ABSTRACT
To be aware is to cognize something and cognition may be taken as synonymous with awareness. That is not to say that cognition is all there is to consciousness for every cognition is, at the same time and by the same token, emotionally toned and conatively propulsive (if sometimes only incipiently); but, attending for the moment only to the cognitive aspect of behaviour, we may say that it consists in the awareness of an object of some sort or other. It is a mental activity the product of which is the appearance to the subject of an object. Appearance, therefore, entails cognition, which is the apprehension of something identifiable and characterized. The typical verbal formulation of a report of appearance is ‘This appears to be so-and-so’, indicating an identifiable ‘this’ and characterizing it as ‘so-and-so’. If no such object is cognized nothing appears, and, of course, an object may appear (or be cognized) without any formulation of a verbal report by the subject in communication with another person or even with himself. Obviously, if animals are capable of cognition and experience appearances, they cannot formulate verbal reports. We can only infer from their behaviour whether or not they cognize anything.
