SENSE MEMORY

Paul Gerard Horrigan, Ph.D., 2018.

Sense memory or sensitive memory is the fourth and last of the internal senses studied by
philosophical anthropology, the first three being the central sense (also called the common sense
or sensus communis), the imagination, and the estimative power (in animals)/cogitative power (in
man). Sense memory is the internal sense power, operative potency or faculty that enables us to
recall past things and conscious states of a sensory kind and to recognize them as having been
present in past experiences, as well as recognizing these past experiences insofar as they have
affected us favorably or unfavorably because of sense memory’s power of conserving and re-
presenting of the evaluative perceptions of the cogitative power. The internal sense of the
imagination is capable of forming phantasms or images of things even in the absence of those
extra-mental real things that once actuated our external senses and were perceived by the central
sense. Now, what is distinctive of the internal sense of sensitive memory is the recognition of
past objects and events, not the mere forming, conserving and reproduction of phantasms or
images as is the case with the imagination. Memory goes further than the imagination in that it
puts our image or phantasm of a thing in a definite past experience. With my imagination I, for
example, can picture my large brown dog; I am able to form, conserve and reproduce an image
or phantasm of my dog with my internal sense power of imagination. In sense memory, instead,
not only do I picture my dog, but I can recall when my irritated dog bit me on my left arm near
the front door of our house twelve years ago on a rainy day, while at the same time feeling pain
and anger at his having done that to me. To recall something is to picture something as one
actually experienced it on a definite past occasion, so that the occasion and the experience are as
much a part of the memory as is the thing itself. “The last of the internal sense powers is sense
memory, by which we are able to recall past experiences of a sensory kind, with a recognition of
the past insofar as it has affected us favorably or unfavorably. While the imagination is a
‘storehouse’ of external sensory impressions, it is not sense memory in the strict sense of the
word, for it does not record the past in its formal aspect of the recognition of the past as it
actually affected the knower. Sense memory is the ‘storehouse’ of the estimative power rather
than of the external senses.

“To illustrate the difference between imagination and memory in respect to the same kind
of sensory object, let us suppose that a person goes to a movie, enjoys the picture, but after some
time forgets the characters, the plot, and even the name of the film. If by chance he goes to see
the same film several years later, not realizing that he has seen it before, it may happen that the
characters and the plot seem familiar to him, but he cannot recall why they are familiar. He has
retained the images of the characters and their actions in his imagination, but they have no direct
ties with a recognizable past experience that is the work of his imagination. If, on the contrary,
he can identify the movie as one that he has already seen, if he can recall the circumstances of
the previous experience and be aware of how he was affected by it, his new experience is an
example of memory.

“In comparison with memory, the imagination is like a vault in which a film has been
stored to be shown again at a later date. Imagination is, then, simply an instrument of memory in

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that it furnishes the sensory data of the past in which memory operates. Not simply the retention
of the past experience, but the recognition of it as having already affected us, makes memory in
the formal sense. Memory perfects the imagination by placing the images in their proper setting
of time and place, for without memory the images would be unconnected and in a kind of
psychical vacuum, without a mooring in personal experience.”1

“La memoria sensitiva consiste nella facoltà di mantenere le percezioni

dell’estimativa/cogitativa. In modo simile a come il senso comune necessita dell’archivio delle
proprie sintesi sensoriali, anche l’estimativa o cogitativa richiede un senso interno che conservi
le valutazioni effettuate. La funzione propria di questo senso è ricordare. È la facoltà con cui si
coglie il passato ed è importante per la coscienza della propria identità. Mediante la
conservazione delle valutazioni si acquisisce esperienza sulle cose singolari esterne e sul modo
di comportarsi di fronte a esse: se si sperimenta che una determinata cosa piace o no, poi, grazie
al ricordo di tale esperienza, la si preferirà o rifiuterà. Anche la memoria, come d’altra parte tutti
i sensi esterni e interni, ha una base organica localizzata nel cervello e, per questo, è suscettibile
di lesioni.”2 “La memoria ha il compito di conservare e ripresentare le percezioni valutative della
cogitativa, sicché può essere chiamata ‘senso intenzionale del passato,’ mentre la cogitativa o la
estimativa lo è del futuro, come si è detto…la memoria coglie in un certo modo il tempo, mentre
l’immaginazione non può farlo. Le valutazioni, in effetti, non corrispondono semplicemente con
le qualità della realtà esterna che sono oggetto dei nostri sensi, ma fanno riferimento pure alle
nostre disposizioni soggettive. Perciò, quello che viene conservato nella memoria – che prima è
colto dalla cogitativa o estimativa – è l’attività interna dello stesso vivente, vale a dire, il suo
‘vissuto.’ A partire da questa descrizione si avverte l’importanza della memoria per consolidare
l’esperienza già acquisita: tale esperienza è resa possibile immediatamente dalla estimativa o
cogitativa, ma viene conservata e consolidata proprio dalla memoria…Possiamo riassumere le
funzioni della memoria in queste tre: a) conservare le percezioni valutative; b) articolare le
sensazioni secondo il loro tempo; c) conferire continuità all’esperienza interna. Anche in questa
facoltà si nota la differenza tra l’essere umano e gli animali: mentre in questi ultimi il ricordo
avviene in modo istintivo, nell’individuo umano il ricordo può essere controllato e ordinato,3
grazie al fatto che anche la memoria partecipa del livello intellettuale e volontario. La cogitativa
e la memoria hanno la loro base organica in determinate aree cerebrali ben localizzate; una loro
lesione può far perdere, in tutto o in parte, la capacità di ricordare.”4

“The memory or memorative power plays a role with respect to the cogitative or
estimative power analogous to that played by the imagination with respect to the central sense. It
preserves functional meanings such as estimates of good or bad so that it can re-experience what
has happened before and recognize this experience as something past. Thus the memory stores
experiences and recalls them, situating them in a type of temporal continuity that is measured by
the projection of perception toward the past. It functions to assure the continuity of experience
lived by the knowing subject…To achieve this result both the memorative power and the

1
H. REITH, An Introduction to Philosophical Psychology, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1956, pp. 107-
108.
2
F. BERGAMINO, La struttura dell’essere umano, EDUSC, Rome, 2007, p. 100.
3
Per sottolineare la distinzione l’Aquinate parla di memoria negli animali e di reminiscenza negli uomini: cfr
TOMMASO D’AQUINO, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 78, a. 4, c.
4
J. A. LOMBO and F. RUSSO, Antropologia filosofica. Una introduzione, EDUSC, Rome, 2007, pp. 101-103.

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cogitative power employ the expressed species produced by the imagination and known as the
phantasm.”5 “The last function of the internal sensibility is sensitive memory by means of which
the animal recognizes past experiences as past; the memory, thus differing from the imagination,
which merely reproduces them without putting them in their setting as things experienced in the
past. Such recognition of past experiences is clear in ourselves, when we recognize a face or a
place which we have seen before, and is not to be denied to the lower animals, who also
recognize persons and places from which they have been separated, sometimes for a long time.”6
“The living being needs to be able to recall for actual consideration species that have been
previously apprehended by the senses and interiorly preserved by the imagination. Now although
it may seem so at first, the imagination is not itself adequate for this purpose. It is, in some way,
the treasury in which the forms apprehended by the senses are stored. But we have just noted that
the particular sense is unable to apprehend all aspects of the sensible. The useful and harmful as
such escape it. Hence a new power is required in order to preserve their species.7 Moreover, it
must be conceded that different movements suppose different motive principles, that is, different
powers which determine them. Now, in the imagination movement proceeds from things to the
soul. These objects are impressed first in the particular sense, then in the common sense in order
that the imagination or fancy may preserve them. But it is not the same with the memory. Here
movement begins in the soul and is terminated in the species evoked. With animals, it is the
recollection of the useful or harmful that causes the representation of previously perceived
objects to arise. Here we have a spontaneous restoration of sensible species which depend upon
the memory, properly so-called. With man, on the contrary, there has to be a searching effort in
order that the species stored by the imagination may again become the object of actual
consideration. Here we have no longer merely memory, but something that is called
reminiscence. Let us add that, in both cases, the objects are presented again in the character of
something past – quite a different quality, indeed, than the particular sense, left to itself, could
attain.8”9 “The mere conservation and reproduction of sensory impressions is the work of the
imagination. What the memory does is to store up the nonsensed species or intentions known by
the estimative and cogitative powers. Thus it is able to revive these experiences in consciousness
through recall of the appropriate species. But this is not all. The really distinctive characteristic
of memory as understood by Aristotle is its power to represent past things as past: sub ratione
praeteriti. Is it not, in fact, true that we say we remember a thing when we can relate the
presently revived awareness of it to its moment in the past? Yesterday, for example, I met
someone. Today I have a sensory image of this experience in my consciousness, together with its
temporal circumstance; today, then, I remember it…The immediate perception of movement is a
sensory process, and this perception forms the basis for the perception of time. Accordingly, the
temporal sequence of sensory experiences of movement is somehow inscribed in memory, and
can therefore be reproduced by it. Any such experience has only to be presented anew to
memory, either in fact or imagination, and it will be able to determine its temporal relation to

5
W. WALLACE, The Elements of Philosophy, Alba House, Staten Island, NY, 1977, p. 70.
6
R. P. PHILLIPS, Modern Thomistic Philosophy, vol. 1 (The Philosophy of Nature), Burns Oates & Washbourne,
London, 1941, p. 238.
7
Cf. Summa Theologiae, I, q. 78, a. 4.
8
Ibid.; De Anima, 13. The difference between human and animal memories is not based on the way they are
constituted as sensitive faculties. The superiority of human memory comes from its contact with man’s reason which
has a sort of reflected influence upon it (loc. cit., ad 5).
9
É. GILSON, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, IN,
1956, pp. 205-206.

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other experiences. In animals the recalling of the past takes place automatically, which is to say
instinctively; but in man it may also come about through a studied search of the background of
experiences that resembles intellectual inquiry. Therefore, even as man’s estimative power is
more perfect than the animal’s and is called the cogitative power and the particular reason, so,
for similar reasons, is man’s memory more perfect and is called reminiscence.”10

“The power of sense memory in man differs from the sense memory of brute animals in
the same way that the cogitative power differs from the estimative power, namely, by being
subject to the power of reason. Reason makes it possible for man to employ sense memory
deliberately, in a kind of syllogistic way. The sense memory of brute animals, for example, is
predetermined by the physical surroundings in which it operates, as when a dog remembers the
pain it experienced when the person who once inflicted the pain is seen and smelled again.
Unlike irrational animals, man can deliberately provoke his sense memory to act without a new
sensory experience, as he does when he wishes to recall the name and features of a person who
had injured him. We should not suppose, however, that sense memory in man operates only in
the area of sensory objects that have harmed us or benefited us physically. On the contrary, any
sensory experience connected with us as human persons, whether in the physical, intellectual, or
moral order, is subject to sense memory, since we cannot in fact isolate any of our inferior
powers from the power of reason…A distinction must be made, however, between the memory
of a sensory experience and the memory of an intellectual operation of the past. Intellectual
memory differs from sense memory because it deals with a type of object that is strictly
intellectual. The ability to recall philosophical proofs, not simply as printed words on a page or
sounds of a teacher’s voice, but as meaningful statements, comes from intellectual memory.
Nevertheless, the intellectual memory can operate only through phantasms by means of which
the experience is concretized.”11

“La memoria non solo riproduce immagini precedenti, ma riconosce il passato. La

memoria animale si limita a riconoscere in modo concreto oggetti o avvenimenti familiari
passati, collegati agli interessi della vita istintiva. La memoria umana, invece, come
l’immaginazione, è penetrata dall’intelligenza. Ricordiamo atti passati in quanto tali, situandoli
in un momento del tempo e ricostruendoli narrativamente, in quanto oggettiviamo astrattamente
la temporalità e siamo capaci di misurarla.

“La memoria a breve termine ci consente di integrare le parti passate di una percezione
successiva con quelle presenti (per seguire una frase lunga o una melodia dobbiamo percepirla
nella sua globalità in fieri, cosa che richiede memoria). La memoria a lungo termine ci consente
di ricordare il nostro passato biografico, di riconoscere persone e oggetti percepiti nel nostro
passato remoto. In questo senso la memoria è fondamentale per il riconoscimento della propria
identità (sapere chi sono io). Con la memoria «di lavoro» teniamo presenti in modo simultaneo
molti elementi noti, per usarli convenientemente nello svolgimento di un certo compito (chi
scrive un libro, ad esempio, deve averlo tutto presente in ogni istante del suo lavoro).

10
H. D. GARDEIL, Introduction to the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, vol. 3 (Psychology), B. Herder, St.
Louis, 1959, pp. 76-77.
11
H. REITH, op. cit., pp. 108-109.

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 “La memoria è il senso del tempo. L’uomo coglie se stesso come esistente in un presente
mobile grazie alla memoria. Il senso dell’adesso cronologico è collegato ai sensi del passato e
del futuro più o meno immediati. Il nostro presente mobile è la via concreta verso il futuro.
Stiamo costantemente anticipando ciò che faremo (piani, orari, progetti) grazie alla memoria del
passato. La memoria consente inoltre l’apprendimento. I nostri ricordi, le nostre abilità acquisite
e tutti i nostri vissuti si accumulano nella memoria e generano in noi una crescita interiore che
sarebbe illimitata se non ci fossero i limiti fisici dell’invecchiamento. In questo senso la memoria
e la libertà dell’immaginazione sono una piattaforma indispensabile per l’intelligenza.”12

12
J. J. SANGUINETI, Introduzione alla gnoseologia, Le Monnier, Florence, 2003, pp. 59-60.