ABSTRACT
According to Aquinas, information is the distinctive feature of cognition: he defines beings capable of cognition as those capable of receiving information about the world. Aquinas understands information in a very technical Aristotelian sense: receiving the form of the thing cognized. Crucial to his account is the distinction between the natural being and the intentional being of a form: the form of the thing cognized has a natural mode of being in the thing cognized and an intentional mode of being in the cognizer. The form in its intentional being is called intentional species. In this chapter I present some fundamental aspects and issues in Aquinas ’s account of cognition as “intentional” information. These include Aquinas ’s understanding of Aristotle ’s formula that the senses receive perceptible forms “without the matter” in terms of the distinction between natural and intentional being of a form, the assumption that intentional species exist not only in the perceiver but also in the medium of perception, the special status of the intentional species involved in intellectual cognition, the role of intentional species in cognition.
