Volume 98, Issue 4, Fall 2024
Kinds of Intentionality and Kinds of Approaches to Intentionality
Charles Ehret
Pages 467-491
https://doi.org/10.5840/acpq2025324301
Aquinas on Intentionality in Perception
For Aquinas, a concept is about something only if it relates to the common nature of a particular being attended to through perception. Intentionality is fundamentally perceptual for Aquinas. Having argued this claim, I then give a novel account of perceptual intentionality in Aquinas, according to which the forms received by perceivers (¡°sensible species¡±) are the same particular forms as those in the perceived object. This is possible because accidental forms have two individuators: matter makes them particular and quantity makes them distinct. Aquinas¡¯s claim that sensible species are ¡°without matter¡± implies that, although they are distinct from the perceived qualities, they remain the same particular forms. This allows us to say that one has a distinct view of this particular object, which accounts for the intentionality of perception, and thus for the intentionality of concepts, as applied to what is perceived.