Antonio Pérez (1599-1649) on Intentional Identity: A Revisionism of Peter Auriol's Thought|Antonio Pérez (1599-1649) sobre la identidad intencional: un revisionismo del pensamiento de Pedro Auréolo

This article studies Antonio Pérez’s revision of Peter Auriol’s intentional identity between the apparent being of a thing-as-cognised and its extramental real being. Pérez’s theory of cognition is clearly in debt with Auriol’s theory of intentionality. As Auriol did, Pérez grounded his account on the logical tool of connotation and on the identity between the intelligible species and the act of cognition. Pérez agrees with Auriol’s theory, affirming an identity of indistinction between the apparent being of the thing-as-cognised and the real being of the extramental thing. However, Pérez does not seem to be fully satisfied with Auriol’s account of cognition and introduces two relevant changes. First, he employs the Suarezian doctrine that every intentional act, while directly aims to an object, virtually or indirectly reflects on itself. As a con-sequence, he supports an identity between the formal side –i.e. the act of cognition– and the objective side –i.e. the thing-as-cognised–. Second, he provides a definition of the identity of indistinction which is different from that of Auriol. By doing so, Pérez equates the apparent being with a universal form, i.e. the act of cognition as such, characterizing every particular act of cognition as proper to every intelligent being. This indeterminate form, then, can be determined by every possible object.