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Posted by Florian on April 12, 19101 at 10:31:29:
In Reply to: augustine and knowledge? posted by fred Runge on April 04, 19101 at 15:07:18:
See _Confessions_ Book 10, esp. sections 15-19. We learn of the material world through the senses impressing images of it on our memories. But we make sense of these images by means of _a priori_ knowledge that we discover already in our minds, and do not learn from outside stimuli: logic and mathematics, particularly. By applying our _a priori_ knowledge to the knowledge gathered by our senses, we can come to know the true identity of the sensate world.
It's a lot like Plato's theory of recollection, especially (of course) the _a priori_ stuff. I think Augustine lays more emphasis on the ability to learn from physical objects, though. In Plato I think we know what mountains are only because when we see a mountain we remember the form of Mountain; theoretically we would not need to see the physical mountain at all to figure our that such things must exist. In Augustine, I think we know what a mountain is only because we have seen one, but are able to think about it only because of our _a priori_ access to Reason, the principle of all Form.
This difference between Plato and Augustine is in broader terms characteristic of a basic difference between Platonism and Neo-Platonism, and Augustine's philosophy was very much inflenced by the Neo-Platonists.