Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 5.19

"A man himself is differently comprehended by the senses, by imagination, by reason, and by intelligence. 

 
"For the senses distinguish the form as set in the matter operated upon by the form; imagination distinguishes the appearance alone without the matter. 
 
"Reason goes even further than imagination; by a general and universal contemplation it investigates the actual kind which is represented in individual specimens. 
 
"Higher still is the view of the intelligence, which reaches above the sphere of the universal, and with the unsullied eye of the mind gazes upon that very form of the kind in its absolute simplicity." 
 
—from Book 5, Prose 4
 
The power of awareness can take on many distinct forms, and this becomes evident when we consider the various expressions of our own human consciousness. It should also reveal that we ourselves, in turn, can be apprehended in a range of degrees, from the narrow to the broad, from the more concrete to the more abstract, from the imperfect to the perfect. 
 
The way a dog is aware of a man is different than the way a man is aware of a dog, and the way a man is aware of God is different than the way God is aware of a man. 
 
I apologize if my own attempts at explanation tend to come from the language and perspective of Thomist philosophy, but these are the terms that best help me to express difficult problems. There are, of course, many other schools and traditions, all of them trying, in their own ways, to arrive at an account of what it means to perceive or to know. Boethius, like St. Thomas, always tried to work from a synthesis of different classical models. 
 
On the level of the senses, the particular impression received is of a form joined to its specific matter. I am aware of this individual dog, physically present right before me. 
 
On the level of imagination, that same particular impression is retained, as in memory, separately from its matter. I am still aware of this individual dog, but I recall it without its physical presence. 
 
On the level of reason, the form is considered in universal abstraction. I am no longer looking at this dog, or at that dog, with all of their particular differences, but I come to apprehend the identity that all dogs essentially share in common. 
 
And finally, on the level of what can be called intelligence, form is fully and completely contained within Mind, not received from the outside, or subject to any sort of alteration. 
 
This would be, however poorly we are able to speak of it, the mode of Divine knowledge, nothing less than God’s presence to Himself, as the source and measure of all creatures. 
 
The dog can sense me, and he can remember me. I can also sense and remember the dog, but I can further contemplate his inherent identity, and ponder what the meaning of “dogness” is. 
 
And beyond any of that is the perfect knowledge of God, where His existence and His knowledge are one and the same. Trying to contrast the consciousness of a creature to the consciousness of the Creator is something like comparing a drop of water to the entire ocean, and then some. 

Written in 1/2016