tietoisuutena

Tietoisuutena is the essive form of the Finnish noun tietoisuus, meaning consciousness or awareness. The form literally translates to “as consciousness” and is used to express a role, identity, or standpoint from which a phenomenon is considered or experienced.

In academic Finnish, tietoisuutena is commonly found in philosophical, phenomenological, and cognitive-science writing. It signals that the discussion treats a thing not simply as an external object, but as it is encountered or constituted within awareness. For example, a researcher might analyze a perceptual event tietoisuutena, i.e., “as consciousness/awareness,” to emphasize subjective appearance rather than objective properties. The term also appears in debates about subjectivity, intentionality, and the conditions of experience.

Linguistic note: the suffix -na/-nä marks the essive case in Finnish, meaning “in the capacity of” or “as.” Tietoisuutena thus derives from tietoisuus and is distinct from the genitive tietoisuu­dén or the illative tietoisuuteen. The usage tends to be formal and theoretical, and it is less common in everyday language.

See also: tietoisuus; Finnish essive case; phenomenology; philosophy of mind.