Mind’s Eye: Conscious Perception and Phenomenological Unity A Comparative Study Between Augustinianism and Contemporary Philosophy of Mind

Abstract

In contemporary theories, it is thought that the subject essentially initiates conscious perception. St. Augustine is one of the philosophers who acknowledges this idea via his active perception notion. In Section 1, I will address Augustine’s distinction between vision or visio and cognition or cogitatio. In Section 2, I will focus on Augustine’s notion of intentio to demonstrate the supremacy of the soul or the will of the soul as both the initiator and regulator of conscious awareness. In section 3, I will discuss the contemporary notions of the phenomenology of particularity and object-posting as theories to uphold the inclusion of cognitive phenomenology in the domain of conscious perception. Finally, I will show how these notions of perception perfectly align with conscious awareness as two conspicuous processes of polyadic relations depicted in De Trinitate. 

Keywords: visio, cogitatio, intentio, perceptual and cognitive phenomenology, phenomenology of particularity.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21747/civitas/11a1