10 minute read

I, an experience

Essay 1 | MEDVL1101: Mind & Soul in the Middle Ages

Little by little I began to realize where I was and to want to make my wishes known to others, who might satisfy them. But this I could not do, because my wishes were inside me, while other people were outside, and they had no faculty which could penetrate my mind. So I would toss my arms and legs about and make noises, hoping that such few sighs as I could make would show my meaning, though they were quite unlike what they were meant to mime. And if my wishes were not carried out, either because they had not been understood or because what I wanted would have harmed me, I would get cross with my elders, who were not at my beck and call, and with people who were not my servants, simply because they did not attend to my wishes; and I would take my revenge by bursting into tears. (Confessions, I.6)1

In the above passage, Augustine details his perceived ego isolation as a baby, where he acts as an independent agent with thoughts and desires. This view of ego is implicit throughout his works-- Confessions reads like an instruction manual for intellectual self-defense, in which Augustine confesses the apparent hypocrisy of his youth and previous religious affiliation with his conversion to Christianity and eventual bishophood. In his later literature such as On the Trinity, Augustine continues to develop more complex theories dependent on such an ego. Most notably, his theory of illumination2 rests on his rejection of skepticism,3 “I know that I am alive.”

Although it seems that Augustine rejects skepticism with this simple statement, the cogito must be fully qualified. To refute skepticism, one must show that something can be known. Thus, the cogito requires Augustine to examine who exactly the “I” is that is alive, and the “I” that can come to understand a priori knowledge via his theory of illumination. This essay will first examine Augustine's attempt to define this “I”, and then proceed to examine Augustine's cogito through the lens of modern skepticism, before finally offering an alternative.

In Confessions, Augustine fails to find the ‘true self' present in both his young, intelligent, rebellious ego and his old, wise, and disciplined ego. While contemplating self-knowledge, Augustine realizes that while he is the closest thing to himself, he paradoxically cannot grasp all that he is.4 A central topic of Confessions are Augustine's mystical ascents, which were essential to his conversion from Manicheanism to Christianity. Yet these ascents, in which Augustine claims to have encountered God, offer no solution to his self-knowledge paradox.5

Augustine realized this and sought to clarify self-knowledge in his later On the Trinity, which contains his theory of illumination. Augustine states that the “mind's presence to itself” is the basis for self-knowledge. More specifically, the mind is the source of thinking, and is indistinct from it.6 It follows that your mind is your thoughts, and your thoughts are your mind when you are thinking. Yet one finds their thoughts changing dramatically over time. This leaves no room for an unchanging self. Thus, Augustine's self-knowledge isn't knowledge of some permanent, true self, but is rather a closer awareness to one's mind. In this way, Augustine artfully dodges any attempt at defining a true self. He seems to define the mind as an experiencer, not as an independent, immutable ego. This renders his cogito unsatisfactory. How can “I” know that I am alive, if the very “I” that which is knowing cannot be defined?

It is not just this refined view of mind that invalidates Augustine's cogito. The cogito also fails to withstand the rigor of modern skepticism.7 For Augustine, the cogito was meant to show that just one thing could be known, a premise on which he can base more complex theories of knowledge. But long after Augustine's time, Descartes famously offered his evil demon skeptical hypothesis, which posits that all of one's experience is being controlled by an evil demon.7 Compared to the real world hypothesis,8 skeptical hypotheses like these posit that nothing can be known at all, as knowledge is based on sense experience, which, according to the skeptic, is not only faulty but constituted by unknown mechanisms.

While Descartes's skeptical hypothesis seems to be more of a thought experiment than a well thought out theory,9 more complex and convincing skeptical hypotheses have been formulated. Measures such as “theoretical virtues” have been used to distinguish between these hypotheses and the real-world hypothesis. Consider the computer skeptical hypothesis,10 which posits that you are a brain in a vat with all experience being simulated by a computer. Skeptical hypotheses like these are relevant because they offer a near match in explanatory power compared to real world hypothesis. For each object in the real world, there is a corresponding location on the computer, and each physical law is coded into the simulation. It is much harder to make the argument that you are “alive” in this case of your being simulated on a computer, while it is still certain that something is experiencing. This skeptical viewpoint refutes the cogito.

As shown, Augustine's cogito fails not just by advances in skeptical thought and science, but by a closer examination of ego. Without a true self, Augustine is responsible, but not guilty, for his sins, hypocrisy, and wrongdoing. To satisfy the reader, the following experientiam is offered: “I know that I am experiencing.” While the experientiam uses the term “I,” it does not imply the same permanent self that the cogito does. Without experience, there is nothing but inanimate matter, but something that has no sense of self still can have experience.11 Therefore, experience is always known, as there nothing could exist without it. The burden of the proof is thus on the skeptic to argue that the reader does not know that they are experiencing the act of reading the words off this page. Even if the reader is a brain in a vat connected to a computer, they can still be sure of this experience. And with the refutation of a true self in mind, they can rest peace with whatever the current experience offers.

Works Cited

Augustine, Saint. Confessions.

Augustine, Saint. On the Trinity.

Descartes, René. Discourse on the Method: And, Meditations on First Philosophy. Yale UP, 1996. Accessed 28 Sept. 2022.

King, Peter. “Augustine on Knowledge.” The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, edited by David Vincent Meconi and Eleonore Stump, 2nd ed., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2014, pp. 142–165. Cambridge Companions to Philosophy. UP, 1996. Accessed 28 Sept. 2022.

Matthews, Gareth B. Thought's Ego in Augustine and Descartes. Cornell University Press, 1992.

Vogel, Jonathan. “Cartesian Skepticism and Inference to the Best Explanation.” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 87, no. 11, 1990, pp. 658–66. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2026858. Accessed 28 Sep. 2022.

Footnotes

  1. For additional commentary on the quote, see chapter 12 of Matthews. ↩

  2. Which is an attempt to explain how a priori knowledge is “illuminated” to the mind. For more, see King pages 150-156. ↩

  3. Skepticism, the school of thought which states that nothing can be known, was thought to have been refuted by the cogito for hundreds of years. King details the cogito, more formally known as “The Augustinian Cogito,” and its effects in Augustine on Knowledge. ↩

  4. King noted this when analyzed book 10 of the Confessions. ↩

  5. By virtue of the fact that Augustine never explained this ‘true self' in Confessions, nor any work. ↩

  6. As analyzed by King. ↩

  7. For the backstory of how Descartes formed this hypothesis, see his Meditation I. ↩

  8. The real world hypothesis is simply the absence of a skeptical hypothesis. It is the view that things can be known, and that the world one is living in is in fact real. ↩

  9. How does the evil demon decide what he show you? Another evil demon that controls what the first sees? ↩

  10. For an in-depth analysis of theoretical virtues, see Vogel. ↩

  11. Experience in the form of consciousness. If nothing was conscious, then the universe is simply the movement of matter. For all intents and purposes, the universe would not exist without something to experience it. In addition, consider an unintelligent organism. Certainly, it is experiencing something, but has nothing of the sort of self that a human has. ↩