Another either/or option for this week's question. [If you feel compelled to answer both of these, feel free to do so!]
4a) in class today I tossed out the term "strategic remembrance" to characterize what Augustine is doing in the autobiographical sections of Confessions. It's "remembrance" because he's recalling past events, and "strategic" because he's clearly doing it with a purpose, a purpose that he makes clear in the later chapters of the book. Does this clear and obvious purpose raise problems for Augustine's claim that remembering also recalls things that we know innately, like what happiness is? Can memory be both strategic and innate?
4b) thinking specifically of the article on Alzheimer's that we looked at for this week, and also thinking about Augustine's analysis of the relationship between identity and memory: would you still be you if you couldn't remember your past?
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