Augustine and Descartes on the Function of Attention in Perceptual Awareness

To the extent that ancient and medieval thinkers were even concerned with what we nowadays call perceptual consciousness or awareness, it was in relation to specifying the functions of sensation and its relationship to thought that the matter arose. Sensory awareness was generally thought to be a transitive relationship, awareness of particular things, shared by humans and animals, and, for many, the model for thought in general. Within the Aristotelian tradition, even self-awareness was thought to depend ultimately on the awareness we have of particular objects that impinge upon our senses and provide us, thereby, with the occasion for reflecting on our thoughts, our own particular souls and the nature of the soul in general.1 The idea that cognition might be at base a passive process was, however, tempered by the desire to acknowledge the active functions of the intellect and, in the animal soul, the activity of the so-called “internal” senses.