Was den Menschen zum Menschen macht

Cognition

12 Min. Lesezeit

🇩🇪 Deutsche Version: Erkenntnis

Cognition (cognitio, Greek γνῶσις) is the personal act in which the spirit touches reality and grasps a being as it is. Unlike mere opinion, cognition grasps a state of affairs that obtains independently of one’s own thinking. The person does not invent it; she discovers it. The difference between insight and opinion is fundamental: an opinion can be true or false, but one does not know this with certainty. Cognition, by contrast, is a spiritual grasping that gives firm ground underfoot (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 30–55).

From the book

“In all three cases we cognize something that cannot be otherwise. We discover not contingent facts but necessary connections. This is precisely the kind of cognition that is decisive for the question concerning the essence of the human being.”

— What attentive looking means, Chapter 2

The phenomenological method lets the matter itself speak, instead of forcing it into a preconceived scheme — one takes seriously what shows itself, even when it does not fit the currently fashionable worldview. Some truths cannot be proved like a mathematical theorem; they can only be pointed out. One can lead someone to the place where insight becomes possible — but one cannot compel it. Aristotle puts it thus: “Philosophy is the science of truth.”

Cognition as a Personal Act

Cognition is a personal act — an enactment possible only to a person. A measuring instrument registers, an animal perceives, but only the person cognizes: she grasps not only that something is the case, but why it is so and that it cannot be otherwise. Alongside cognition, the personal acts include, among others, decision, action, intentional feeling, empathy, judgment, and the social act. Among these acts cognition holds a foundational position: without cognition no other personal act would be possible — for every decision, every value-response, every love presupposes a grasping of its counterpart.

Cognition and Personhood

For the question concerning personhood, cognition is of particular importance. A human being’s personhood is never purely empirically graspable. It cannot be seen under the microscope or imaged in a brain scan. It can only be grasped spiritually — through insight, not through measurement.

The human being’s self-experience — the immediate knowledge of one’s own existence (si fallor, sum — “if I am mistaken, I am”) — is a cognition that comes about not through external observation but through spiritual insight. It presupposes a spiritual being. Husserl emphasized: “As long as the concepts are not distinguished and clarified, all further effort is hopeless.”

Sensory Cognition

Sensory cognition is mediated by the outer senses. It is the foundation of all human cognition: nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit prius in sensu — “nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses” — with the Thomistic qualification: nisi intellectus ipse — “except the intellect itself.” Sensory cognition gives the person the first access to reality, but remains confined to the singular, the concrete, the visible.

Intellectual Cognition

Intellectual cognition goes beyond the sensory and grasps essences, principles, and necessary connections. It encompasses the essential intuition of realistic phenomenology: the immediate spiritual contact with the essence of a being. Essential intuition is no mystical vision but a methodically rigorous form of intellectual cognition in which the essence of a thing — what it necessarily is — comes to the fore. Through it the essential characteristics of the person are cognized.

Cognition and Affectivity

Cognition and affectivity are complementary modes of access to reality. Rationality grasps what is true, affectivity what is valuable — both belong to the person’s complete access to the world. The heart is here a genuine organ of cognition for values: the deepest cognitions of value occur not in the pure intellect but in being affectively touched by what is valuable. Cognition in the full sense therefore encompasses both: intellectual grasping and affective being-touched.

Presuppositions of Cognition

Cognition presupposes two essential characteristics of the person:

  • Rationality — the ontological endowment with reason, without which no grasping of states of affairs would be possible
  • capacity for truth — the capacity to cognize and acknowledge truth, which raises the act of cognition above mere information processing

Cognition is a fundamental enactment of the second dimension of personhood: it belongs to what the person does (not merely is), and presupposes the first dimension — the being of the person as spiritual substance.

Ontological classification:

Ontological relations:

Chapter assignment: Chapter 2: How does one think about such questions?, Chapter 4 (esp. 4.1, 4.6.3)

Thinking

The concept of “thinking” is ambiguous and is used, in everyday as well as philosophical language, in very different meanings. The dissertation distinguishes, among other things, between thinking as mere opining, as logical inference, as insight into essential necessities, and as self-consciousness (Bexten 2017, pp. 38 ff.). This distinction is important, because a foreshortened concept of thinking — for instance the equation of thinking with neuronal activity — misses the spiritual essence of reason. Genuine thinking in the full sense is a spiritual act directed toward the cognition of truth.

Thinking as Second Actuality

In the ontology of personhood, actual thinking is a second actuality (deutera energeia): the exercise of a faculty grounded in the first actuality — substantial personhood. Thinking presupposes the second dimension, in which the person actually exercises her rationality and capacity for truth.

Thinking and Artificial Intelligence

The distinction between genuine thinking and mere information processing is especially relevant today: artificial intelligence can recognize patterns and produce language, but it does not think in the personal sense. It lacks the interiority, the intentionality, and the self-consciousness that characterize genuine thinking. Whoever equates the two commits a form of oblivion of the person (cf. AI ethics).

Ontological classification:

Experience

Experience is the point of departure of all philosophical cognition. The dissertation distinguishes various kinds of experience: sensory experience, spiritual experience, and self-experience (Bexten 2017, pp. 30 ff.). The phenomenological method takes experience seriously as it shows itself, without prematurely reducing it to a single kind of experience (such as the empirically measurable). It is precisely spiritual experience — the insight into essential necessities and the immediate grasping of truth — that is indispensable for the question concerning personhood.

Ontological classification: Subordinate concepts: Spiritual experience, Sensory experience

Ground of Cognition

The ground of cognition (ratio cognoscendi) of personhood is to be distinguished from the ground of being (ratio essendi). What the person is is not the same as that by which we cognize that she is a person. We cognize another’s personhood by person-behavior — by actions that bear witness to reason, freedom, and self-consciousness. This corresponds to the principle agere sequitur esse (acting follows being).

Yet person-behavior is only the ground of cognition, not the ground of being of personhood. Even where no person-behavior becomes visible — in the sleeping human being, in the embryo, or in severe dementia — personhood persists. Whoever confuses the ground of cognition with the ground of being falls prey to the functionalist fallacy and makes personhood dependent on its manifestations (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 145–160).

Spiritual Experience

Spiritual experience is that form of experience which is mediated not by the outer senses but by the spirit (intellectus, nous). It is fundamentally different from sensory experience: whereas the senses grasp the singular, concrete, material, spiritual experience discloses essences, necessary connections, and intelligible contents (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 30–55).

Its highest form is essential intuition (eidetic intuition) — the immediate spiritual contact with the essence of a being. Husserl established essential intuition as a method; Seifert and realistic phenomenology understand it as genuine contact with reality, not as a mere construction of consciousness. In essential intuition, what a thing necessarily is is grasped — in contrast to what it contingently is.

Religious experience too is a form of spiritual experience: the experience of the holy, the unconditioned, the transcendent. Spiritual experience presupposes a spiritual being — it is therefore a mark of the person as spiritual substance (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 38–46).

Ontological relations:

Intellectual Cognition

Intellectual cognition (cognitio intellectualis) is that form of cognition which goes beyond the sensory and grasps essences, principles, and necessary connections. Whereas sensory cognition remains confined to the singular, the concrete, intellectual cognition penetrates to the what of a thing: to that which it is by its essence and cannot be otherwise (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 30–55).

Its highest form is essential intuition — the immediate spiritual contact with the essence of a being. Husserl established essential intuition as the method of phenomenology; Seifert and realistic phenomenology understand it as genuine contact with reality, not as a construction of consciousness. The intellect grasps necessary essential laws — for instance, that a cognition cannot be at once true and false — and thereby cognizes states of affairs that are inaccessible to the senses. Intellectual cognition presupposes the rationality of the person as an ontological condition (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 133–139).

Ontological relations:

Error

→ Standalone page: Error

Error is the non-correspondence of the state of affairs asserted by judgment with the state of affairs obtaining in reality. It is possible because human cognition is fallible. At the same time, the capacity to cognize error attests to the fundamental capacity for truth of the person: only one who can fundamentally cognize truth can also see through error as error.

State of Affairs

→ Standalone page: State of affairs

The state of affairs (state of affairs) is the that-something-is-so: an autonomous ontological type that can be reduced neither to things nor to sentences nor to judgments. It is the objective correlate of judgment and is thus fundamental for all cognition and all truth (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 38–46).

Sensory Experience

Sensory experience is experience through the outer senses — seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting. It forms the foundation of all human cognition, but is confined to the particular and concrete (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 122 ff.).

In Thomistic epistemology it holds: nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu — nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses. Sensory experience supplies the material that the intellect transforms into cognition. At the same time it is essentially limited: the senses always grasp only this concrete singular thing here and now, not the universal and essential. Seifert emphasizes that sensory experience can nonetheless convey genuine truth — the senses do not deceive in principle, even if they are correctable. For the person as a body-soul unity, sensory experience is no lesser mode of cognition but the bodily way in which the spiritual being that is the human being encounters the world.

Ontological relations:

Sensory Cognition

Sensory cognition (cognitio sensitiva) is that form of cognition which is mediated by the outer senses. It forms the foundation of all human cognition: nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit prius in sensu — “nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses” — with the decisive Thomistic qualification: nisi intellectus ipse — “except the intellect itself” (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 30–55).

Sensory cognition gives the person the first access to reality, but remains confined to the singular, the concrete, the visible. It grasps that something is there — this rose, this color, for instance — but not the essence of the thing: why it is so and cannot be otherwise. For this, intellectual cognition is required.

As a body-soul unity, the human being is essentially dependent on sensory cognition. The body is no hindrance but a medium of access to the world. Yet sensory cognition alone can disclose neither essential laws nor the personhood of the human being — for this, essential intuition as a spiritual form of cognition is required (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 133–139).

Ontological relations:

Knowledge

Knowledge is justified, true conviction. It is a habitual state of the person, acquired through acts of cognition, and forms the foundation for further cognition and responsible action. Knowledge differs from mere opining by its being justified, and from error by its correspondence with being.

As a habitual state, knowledge belongs to the unfolding of the second dimension of personhood. It is fostered by education and can deepen into wisdom, which, as the highest form of knowledge, encompasses insight into the ultimate grounds and highest principles. The capacity for truth of the person is the ontological presupposition of all knowledge.

See also: Wisdom, Cognition, Education, Error, Truth, Person, Personhood, Second dimension

See also

Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.

Further sources:

  • Aristotle: Metaphysics II, 993b (“It is right also that philosophy should be called knowledge of the truth”).
  • Aristotle: De anima III (nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu).
  • Augustine: The City of God XI, 26 (si fallor, sum).
  • Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae I, q. 84, a. 6 (sense cognition and intellectual cognition).
  • Husserl, Edmund: Logical Investigations. Transl. J. N. Findlay. London/New York: Routledge, 2001. (German original 1900/01.)
  • Reinach, Adolf (1911): “Zur Theorie des negativen Urteils.” In: Münchener Philosophische Abhandlungen. Leipzig. (German)
  • Seifert, Josef (1987): Back to ‘Things in Themselves’. A Phenomenological Foundation for Classical Realism. London/New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

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