when he does not know you?  For an
     ignorant person might call upon someone else instead of
     the right one (*Conf*. 1.1.1).          

This possibility of failure of communication occurs then, even
when one party is an omnipotent, omniscient god.  What this gulf
between speaking and understanding and the everpresent
possibility of misinterpretation demonstrates for Augustine is
the necessity of the incarnation for all *discourse*.

     Now, therefore, not even this is left to words, namely
     that at any rate they express the mind of the speaker,
     since a speaker may indeed not know the things about
     which he speaks.   . . . words not only do not disclose
     the true intention of the mind, but they may serve to
     conceal it (*DM* 13.42).<<27>>

Augustine even claims that no one can know whether they
themselves are really telling the truth:

     Why then should I be concerned for human readers to
     hear my confessions? . . . And when they hear me
     talking about myself, how can they know if I am telling
     the truth, when no one knows what is going on in a
     person except the human spirit which is within? (*Conf.
     *10.3.3).

Since we are never confronted with things in themselves but only
with their signs, all forms of communication and thought itself
are open to misinterpretation.  Language is by nature
allegorical.
     Things are nearly always (excepting those Platonic cases
such as filth) to be preferred to their signs.  Images are not
the truth; images can be deceptive or at least distracting.  But
we do know the truth and perhaps even the Truth.  (Or at least
Augustine does.)  There are manifold possible interpretations for
any form of communication, and multiple levels of meaning and
significance for nearly all things, natural and artificial, as
Augustine says:

     But only in signs given corporeal expression and in
     intellectual concepts do we find [an interpretation]
     which illustrate[s] how one thing can be expressed in
     several ways and how one formulation can bear many
     meanings (*Conf. *13.24.37).

Thus an absolute inviolable method for determining whether one is
perceiving or interpreting correctly is unavailable.  The
inadequacy of ordinary learning and communicating (via signs)
together with instances of knowledge and successful communication
imply the existence of some extra-ordinary epistemic process by
means of which we come to know that truth directly, sans images. 
By our natural abilities, we simply do not know.
     Without a mediator, memory or mind would not work.  There
would be no knowledge whatsoever.   Augustine says:

     But, referring now to all things which we understand,
     we consult, not the speaker who utters words, but the
     guardian truth within the mind itself because we have
     perhaps been reminded by words to do so (*DM* 12.38).

The need for divine assistance or rather, and stronger, faith, is
necessary in order to avoid a skepticism or a solipsism of the
deepest and most frightening sort.<<28>>  The mediator eliminates
the radical skepticism and allows Augustine to rest content that
he can indeed call upon his God.  The guarantee works within the
perceiver, yet exists outside.  He says:

     See how widely I have ranged, Lord, searching for you
     in my memory.  I have not found you outside it.  ... 
     Where I discovered the truth there I found my God,
     truth itself, ... .  An so, since the time I learnt of
     you, you remain in my consciousness . . .(*Conf.
     *10.24.35).

     But where in my consciousness, Lord do you dwell? . . .
     You conferred this honor on my memory that you should
     dwell in it.  But the question I have to consider is,
     in what part of it do you dwell? . . . I entered into
     the very seat of my mind, which is located in my
     memory, since the mind also remembers itself.  But you
     were not there ... All these things are liable to
     change.  But you remain immutable above all things, and
     yet have deigned to dwell in my memory since the time I
     learnt about you (10.25.36).

     Where then did I find you so that I could learn of you
     if not in the fact that you transcend me? (*Conf.
     *10.26.37).

Knowledge of God, insofar as it is possible must be
representational.  Memory is far too circumscribed to actually
contain God.  On the other hand, it is impossible to represent
God. God is within the mind but is not identical with mind.  The
actual entity God is within, without error producing
representation, yet of course God is not a person either.  Being
charitable, one might call Augustine's utterances paradoxical. 
That God is found within a person yet does not exist in that
person is not supposed to be philosophically consistent.
     Augustine is then committed to the (deeply) paradoxical
position of knowing he has knowledge of that which he can never
know.  Both humanity and divinity are essentially
unknowable.<<29>>  He knows the things in this world are signs of
something else.  He knows the incarnation drives that point home. 
Yet he also knows (and knows that he knows) none of these things. 
The incarnation means he can be confident that his questions are
appropriately unanswered.  Augustine believes that the only true
thing in itself is God, and that all else is a sign of God.  He
maintains that since we do not know God, we deal only in the
illusory, the realm of appearances, where we may be constantly
confused owing to our misinterpreting the nondenumerable signs
with which we are confronted.  For Augustine God is truth, both
Truth and truth, and God is the only truth.  Any truths we think
we know are only approximations.  Philosophical discourse is
possible, only because God allows it.  Augustine knows this.  But
he also knows that he knows no such thing.

6.  CONCLUSION

     In what does the ability of our souls or minds to transcend
sensory information consist?  On the one hand by this capacity
Augustine means to affirm again Romans 1:20.  Our minds can allow
things in the physical world to act as signs for that which is
beyond them.  This competence to recognize the broader
significance of things is shared by animals, for example, when
they recognized the drop in barometric pressure as a sign of an
impending storm.  This sort of case is familiar enough.  But on
the other hand, the capacity to transcend sensory information for
Augustine means that some concepts are not known through images
in any sense; objects known are present to the mind themselves.
And presumably animals do not share the ability to think of
things which have no corresponding external signs.  Animal
thoughts are determined by their environment.<<30>>  
     Does Augustine's inner truth genuinely allay the sort of
skeptical fears he presents at the outset of *Confessions* (and
elsewhere)?  He recognizes practical knowledge; he seems to have
certainty about many things without invoking the need for an
extra-ordinary guarantee; his works live on as a demonstration of
the efficacy of communication; he writes *for others* as well as
for himself; he writes dialogues.  Why does he claim not to know? 
At times he berates himself for the pride he takes in what he
*knows*.  
     He has set up a justificatory circle:  ideas themselves,
regardless of their source, do not provide certainty.  If God is
known, God will bridge the gulf between speakers and listeners,
between things and signs, between a person and her epistemic
anxiety.  Where should one find God?  Why within, of course,
among one's ideas!   The incarnation justifies and guarantees our
claims to know, for every idea that danced across a brain.  I am
not certain that this method works, or perhaps more importantly,
that Augustine *really *thought the incarnation was an
appropriate justificatory strategy for  *epistemology.*  In fact
it is noteworthy that in his discussion of mind and memory there
is a dearth of scriptural citations.<<31>>  Augustine would
contend that asking for a different justification for
epistemological certainty is too philosophical a question for a
bishop or for anyone, perhaps, who shares his belief that God
creates the very possibility of truth.  For one who believes God
is the truth, and that truth is found within the person asking
the question (*Conf. *10.24.35), the question of external
justification for a system is misplaced.
     But when Augustine speaks as though he knows, or as though
God's goodness answers all of his questions or God's grace
answers all of his problems, it is in a certain context.  He has
one set of axes to grind, that is he is dealing with a certain
set of opponents, and in most cases, his opponents were real
human beings with whom he conversed.  So he waxes polemical. 
Rudolph Arbesmann (1943) says:

     It is the great merit of St. Augustine that he recalls
     the marvelous cognitive power of reason against
     prevailing skepticism.  Equally emphatic, however, are
     his statements on reason's insufficiency to answer the
     deepest question of life.  Man is in need of divine
     instruction (p. 93).

But it is wrong to let this wonderful thinker be co-opted by the
Christians.  I think he can also be construed as a philosopher in
the contemporary sense.<<32>>  He considers issues, reflects on
his experience, reads and contemplates the views of his
philosophical predecessors, and offers different solutions to
problems when he approaches them from a different angle or with a
different set of presuppositions in mind.  His views evolve over
his lifetime; he reconsiders some of his earlier opinions (in
fact he actually wrote a work entitled "Reconsiderations" because
he thought it crucial to disseminate some of his newer
speculations).  And he does not reject the conclusions of his
reflections simply because they do not fit some preexisting set
of Christian assumptions. 
   I do not argue that he has a system or a set of consistent
philosophical views.  I *believe* his views are coherent.  They
make sense to me, even if they do not always ring true--even
though I do not share his philosophical or Christian assumptions. 
I would be more comfortable with Augustine's epistemology if it
were the case that he reserved the need for divine assistance
only for those matters that transcend reason.  But as we have
seen, he does not do so.  Moreover it is not only later in his
career that he invokes the requirement of the mediator for all
forms of recognition of truth, for it is present at least in *De
Magistro*.  Given the extent of the Augustinian corpus, and the
density of the writing, it is a difficult task indeed to sort out
when and precisely why Augustine thinks natural powers are
insufficient to attain natural knowledge.
   One must remember that he is helping to create some of the
doctrines we associate with Christianity today.  And so what
Augustine does is to formulate philosophical points at the same
time that he shapes Christian doctrine.  There is much in
Augustine that can be considered in abstraction from the
Christian doctrine, regardless of his stepping back to praise God
at some crucial juncture in an argument.  And the upshot is that
his epistemology is remarkable in the insights it offers.   I am
learning much by investigating the questions Augustine asks, and
as I have indicated, they often seem to be the very same
questions we ask.

                                   NOTES

1.     Augustine discusses memory frequently in his works.  See
O'Donnell (1992), p. 176 for a list of those works.

2.     Evans' (1982) book is entitled *Augustine on Evil* for
example, but she covers a great deal of epistemological territory
therein.  One must *know* one is doing wrong in order for that
wrongdoing to be sinful. 

3.     McCrone (1991) gives the following definition of 'memory': 
"A general term that covers both natural abilities of the brain,
such as the ability to recognize, and learned abilities, such as
the ability to recall and replay events in our lives" (p. 8).


4.     Chadwick (1991) says:  "*Memoria* for Augustine is a
deeper and wider term than our `memory.'" note 12, p. 185.  I
think we often use the term in the same broad (and vague) sense.

5.     O'Donnell (1992) calls the discussion of memory in Book 10
a "digression" (p. 174).  I do not believe he intends to belittle
the significance of *memoria *by his label.

6.     I do not mean to suggest that Augustine read these
authors' works in their original versions.  Below I speak of
Platonism and Aristotelianism.  See also O'Donnell (1992), pp.
176-177.  


7.     See *Contra Academicos *3.9-3.12.  I elaborate on
Augustine's views on sense perception below.

8.     Ludwig Schopp (1948) says:  
   However, the immediate certitude of man's inner experience,
   which, disconnected from the world, is only of subjective
   value, could not satisfy the man in his search for an extra-
   individual, objective, and everlasting truth.  Like the
   changeableness of the sensuous world ... was merely a
   stepping stone ... [to] the one Truth, unchangeable, and
   eternal, whence everything has received its truth ... (p.
   10).

9.     For some of Augustine's other enunciations of the *cogito
*or *dubito ergo sum* made famous so much later by Descartes, see
*Sol*. 2.1.1. and *DT* 10.10.14.


10.    Recent books are "discovering" the sentience and
consciousness of animals.  Griffin (1992) has a useful
bibliography of other sources for this information.

11.    This notion flies in the face of what is known, and more
importantly, what Augustine knew, and talks about frequently in
*Conf.*, concerning self-deception.  But there is no place for
the highly unsettled issue of the psychology of self-deception in
this paper.

12.    When Augustine speaks of the liberal arts he refers to the
trivium and the quadrivium that formed the basis of classical
education.  In some sense the arts reduce to number theory of one
sort or another.  His discussion of what is knowable without
recourse to sense perception in *Contra Academicos *and *De
libero arbitrio *reinforces the view that he thinks the liberal
arts, mathematics, logic, and dialectic are roughly equivalent. 
Certainly he thinks that they are learned and remembered in the
same way.  What is important about the arts he discusses is their
relationship to the science of number.  Augustine believes that
the principles and laws of numbers and dimensions lack sensory
qualities and are not known via images.  O'Donnell (1992) con-
firms that it is possible to argue that Augustine's use of the
"artes liberales" in book 10 is coextensive with the his use of
"number."   He says that the concept of number is significant to
Augustine from his earliest writings on (p. 183). 


13.    Augustine liked this puzzle.  It appears frequently in his
works.

14.    His view is often noted as Platonic and left at that.  For
instance, Chadwick notes that the questions Augustine asks are
"interestingly different from those of Aristotle's Posterior
Analytics 2.1" (1991), note 14, p. 188.  He reasserts the claim
about Plato in note 15, p. 189.  He maintains that they are the
standard questions from the Neoplatonic schools so their root is
closer to Plato.

15.    I find many (but not all by any means) recent discussions
of philosophy of mind highly resonant what I read in Augustine.
There are strong similarities, although there are admittedly
strong dissimilarities as well.  One would have to twist
Augustine a great deal to make him out to be a materialist of any
sort, and Dennett most certainly is a materialist.  I grant that
visual memory, for instance, is now discussed in terms of what
goes on in the visual cortex of the brain.  The discussion
proceeds in terms of neural pathways, image storage and
retrieval.  But it strikes me that, excepting the terminology
used to name or refer to parts of the brain, the language used in
these discussions is remarkably similar to that of Augustine as
he wonders about how memory works.
   Another example is seen in what Dennett calls the "taxonomy of
the phenom," in which he divides our "inner" world into three
types of experiences in very much the same manner as does
Augustine.  In fact, when he talks about experiences of the
external world, he sequences the senses in typical Augustinian
fashion.  Dennett (1991), p. 45.  See also Conf, 10.8.13,
10.9.16, 10.31.43-10.35.54.  That is we still use the same
*metaphors.*
   Both Augustine and Dennett believe that memory creates the
very possibility of sense experience.  Dennett says that
experience makes sense, and even is an experience, only when the
sensory stimulation is noticed, that is, when it is filtered
through memory and its organizing principles.Dennett (1991).  See
for instance his discussion of the impossibility of adjudicating
between what he calls Stalinesque and Orwellian models of
conscious experience pp. 116-124, or pp. 134-138, or pp. 140-144.
Thus I believe that some comparisons between our contemporaries
and Augustine are useful and illuminating. 
   I choose Daniel Dennett's book *Consciousness Explained* as a
focus because it is useful for my purposes (of course).  But also
it is not too technical; readers do not need to be specialists in
cognitive science in order to grasp his explanations and
analogies.  Paul Churchland's (1988) book is slightly more
technical, but still highly readable.  Another book containing an
explanation of an evolutionary (materialist) philosophy of mind
written for a very general audience is McCrone (1991).  Paul
Churchland (1986) and Patricia Churchland (1990) are excellent
works written for the specialist, as are both of Alvin Goldman's
books (1993) and (1993a).
       I do not care to apologize too much for using a
contemporary philosopher to illuminate the thought of Augustine. 
Any scholar brings her own conceptual framework to bear when she
interprets another author, whether it be a contemporary and a
neighbor of hers or someone from long past times and distant
lands.   But the case will be made as the paper progresses.  My
own perspective includes a good deal of recent work in the
philosophy of mind.


16.    O'Donnell wonders why Augustine treats forgetfulness as a
thing rather than as a privation (p 186).  Involved in part is
the tendency of language to reify.  I think O'Donnell takes the
discussion too seriously.  That is, I believe that O'Donnell is
trying to assimilate Augustine's discussion of epistemological
puzzles to his discussion of evil.  While I agree that sometimes
such assimilation is appropriate, I do not believe that it works
in this case.  Whereas when he is discussing evil explicitly he
has to arrive at prespecified conclusions that always accord with
the notion that evil is a privation, when discussing the nature
of forgetfulness Augustine is under no such constraints. 
Moreover, Augustine is merely reflecting on his experience, and I
think his reflections make perfect sense.
   O'Donnell says that the discussion of forgetfulness is not
supposed to be coherent and consistent in modern terms (p. 187). 
But I find Augustine's discussion completely coherent.  It is
reminiscent of Plato's discussion in the Sophist concerning
whether there are forms for things like not-being and different. 
I agree with O'Donnell that Augustine is performing a thought
experiment, but I take exception to his analysis of the point of
the experiment.  O'Donnell insists that Augustine is concerned
here to point out that things are not always as they seem, so we
must always keep our focus on the ascent to God.  All speculation
should lead to something greater than the self.  O'Donnell does
not consider is that Augustine is playing, having some
philosophical fun.  Moreover, as Augustine insists, it is always
true that one is remembering even if what is remembered is false.


17.    Dennett (1991) has a though experiment which illustrates
the same point--remembered or imagined pain is not at all similar
to the real thing, pp. 60-61.  He discusses the world of
experience, what he class "the phenomenological garden," pp. 43-
65.  Like Augustine, he divides the garden into experiences for
which there are external stimuli and corresponding objects and
internal experiences where the mind produces the experiences all
by itself.  The cases and examples he uses are very much similar
to those in *Conf.* 10.  What does this similarity show? 
Minimally, that the experiences we find worth discussing because
they are philosophically problematic, because their sources elude
our explanatory frameworks, have not changed in 1600 years.


18.    I realize that Augustine treats happiness differently from
the way he treats remembered physical pains and other remembered
emotions.  He has a few additional axes to grind in the case of
happiness.  But I think my point remains.  It is not too unfair
to lump happiness as ordinary garden variety feeling joyous,
together with other emotions for my purposes.

19.    See for instance, pp. 448-454.  Dennett believes that
nearly *all* aspects of consciousness develop because of the
evolutionary advantages they conferred on their bearers.  He
explains, for example, how our dreams, both waking and sleeping,
help us to function.

20.    O'Donnell (1992) writes that memory in the sense of the
hypostatized triad of memory, intellect and will, entails that
memory cannot be independent of intellect or will.  But still, of
the triad,  memory is the locus of the self, the source of
personal identity (p. 175).  If it were possible, for example,
for intellect and will to survive without memory, much if not all
of the self would be lost (p. 184).  A full consideration of
Augustine's philosophy of memory must explain this reified notion
of memory.  It would consider Augustine's use of "memory" as part
of a trinity with understanding and will.  But such consideration
lies beyond the scope of this paper.


21.    See also O'Donnell (1992) p. 182.

22.    McCrone (1991), in his attempt to explain recent results
in neuroscience to the layperson, sounds remarkably Augustinian
much of the time.  On the other hand, I believe that research
from neuropsychology and cognitive science has produced genuine,
fruitful, parsimonious explanations.  But I realize that the
dualist will contend that these too involve metaphors and
promissory notes.  


23.    George Bealer did an excellent job of defending this sort
of claim, arguing for the existence of qualia against a mind-
brain identity theory at the December 1993 American Philosophical
Association meetings.


24.    *DIA*, passim.

25.    Both Dennett and McCrone talk about how language shapes
the mind.  Language acquisition not only differentiates human
minds or brains from animal brains.  Recent views suggest that
the human brain is plastic; that is, it is not born as a fully
formed human mind.  Following these metaphors we can say that one
of the things that enables a brain to have a mind or to be a
mind, if you will, is its acquisition of language.   Language use
is key to understanding consciousness.  It may explain the origin
of self-consciousness as well.  Several articles in Goldman
(1993) explore these areas as well.


26.    See O'Donnell (1992) p. 185 and O'Donnell (1985) pp. 14-
38.


27.    The setting for this skeptical pronouncement is a
conversation he has with his son.  Are they or are they not
communicating?  What is going on there?

28.    We must bear in mind that he does not have access to
theories concerning the evolutionary advantages accruing to
language use.  Current theories hypothesize that language
developed because it helped the large primates, one of which we
are, survive in their changing environment.  Persons are by and
large truthful because it is natural.  That is, for a variety of
reasons it pays to speak the truth.   See Dennett's (1991)
explanation of the processes of learning in terms of memes: 
"more or less identifiable cultural units" p. 201.  There is no
place here to give his account full airing.  For further
discussion see pp. 199-252.  Also see McCrone (1991), Quine and
Ullian (1970).

29.    The points in this paragraph were inspired by O'Donnell
(1992), p. 159.


30.    See MCrone (1991) for example.

31.    O'Donnell (1992) suggests that the lack of Scriptural
citation indicates that Augustine's relative comfort doing the
sort of philosophy he is engaged in here (p. 173).  O'Donnell
says that discussion of the present is more transparent than the
past or the future (eternity or salvation).  There is less need
for commentary or for Scriptural assistance in these matters.


32.    Contrast Matthews (1992):

   he is a much more interesting and important philosophical
   thinker than is generally appreciated, [but] I make no claim
   that he is a philosopher of the first rank.  Nor is it
   surprising that he should be only, so to speak, a major
   "minor" philosopher ... (pp. ix-x).
WORKS CITED

Translations of Works of Augustine:

    *Confessions* (397-401)  Henry Chadwick, trans.  Oxford: 
       Oxford University Press, 1991.  (*Conf.*)

    *Contra academicos* (386)  Denis J. Kavanagh, trans. 
       *Fathers of the Church *Vol. 1., 1948.  (*CA*)

    *De beata vita* (386) Ludwig Schopp, trans.  *Fathers of the
       Church* Vol. 1, 1948.  (*DBV*)

    *De doctrina Christiana *(396-426)  D.W. Robertson, Jr.
       trans.  Indianapolis:  Bobbs-Merrill Library of Liberal
       Arts, 1958. (*DDC*)

    *De immortalitate animae* (387) George G. Leckie, trans.
       *Concerning the Teacher and On the Immortality of the
       soul.  *New York:  Appleton-Century Crofts, 1938. (*DIA*)

    *De libero arbitrio *(387-395)  Anna S. Benjamin and L.H.
       Hackstaff, trans. Indianapolis:  Bobbs-Merrill Library of
       Liberal Arts, 1964.  (*DLA*)

    *De magistro* (389)  In Leckie (1938).  (*DM*)

    *Retractationes *(426-427)  I. Bogan, trans. *Fathers of the
       Church. *Vol. 60, 1968.  (*Ret.*)

    *Soliloquia* (386-387)  Thomas F. Gilligan, trans.  *Fathers
       of the Church *Vol. 1, 1948.  (*Sol*.)

    *De Trinitate* (399-419)  Stephen McKenna, trans.  *Fathers
       of the Church* Vol. 45, 1963.  (*DT*)

    *The Writings of Saint Augustine.  Fathers of the Church. 
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    Quine, W.V.O. and Ullian, J.S. (1970) *The Web of Belief*. 
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