| 398 | Confessions |
| p.24 | 22887 | If God existed before creation, why would a perfect being desire to change things? | |
| Full Idea: If nothing existed by God before creation, then what could have happened to, or within, God that led God to decide to create the universe at that particular moment? Why would an eternal or perfect being want or need to change? | |||
| From: report of Augustine (Confessions [c.398]) by Adrian Bardon - Brief History of the Philosophy of Time 1 'Augustine's' | |||
| A reaction: I suppose you could reply that change is superior to stasis, but then why did God delay the creation? |
| p.25 | 22888 | To be aware of time it can only exist in the mind, as memory or anticipation | |
| Full Idea: Augustine answers that for us to be aware of time it must exist only in the mind, …and the difference between past and future is just the difference between memory and anticipation. | |||
| From: report of Augustine (Confessions [c.398]) by Adrian Bardon - Brief History of the Philosophy of Time 1 'Augustine's' | |||
| A reaction: This is an extreme idealist view. Are we to say that the past consists only of what can be remembered, and the future only of what is anticipated? Absurd anti-realism, in my view. Where do his concepts come from, asks Le Poidevin. |
| X.08 | p.214 | 22976 | Memories are preserved separately, according to category |
| Full Idea: In memory everything is preserved separately, according to its category. | |||
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.08) | |||
| A reaction: This strikes me as the first seeds of the idea that the mind functions by means of mental files. Our memories of cats are 'close to' or 'linked to' our memories of dogs. |
| X.08 | p.214 | 22977 | I can distinguish different smells even when I am not experiencing them |
| Full Idea: I can distinguish the scent of lilies from that of violets, even though there is no scent at all in my nostrils. | |||
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.08) | |||
| A reaction: Augustine has a nice introspective account of how we experience memory, and identifies lots of puzzling features. I know I can identify the smell of vinegar, but I can't bring it to mind, the way I can the appearance of roses. |
| X.08 | p.216 | 22978 | Memory is so vast that I cannot recognise it as part of my mind |
| Full Idea: The memory is a vast immeasurable sanctuary. It is part of my nature, but I cannot understand all that I am. Hence the mind is too narrow to contain itself entirely. Is the other part outside of itself, and not within it? How then can it be a part? | |||
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.08) | |||
| A reaction: He seems to understand the mind as entirely consisting of consciousness. Nevertheless, this seems to be the first inklings of the modern externalist view of the mind. |
| X.10 | p.217 | 22979 | Three main questions seem to be whether a thing is, what it is, and what sort it is |
| Full Idea: I am told that I can ask three sorts of questions - whether a thing is, what it is, and what sort it is. | |||
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.10) | |||
| A reaction: This seems to be a very Aristotelian approach. I am pleased to see that what it is and what sort it is are not conflated. The first one must be its individual essence, and the second its generic essence. |
| X.12 | p.219 | 22980 | Memory contains innumerable principles of maths, as well as past sense experiences |
| Full Idea: The memory contains the innumerable principles and laws of numbers and dimensions. None of these can have been conveyed to me by the bodily senses. | |||
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.12) | |||
| A reaction: Even if you have a fairly empirical view of the sources of mathematics (a view with which I sympathise), it must by admitted that our endless extrapolations from the sources also reside in memory. So we remember thoughts as well as experiences. |
| X.14 | p.220 | 22981 | Mind and memory are the same, as shown in 'bear it in mind' or 'it slipped from mind' |
| Full Idea: The mind and the memory are one and the same. We even call the memory the mind, for when we tell a person to remember something, we tell them to 'bear this in mind', and when we forget something 'it slipped out of my mind'. | |||
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.14) | |||
| A reaction: This idea has become familiar in modern neuroscience, I think, presumably because we do not find distinct types of neurons for consciousness and for memory. |
| X.14 | p.220 | 22982 | Why does joy in my mind make me happy, but joy in my memory doesn't? |
| Full Idea: How can it be that my mind can be happy because of the joy that is in it, and yet my memory is not sad by reason of the sadness that is in it? | |||
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.14) | |||
| A reaction: This seems to contradict his thought in Idea 22981, that memory and mind are the same. Recall seems to be a part of consciousness which is not fully wired up to the rest of the mind. |
| X.14 | p.221 | 22983 | We would avoid remembering sorrow or fear if that triggered the emotions afresh |
| Full Idea: If we had to experience sorrow or fear every time that we mentioned these emotions, no one would be willing to speak of them. | |||
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.14) | |||
| A reaction: Remembering the death of a loved one can trigger fresh grief, but remembering their dangerous illness from which they recovered no longer contains the feeling of fear. |
| X.16 | p.223 | 22984 | Without memory I could not even speak of myself |
| Full Idea: I do not understand the power of memory that is in myself, although without it I could not even speak of myself. | |||
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.16) | |||
| A reaction: Even if the self is not identical with memory, this idea seems to establish that memory is an essential aspect of the self. This point is neglected by those who see the self as an entity (the 'soul pearl') which persists through all experience. |
| X.20 | p.226 | 22985 | Everyone wants happiness |
| Full Idea: Surely happiness is what everyone wants, so much so that there can be none who do not want it? | |||
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.20) | |||
| A reaction: His concept of happiness is, of course, religious. Occasionally you meet habitual grumblers about life who give the impression that they are only happy when they are discontented. So happiness is achieving desires, not feeling good? |
| XI.01 | p.253 | 5976 | If God is outside time in eternity, can He hear prayers? |
| Full Idea: O Lord, since you are outside time in eternity, are you unaware of the things that I tell you? | |||
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.01) | |||
| A reaction: This strikes me as the single most difficult and most elusive question about the nature of a supreme divine being. If the being is trapped in time, as we are, it is greatly diminished, and if it is outside, it is hard to see how it could be a participant. |
| XI.04 | p.256 | 5977 | Heaven and earth must be created, because they are subject to change |
| Full Idea: The fact that heaven and earth are there proclaims that they were created, for they are subject to change and variation; ..the meaning of change and variation is that something is there which was not there before. | |||
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.04) | |||
| A reaction: It seems possible that the underlying matter is eternal (as in various conservation laws, such as that of energy), and that all change is in the form rather than the substance. |
| XI.14 | p.264 | 5979 | If the past is no longer, and the future is not yet, how can they exist? |
| Full Idea: Of the three divisions of time, how can two, the past and the future, be, when the past no longer is, and the future is not yet? | |||
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.14) | |||
| A reaction: This is the oldest bewilderment about time, which naturally leads us to the thought that time cannot actually 'exist'. The remark implies that at least 'now' is safe, but that also succumbs to paradox pretty quickly. |
| XI.14 | p.264 | 5978 | I know what time is, until someone asks me to explain it |
| Full Idea: I know well enough what time is, provided that nobody asks me; but if I am asked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled. | |||
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.14) | |||
| A reaction: A justly famous remark, even though it adds nothing to our knowledge of time. This sort of thought pushes us towards accepting many things as axiomatic, such as time, space, identity, persons, mind. |
| XI.15 | p.264 | 5980 | How can ten days ahead be a short time, if it doesn't exist? |
| Full Idea: A short time ago or a short time ahead we might put at ten days, but how can anything which does not exist be either long or short? | |||
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.15) | |||
| A reaction: A nice question, which gets at the paradoxical nature of time very nicely. How can it be long, but non-existent? We could break the paradox by concluding '..and therefore time does exist', even though we can't see how. |
| XI.15 | p.265 | 5981 | The whole of the current year is not present, so how can it exist? |
| Full Idea: We cannot say that the whole of the current year is present, and if the whole of it is not present, the year is not present. | |||
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.15) | |||
| A reaction: Another nice way of presenting the paradox of time. We are in a particular year, so it has to be real. |
| XI.17 | p.267 | 5982 | If the future does not exist, how can prophets see it? |
| Full Idea: How do prophets see the future, if there is not a future to be seen? | |||
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.17) | |||
| A reaction: The answer, I suspect, is that prophets can't see the future. The prospect that the future already exists would seem to saboutage human freedom and responsibility, and point to Calvinist predestination, and even fatalism. |
| XI.22 | p.271 | 5983 | I disagree with the idea that time is nothing but cosmic movement |
| Full Idea: I once heard a learned man say that time is nothing but the movement of the sun and the moon and the stars, but I do not agree. | |||
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.22) | |||
| A reaction: It is tempting to say that you either take time or movement as axiomatic, and describe one in terms of the other, but you are stuck unable to give the initial statement of the axiom without mentioning the second property you were saving for later. |
| XI.26 | p.274 | 5984 | Maybe time is an extension of the mind |
| Full Idea: I begin to wonder whether time is an extension of the mind itself. | |||
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.26) | |||
| A reaction: The observation that the mind creates a 'specious present' (spreading experience out over a short fraction of second) reinforces this. Personally I like David Marshall's proposal that consciousness is entirely memory, which would deny this idea. |
| XII.6 | p.38 | 16588 | I prefer a lack of form to mean non-existence, than to think of some quasi-existence |
| Full Idea: I sooner judged that what lacks all form does not exist, than thought of as something in between form and nothing, neither formed nor nothing, unformed and next to nothing. | |||
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XII.6), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 03.1 | |||
| A reaction: Scholastics were struck by the contrast between this remark, and the remark of Averroes (Idea 16587) that prime matter was halfway existence. Their two great authorities disagreed! This sort of thing stimulated the revival of metaphysics. |
| 415 | works |
| p.7 | 22167 | Our images of bodies are not produced by the bodies, but by our own minds | |
| Full Idea: Augustine says bodies don't form images in our spirit; our spirit does that itself with amazing quickness. ...So the appearances under which mind knows things aren't drawn from the things themselves. | |||
| From: report of Augustine (works [c.415]) by Thomas Aquinas - Quodlibeta 8.2.1 | |||
| A reaction: This is Augustine's theory of 'illumination' - that God creates experience within us. His theory was soon discarded by the early scholastics. |
| p.44 | 19338 | Augustine said evil does not really exist, and evil is a limitation in goodness | |
| Full Idea: Augustine solution to the problem of evil was to say that, strictly speaking, evil does not exist. Human beings are not part evil and part good, but rather just a limited amount of goodness. | |||
| From: report of Augustine (works [c.415]) by Franklin Perkins - Leibniz: Guide for the Perplexed 2.III | |||
| A reaction: Augustine was rebelling against Manicheanism, which he espoused when young, which proposed a good and an evil force. An apathetic slob seems devoid of goodness, but is not evil. It takes extra effort to perform active evil. |
| p.73 | 22116 | Augustine identified Donatism, Pelagianism and Manicheism as the main heresies | |
| Full Idea: Augustine did the most to define Christian heresy. The three most prominent were Donatism, Pelagianism (that humans are perfectible), and Manicheism (that good and evil are equally basic metaphysical realities). | |||
| From: report of Augustine (works [c.415]) by Gareth B. Matthews - Augustine p.73 | |||
| A reaction: Manicheans had presumably been studying Empedocles. (I suppose it's too late to identify Christianity as a heresy?). |
| p.74 | 22119 | Augustine said (unusually) that 'ought' does not imply 'can' | |
| Full Idea: Augustine insisted that 'ought' does not, in any straightforward way, imply 'can' - which distinguishes him from most modern ethicists. | |||
| From: report of Augustine (works [c.415]) by Gareth B. Matthews - Augustine p.74 | |||
| A reaction: Not unreasonable. I ought to help my ailing friend who lives abroad, but I haven't the time or money to do it. We can experience impossibilities as duties. Impossibilities are just excuses. Augustine is opposing the Pelagian heresy. |
| p.74 | 22117 | Our minds grasp reality by direct illumination (rather than abstraction from experience) | |
| Full Idea: Instead of supposing that what we know can be abstracted from sensible particulars that instantiate such knowledge, Augustine insists that our mind is so constituted as to see 'intelligible realities' directly by inner illumination. | |||
| From: report of Augustine (works [c.415]) by Gareth B. Matthews - Augustine p.74 | |||
| A reaction: His 'theory of illumination'. This seems to be a sort of super-rationalism. This doesn't make clear the role of sensations. Surely he doesn't thing that we just bypass them? |
| p.74 | 22118 | Augustine created the modern concept of the will | |
| Full Idea: The modern concept of the will is often said to originate with Augustine. | |||
| From: report of Augustine (works [c.415]) by Gareth B. Matthews - Augustine p.74 | |||
| A reaction: I'm beginning to think that this is the source of the trouble. How can a thing be intrinsically free? Surely freedom is always a contextual concept? |
| p.109 | 4348 | Love, and do what you will | |
| Full Idea: Love, and do what you will. | |||
| From: Augustine (works [c.415]) | |||
| A reaction: This sounds libertarian, but Augustine had a stern concept of what love required. It nicely captures one of the essential ideas of virtue ethics. |
| p.116 | 7821 | Pagans produced three hundred definitions of the highest good | |
| Full Idea: Augustine claimed that the pagan schools between them had produced nearly three hundred different definitions of the highest good. | |||
| From: report of Augustine (works [c.415]) by A.C. Grayling - What is Good? Ch.5 | |||
| A reaction: I would expect the right definition to be in there somewhere, but no doubt Augustine's definition made it 301. Perhaps the biggest problem of human life is that (as with the Kennedy assassination) proliferating stories obscure the true story. |
| 420 | Some Questions about time |
| 17 | p.389 | 16702 | All things are in the present time to God |
| Full Idea: To God there is neither past nor future, but all things are present. | |||
| From: Augustine (Some Questions about time [c.420], 17), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 18.3 | |||
| A reaction: Presumably God's present was crowded, so He invented time to spread them out? |
| 427 | City of God |
| Ch.XI.26 | p.460 | 3912 | I must exist in order to be mistaken, so that even if I am mistaken, I can't be wrong about my own existence |
| Full Idea: Since therefore I must exist in order to be mistaken, then even if I am mistaken, there can be no doubt that I am not mistaken in my knowledge that I exist…. I know that I exist, and I also know that I know. | |||
| From: Augustine (City of God [c.427], Ch.XI.26) | |||
| A reaction: Fine, but the main problem is his over-confidence about a stable personal identity that does the thinking. |
| XXI.10 | p.986 | 6683 | The contact of spirit and body is utterly amazing, and incomprehensible |
| Full Idea: The manner of contact of spirit with body, which produces a living being, is utterly amazing and beyond our powers of comprehension | |||
| From: Augustine (City of God [c.427], XXI.10) | |||
| A reaction: This leads to a rather clear objection against a theory which needs a miracle to explain a common natural phenomenon. At least Augustine was beginning to recognise that interaction is a bit of a problem. |