AM+DG

The ASCENT to
INTELLECTUAL
KNOWLEDGE
and
IDEOGENESIS

Prepared by Sem. Ted Tuvera

 What is Knowledge?
• the act by which the knower (subject)
possesses the known (object) in an
intentional way.
• Principles
the inner grasp and possession of reality
of Knowledge
in Subject
1. its own proper state, unaffected.
2. Object
3. Knowing Act (Cognition)
 What is Knowledge?
• The object must be impressed upon the
subject.
• HOW?
• The subject is equipped with faculties
(powers or capacity) to know

Cognitive/Knowing Faculties
"The principle of knowledge is in the senses."
Aristole, Metaphysics (As affirmed by St. Thomas Aquinas in ST I q.84, a.6)

"All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds to

the understanding and ends with reason."
Immanuel Kant, Critque of Pure Reason (Preface to the First Edition)
 Sensitive Knowledge
• External Senses
• Internal Senses
• Sense Cognition
• Sensation (awareness in the subject)
• Perception (representation/re-presence of the
object within the subject)

SPECIES (Sense Image)

 Intellect
• the supra-sensuous cognitive faculty that apprehends
reality in a non-material way
• a passive power, thus it receives knowledge but it is not
passive in a lifeless fashion; it receives knowledge and
expresses it in its own way.
• it has the capacity to reflect.
 Intellect
• it is anorganic.
• thus, the brain is not the organ of the intellect
but is rather the seat of the internal senses and
the necessary central portion of the external
sense-system.
 Intellect
• the object of the Intellect is the abstract and
universal essence of reality.
 Formation of Ideas
• the fundamental operation of the mind.
– There are three acts of the mind
» Apprehension = Idea/Concept = What it is (Essence)
» Judgment = Mental Senrence = Whether it is
(Existence)
» Reasoning = Argument = Why it is (Cause)
 Ideas
Phantasms, since they are images of
• product of the first complete act of the
individuals, and exist in corporeal organs,
haveintellect.
not the same mode of existence as the
•human
it is the grasped
intellect, essencehave
and therefore of a not
thing
theor
power of themselves to make an impression
reality
on the passive intellect. This is done by the
•power
theyofare grasped/abstracted from
the active intellect which by turning
phantasm
towards the phantasm produces in the
passive intellect a certain likeness which
represents.

ST I q.85, a1
 Ideogenesis
• also known as the process of
intellactualization
• the process of the formation of ideas.
 Ideogenesis

Thing