St Augustine on Memory and Prediction
This paper traces two key views in contemporary philosophy of memory back to St. Augustine (354-430).
Augustine’s well-developed and concisely delineated account of memory begins in his Confessiones. His
characterisation of memory, and the nature of the human mind created in the image of the triune God, carries on in
his De Trinitate.

The first key view I trace back to Augustine is that remembering the past—i.e., memory—and imagining the future—
i.e., prediction—are continuous processes. That is, the same cognitive processes, which includes but is not limited to
the imagination, undergird both processes. This view is known as ‘continuism’. The form of continuism, which I
defend in this paper, holds that memory and prediction are continuous cognitive processes because they are both
forms of Mental Time Travel (MTT). MTT being the cognitive ability of “re-living the past and/or pre-living the
future” (Suddendorf and Corballis, 2007, p.299). Put another way, memory, or remembering the past, may be
construed as re-living the past. Whereas prediction, or thinking about the future, may be construed as pre-living the
future. Thus, it is via memory and prediction that we mentally travel back as well as forward in time.

The second key view that I trace back to Augustine is related to the first and it goes: Memory and prediction are
constructive in nature. That is, re-living the past (memory) and pre-living the future (prediction) involve a dynamic
(re)construction of acquired information. This view is known as ‘constructivism’ (for such a view see Glenberg, 1997;
Atance and O’Neill 2001 & 2005; De Brigard, 2014; Suddendorf, T. and Corballis, M. C., 1997). Constructivism stands
in opposition to the traditional view of memory as reproduction of stored information. This traditional ‘archival’
view of memory can be traced back to Plato, to whom memory is analogous to a “wax tablet” on which experiences
are imprinted to be later retrieved as memories (Theaetetus191c,d).

An archival view of memory is, according to Mary Carruthers, the “governing model” of memory in all Western
cultures (2008, p.18). This means that Augustine’s constructivism is a minority view. However, recent empirical
findings in cognitive neuroscience and experimental psychology seem to indicate that memory is constructive, rather
than archival, in nature. I go on to explain how, on Augustine’s account, God is known and encountered in memory.
Indeed, the dynamic infiniteness of a reconstructive kind of memory supports Augustine’s epistemic claims
concerning the divine ontology: God’s boundless being is known and encountered within a reconstructive memory’s
infinite, spatiotemporal field.
Date: 3 February 2022, 16:00 (Thursday, 3rd week, Hilary 2022)
Venue: Venue to be announced
Speakers: Buki Fatona (University of Oxford), Professor Joshua Hordern (Associate Professor of Christian Ethics, OHVP, University of Oxford)
Organising department: Faculty of Theology and Religion
Organiser contact email address: alberto.garzoni@keble.ox.ac.uk
Part of: Patristics and Christian Ethics Graduate Research Seminar
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Public
Editors: Frances Roach, Alberto Garzoni