Aristotle's phrase still sets the standard: God is "thought thinking itself": consciousness and self-knowledge complete in a single act, taking in nothing from outside. The problem this raises is how one undifferentiated act bears phenomenal and intentional content. Many theories require a subject, perspective, and some self-relation; not all require a temporally extended higher-order registration. Collapse all of that into one changeless point, as the doctrine does, and what is left must show how it keeps the name of awareness without the structure that makes anything aware.

*What the tradition holds.* The classical doctrine of divine awareness assembles several reinforcing claims. God is *vita perfecta*, perfect life, with the fullness of self-presence the term implies (Aristotle, *Metaphysics* XII.7; Aquinas, *ST* I.18). God is *noesis noeseos noesis*, thought thinking itself: the eternal self-cognition in which knower and known are the same act (Aristotle, *Metaphysics* XII.9; Aquinas, *ST* I.14.2). On the most developed contemporary refinement, divine awareness is sui generis: not a creaturely state of consciousness writ large, but a primitive divine cognition of which creaturely awareness is a faint analogate (Stump, Eleonore, 2013); (Stump, Eleonore, 2016); (Plantinga, A., 2000); (William P. Alston, 1991). Each move tries to keep the qualitative dimension of awareness from being a feature only creatures have. At its most ambitious, the doctrine names a divine being whose self-cognition is one eternal act in which the asymmetry between knower and known has been collapsed into identity at the highest register.

*What cannot be answered.* Five questions meet no answer in the doctrine of awareness, taken in the form structural reasoning can engage. What these pressures turn on is the point [§7.8](<7.8 Life.md>) and [§8.1](<8.1 Drive.md>) develop directly: awareness is reflexive self-relation. A subject is aware when something it bears is held in a relation of taking-itself-as such that the being registers itself in the registering. Self-relation of this kind requires a substantial being (Φ) capable of holding the registration; an interval (T) across which the registering and the registered are distinguishable as the moments they are; and a positional-relational manifold (S) within which the doubled feature (the subject taking itself as object) has somewhere to occur. The classical God is defined as without T, S, and Φ. The five pressures run one at the level of the predicate, four at the level of the conditions awareness-talk runs on.

> [!info]
> **Core concept.** Aristotle's phrase still sets the bar: God is thought thinking itself—consciousness and self-knowledge complete in one act, taking in nothing from outside. The trouble is what being aware actually involves. To be aware is for something to relate to itself: a being that holds the awareness, a stretch of time across which it registers, a standpoint from which it's had. Awareness runs on a gap between the registering and the registered. Collapse all of that into one changeless point, where knower and known are the very same act, and you don't get the sharpest awareness—you get a static relation wearing the name of awareness with none of the structure that makes anything aware.

**Q1.** *What relates to itself, where the knower and the known are the same act?* The phenomenal tradition from Brentano -(Brentano, Franz, 1874) through Husserl -(Husserl, Edmund, 1900–01) to recent higher-order theorists (David M. Rosenthal, 2005); (Kriegel, Uriah, 2009) treats some form of self-relating as constitutive of awareness, not as a contingent feature of certain awarenesses among others. First-order representational accounts (Tye, Michael, 1995); (Dretske, Fred, 1995) can treat awareness as representational content available to a system without a distinct higher-order self-relation. The structural burden therefore concerns determinate subject and content, not one theory of consciousness imposed on every rival. The classical reply is that divine awareness is not analyzable along these lines: God's self-cognition is one eternal act in which knower and known are identical, and the *self-relation* is not a structural condition but a creaturely shadow of the unified divine act (*ST* I.14.2; (Stump, Eleonore, 2013)). The reply is genuinely available, and it does the work the doctrine asks of it. Its most exact form is Aquinas's *distinctio rationis*: knower and known differ in God by a distinction of reason (a conceptual distinction with no answering distinction in the thing) so the asymmetry awareness seems to need is preserved in our way of conceiving God without importing real composition into the divine act (*ST* I.14.2; I.13.4). The concern this section adds is that a *distinctio rationis* secures the asymmetry at precisely the register that cannot do the structural work. A distinction that holds only for the mind conceiving God, and not in God, leaves the divine act itself with no internal asymmetry between the registering and the registered, and an act with no such asymmetry is not the upper limit of self-relation but its absence. A perfectly identical knower-and-known is not a more vivid awareness than the believer's; it is a static relation with the same name as self-relation and none of the structure that made self-relation phenomenal.

**Q2.** *How does an awareness that never varies attend to one thing rather than another?* For an awareness to be the awareness of *this* rather than *that*, the being must be in a state-of-being-aware-of-this that is distinguishable from the being's state of being aware of something else. Distinguishable contents require differentiation, but they need not occur successively; one awareness can simultaneously include several distinct objects. Aquinas's eternal self-cognition (*ST* I.14) forecloses the registering deliberately: God's awareness is one eternal act that does not modulate as creaturely circumstances change. The doctrine preserves divine immutability. The cost is the same one [§6.4.2](<6.4.2 Knowledge.md>) raises for knowledge and [§6.8.2](<6.8.2 Relatability.md>) raises for love: an awareness that does not modulate when its object varies is not a heightened form of attention but a constitutive feature of a static relation. The believer who comes to a moment of grief feels the difference between being-attended-to-in-grief and being-attended-to-in-ordinary-times. Stump's -(Stump, Eleonore, 2010) second-personal experiential knowledge is the most developed contemporary attempt to preserve modulation while keeping atemporality, and the present analysis registers the position as the most resourceful defense the doctrine has found. The concern raised here is whether the modulation Stump preserves can do the work without the temporal index whose role she has factored out.

**Q3.** *From what point of view is a being aware, if it has no point of view?* The phenomenal tradition treats perspective as constitutive of awareness, but a perspective need not be a metric spatial location; it may be an indexical or subject-relative standpoint. Nagel's -(Thomas Nagel, 1974) bat is aware *as a bat is*, with the perspective doing structural work in what the awareness-of-echolocation is like. The classical reply is that divine awareness is non-perspectival: God's cognition is from no point of view, equidistant from every point of view alike. The concern here is one [§6.8.1](<6.8.1 Presence.md>) raises for presence: *equidistant from every point alike* keeps the language of perspective and removes the contrastive structure perspective requires. An awareness from no perspective is not the most encompassing form of awareness but the limiting case of an awareness with no positional anchor for its content to take hold in. The reply that divine awareness is anchored in divine essence rather than in spatial position (Helm, Paul, 2010); (Rocca, Gregory P., 2004) preserves the term by relocating the anchor; what *anchor* names, on the relocation, is doing primitive work the doctrine has not specified.

**Q4.** *What bears the awareness, if there is no being to bear it?* Self-relation runs on a being. The being holds the doubling, sustains it across the moments of the registration, and is what the registering is *of itself* in the relevant sense. The classical doctrine of divine immateriality denies matter and extension, not metaphysical subsistence; Aquinas explicitly treats God as subsistent being. The pressure is whether such a bearer can host differentiated awareness under simplicity. The doctrine preserves divine simplicity. A defender can press further with Stump's hylomorphic reading of Aquinas (Stump, Eleonore, 2003): the divine being is *esse* itself (being itself) and her configurational account of substance offers a bearer that owes nothing to matter or extension, a substance-without-composition fit to hold the self-presence. The concern here is that the bearer this supplies is a substance with exactly the features of substance subtracted: a configuration sustains a doubling only by holding distinguishable elements in a determinate arrangement, and divine simplicity removes the differentiated content any configuration arranges. What remains is not a being with a fuller form of self-presence but a bearer that has yet to show it can hold what *self-presence* names. Stump's second-personal defense is the most resourceful the doctrine has, and it is not the bare positing of a primitive. On Stump's account (*Wandering in Darkness* -(Stump, Eleonore, 2010)), divine awareness is *knowledge of persons*: the irreducible, non-propositional knowing-by-acquaintance the believer has in mind when they say God *knows* them, distinct in kind from knowledge *that* such-and-such holds. The present analysis registers it as a positively structured knowing rather than a place where analysis stops. The concern here is that second-personal knowledge, taken at the strength Stump gives it, is *more* structurally demanding than the propositional knowing it is contrasted with, not less. To know a person second-personally is to attend to *this* one, as they are, from the standpoint of one present to them: a relation indexed at both poles, running across the interval between the attender and the attended, and borne by a being that sustains the attending as the encounter unfolds. The richness that distinguishes second-personal knowing from propositional grasp is supplied entirely by T, S, and Φ: the temporal index that makes the attending *now*, the positional standpoint that makes it *to this one*, and the substantial bearer that holds the encounter together. Invoked to defend a being without those conditions, the second-personal account does not exempt awareness from the structural requirement; it intensifies it. What the believer means by *God attends to me* is precisely the second-personal relation Stump describes, and that relation, described faithfully, is the structure the classical definition has removed. The defense rescues the believer's intuition only by reintroducing the conditions the doctrine was formulated to deny: the move [§6.4.2](<6.4.2 Knowledge.md>), Q8 makes for knowledge.

**Q5.** *Once awareness is stripped of all self-relation, what is left to conceive?* The conceivability question for predicates of God in general is taken up at [§6.8.3](<6.8.3 Describability.md>); the present concern is local. Chalmers -(Chalmers, David J., 2002) registers the relevant asymmetry: conceiving something coherent is some evidence for its possibility, conceiving something with structural self-defeat licenses no such inference. To conceive of awareness without self-relation is, on the analyses surveyed at Q1, to conceive of awareness with the structural condition for awareness removed. To conceive of *vita perfecta* without temporal differentiation, spatial perspective, or substantial being is to conceive of life with the structural conditions of life removed. The reply available to the doctrine is the analogical-and-apophatic one (predicating of God by analogy, or by negation alone; [§6.8.3](<6.8.3 Describability.md>), Q1–Q2): the predicates apply analogically, and the conceivability concern dissolves under the analogical reading. The reply is genuinely available, and [§6.8.3](<6.8.3 Describability.md>) takes its measure. What this section adds is that the conceivability concern does not require univocity to apply. Even on the most generous analogical reading, the predicate has to share enough structure with its creaturely paradigm for the analogical relation to obtain, and the structural conditions removed at T, S, and Φ are precisely what the creaturely paradigm consists in.

One classical argument seems to cut beneath all five pressures at once. Avicenna's *Flying Man* (Avicenna, (c. 1020) 1959) asks you to imagine a person created in an instant, full-grown, suspended in still air, blindfolded, limbs held apart so nothing is felt — no sensation, no perceived body, no world. Even so, the person would affirm *that they are*: self-awareness given with no body to give it, so awareness is no debtor to the structural conditions. Grant the intuition its full force; it still concedes the point. What the scenario subtracts is *outer* sensation and the *perceived* body — not the conditions the self-affirmation runs on. Awareness is not a static having but a registering: to be aware is to be modulated by what one is aware of, to occupy a state that responds to its object and is thereby distinguishable from the states one is not in. If the Flying Man is asked a question, the scenario gains relational content not present in Avicenna's original thought experiment. Even without it, the self-affirmation supplies a minimal subject–content structure; and even with no questioner, his affirming *I am* is the barest form of the same loop, a self registering itself. Feedback of this kind is not one feature of awareness among others; it is what remains when everything else is stripped, and it is already the three structural roles at work: the modulation runs across an ordering (T's role), the registrant stands over against the registered (S's role), and a persisting bearer is what the difference makes a difference to (Φ's role). The tableau concedes as much before the argument begins, suspending him *in air*, creating him *at an instant*, having him *affirm*. The Flying Man supports awareness without outer sensation or perceived embodiment. It supports a bearer and determinate content, but it does not by itself establish temporal duration, spatial placement, or the loaded T/S/Φ types. The intuition that self-presence outlasts the senses is sound; the inference that it outlasts T, S, and Φ removes the very structure the affirmation instances.

> [!info]
> **Natural worry.** Avicenna's Flying Man seems to cut beneath all this: imagine a person created full-grown in midair, blindfolded, feeling nothing—no body, no world. Even so, they'd affirm that they are. Self-awareness with nothing from outside, so awareness owes nothing to structure. Grant it full force and it still concedes the point. What the scene removes is outer sensation and the felt body, not the conditions the self-affirming runs on. To affirm 'I am' is already a self registering itself: a modulation across an interval, a registrant set over against what it registers, a persisting being the difference makes a difference to. The tableau grants as much before it starts—creating him at an instant, suspending him in air, having him affirm.

*What is required.* Awareness, taken on what the five pressures surface, has a specific structural shape. It begins with an asymmetric self-relation between the registering and the registered; a perfectly identical knower-and-known is not the upper limit of self-relation but its absence. The asymmetry runs in time: states of being aware of *this* are distinguishable from states of being aware of *that* only against a temporal differentiation the doctrine of eternal self-cognition deliberately forecloses, and an awareness that does not modulate when its object varies is the feature of a static relation, not heightened attention. It runs from a perspective: there is a *here* from which the awareness is, and equidistance from every point alike keeps the language of perspective without keeping its content. It runs on a being: self-relation requires Φ to hold the doubling, and relocating *self-presence* to a primitive is where the analysis stops rather than where it deepens. And the analogical defense the tradition leans on requires shared structural scaffolding with the creaturely paradigm to obtain at all: exactly what is conceded at T, S, and Φ is exactly what the paradigm consists in. Awareness is what self-relation does when the relation is doubled across a manifold; the predicate points to a feature Nature has when it loops on itself, not a primitive that bypasses the looping.

*What is inverted.* Awareness is Nature in self-relation. The English *aware* descends through Old English *gewær*, *cautious, watchful*, from Proto-Germanic *waraz*, *attentive, on guard*: the term names a state of standing attentively toward what is there to be attended to, and the standing requires somewhere to stand and something to stand attentive over. This self-relation is developed at [§7.8](<7.8 Life.md>) as an emergent feature of T, S, and Φ at sufficient elaboration, and [§8.1](<8.1 Drive.md>) takes reflexive awareness up directly. The classical tradition reaches for a being whose self-presence is more vivid than the believer's, more comprehensive than any creature's, and names a relation that has lost the structure self-presence consists in. The doctrine has been performing the believer's awareness onto a non-being whose conditions for awareness have been removed at every level. The eliminative pressure establishes a determinate subject–content burden. The positive claim that awareness is what Nature does when self-relation develops is deferred to §8 and must be earned there.


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← [6.4 Cognition](<6.4 Cognition.md>) | [6.4.2 Knowledge](<6.4.2 Knowledge.md>) →
