Cognition
Cognition
(Lat. cognoscere, to know) Knowledge in its widest sense including
non-propositional apprehension (perception, memory, introspection, etc.) as well as
propositions or judgments expressive of such apprehension.
Cognition, along with conation and affection, are the three basic aspects or functions of consciousness. See Consiousness, Epistemology. — L.W.
In ScholasticismWhatever is known is, as known, an accident of the knowing soul and therefore caused by an informing agent. All knowledge ultimately is due to an affection of the senses which are informed by the agency of the objects through a medium. The immutation of the sense organ and the corresponding accidental change of the soul are called species sensibilis impressa. The conscious percept is the species expressa. Intellectual knowledge stems from the phantasm out of which the active intellect disengages the universal nature which as species intelligibilis impressa informs the passive intellect and there becomes, as conscious concept. the species expressa or verbum mentis. Sensory cognition is a material process, but it is not the matter of the particular thing which enters into the sensory faculties; rather they supply the material foundation for the sensible form to become existent within the mind. Cognition is, therefore, “assimilation” of the mind to its object. The cognitive mental state as well as the species by which it originates are “images” of the object, in a metaphorical or analogical sense, not to be taken as anything like a copy or a reduplication of the thing. The senses, depending directly on the physical influence exercised by the object, cannot err; error is of the judging reason which may be misled by imagination and neglects to use the necessary critique. — R.A.
AbstractiveThat meaning of cognition which lacks one of the two requisites for intuitive knowledgefor in abstrictive cogniti n either we know things through other things, and not through their proper images — or we know th’ngs that are not presente.g., the knowledge we now have of God, through creatures — or the knowledge we have of Adam, a being not present to us.
ComprehensiveStrictly speaking, that which is adequate to or fully commensurate with the object, — a knowledge in which the whole object is known completely and in every way in which it can be known — even to all the effects and consequences with which it has an intrinsic connection. This knowledge must be clear, certain, evident, and quidditative, because it is the most perfect type of knowledge corresponding to the object. E.g., God’s complete knowledge of Himself.
IntuitiveRequires two things(1) that it result from the proper species, or the proper image of the object itself, impressed upon the mind by the object or by God, and (2) that it bear upon an object that is really present with the greatest clearness and certitude. Our knowledge of the sun is intuitive while we are looking at the sun, and that knowledge which the blessed have of God is intuitive.
QuidditativeIn the strict sense, is that which arises from the proper image of an object, like intuitive knowledge, and besides, penetrates distinctly, with a clear, proper, and positive concept, the essential predicates of a thing even to the last difference. The knowledge which God has of Himself is of this kind. But quidditative knowledge in the wide sense is any knowledge of the quiddity or essence of an object, or any definition explaining what a thing is. — H.G.