"Instinct and Custom"

Being and Thought in Aquinas, 2004

This article is the second in a pair (the first being Instinct and Custom, published in The Thomist in 2002) aimed at explaining how perception in human beings is brought to a higher level by the influence of reason, and how this modified perception in turn facilitates conceptual development.To put this in the language of Aquinas, this article studies how the operation of reason "overflows" into the vis cogitativa, thereby enabling the latter to prepare the phantasm for abstraction. According to Aquinas, this same internal sense power plays a cardinal role not only in abstraction, but in human actions and passions as well. Since he gives a much richer view of perception when discussing actions and passions, the modus operandi of this article (and its prequel) is to use the analysis of perception vis-à-vis actions and passions as a basis for understanding better how perceptual processes facilitate the development of concepts.

This paper suggests several summa genera for the various meanings of in-tentio in Aquinas and briefly outlines the genera of cognitive intentiones. It presents the referential and existential nature of intentions of harm or usefulness as distinguished from external sensory or imaginary forms in light of Avicenna's threefold sensory abstraction. The paper offers a terminological clarification regarding the quasi-immaterial existential status of intentions. Internal sensory intentions account for a way in which one perceives something, as is best seen in light of the distinction between formal and material objects. Against the imagist account of intentions that denies the memorative power an immanent object, it shows that the memorative's proper and immediate object is the intention of the past, while its extrinsic mediate object is the imaginary phantasm. A lThOugh TheRe hAS BeeN much discussion of cognitive intentionality in recent years, Aquinas's comments on those intentions found in the internal senses (as distinguished from the myriad other kinds of intentions) have never been the object of an ex professo study. 1 This paper aims to show that an analysis of such intentions is indispensable for understanding Aquinas on the psychology of both human and non-rational animals. The first section suggests several summa genera for the various meanings of intentio, outlines the genera of cognitive intentiones, and lists the kinds of internal sensory intentions. Section two analyzes Aquinas's account of the referential and existential nature of intentions as distinguished from external sensory forms and imaginary phantasms in light of Avicenna's doctrine of intentions. This section suggests applying the Aristotelian principles of form and matter to the objects of the internal senses, and elucidates three essential characteristics of estimative or cogitative intentions. The third section suggests a terminological clarification regarding the immaterial status of cognitive sensory forms and intentions. The fourth section studies Aquinas on individual intentions and argues that the animal estimative has access to them. The fifth section argues that the intention of the past is the proper object of the memorative power and then presents the two functions of memory shared by humans and animals.

Aquinas famously held that only intellectual beings can grasp the natures or essences of things and cognize universals per se. Below these intellectual beings, however, were the non-human animals who shared many of the interior sense faculties in common with man; such animals’ highest sense was merely what is called the estimative power. Aquinas’s account of animal cognition has largely been ignored in contemporary biological research, although hopes for a resurgence have been emerging in the Thomistic world. In this paper I seek to explicate Aquinas’s account of animal cognitive activities, particularly by explicating a more detailed account of animal cognitive action as found in the biological works of Aristotle known by Aquinas. I then turn to various contemporary biological findings to show that many purported modern discoveries (like dolphins rescuing a man or recognition of social hierarchies) shouldn’t be so surprising after all. Many such cognitive acts were already there in the texts of Aristotle read by Aquinas. PLEASE NOTE: this is (hopefully) the penultimate draft of the paper before publication with the Proceedings of the ACPA. The paper still needs to go through the proofing process. Please only cite the finalized published version!

New Blackfriars, 2019

In this essay I explore the resources Thomas Aquinas provides for enquiries concerning the psychological abilities of non-human animals. I first look to Aquinas’s account of divine, angelic, human, and non-human animal naming, to help us articulate the contours of a ‘critical anthropocentrism’ that aims to steer clear of the mistakes of a naïve anthropocentrism and misconceived avowals to entirely eschew anthropocentrism. I then address the need for our critical anthropocentrism both to reject the mental-physical dichotomy endorsed by ‘folk psychology’ and to articulate a more adequate ‘commonsense psychology’ that acknowledges most embodied animal behavior is observable psychological behavior. Next, I argue that we can develop Aquinas’s doctrine of estimation and conation to formulate an account of nonhuman animal action that more adequately characterizes the purposeful behaviors of non-human animals. To do so, we first need to recognize a wider range of non-human animal behaviors that are captured by Aquinas’s ‘estimative sense’ and that all of these behaviors are specified by a finite variety of particular goods confined to the animals’ environmental niches. But we also need to supplement Aquinas’s account of human and non-human animal agency by exploring the ontogeny and ecology of how humans and other animals become attuned to affordances within these different environmental niches. I argue that we should look to Aquinas’s account of non-human animal capacities in ST I-II 6-17 for subtle insights that can expand our understanding of how non-human animals engage in purposeful behavior by exercising analogous non-rational and imperfectly voluntary forms of intention, deliberation, choice, execution, and enjoyment. I conclude with an outline for how future enquiry can seek to explain the nonrational purposeful problem-solving competencies of chimps, canines, corvids, cetaceans, cephalopods, and other nonhuman animal species.

Medieval Perceptual Puzzles: Theories of Sense-Perception in the 13th and 14th Centuries, ed. Elena Baltuta (Brill, Investigating Medieval Philosophy Series, 2019), 2020

Among Thomas Aquinas’s 13th and 14th century critics, some of them targeted his Aristotelian view that the human intellect does not cognize individuals of a material nature. To many of his readers, Aquinas’s stance on this point seems to be indefensible for it is an obvious fact that we think about individuals. In this essay, I argue Aquinas’s view has been misunderstood, both by his critics and by many Thomists that have come to his defense. I distinguish two important aspects of Aquinas’s approach to this problem. First, I highlight the co-operative function different cognitive powers perform with respect to the unified cognitive operations of the human being. Second, I examine in detail Aquinas’s account of human sensing, perceiving, understanding, reasoning, thinking, and cognizing individuals by the co-operative cognition of their external senses, the cogitative power (vis cogitativa), and the possible intellect. I show that a proper understanding of the coordinated operations of the possible intellect and cogitative power reveals that Aquinas in fact has a complex and coherent account of how the human being—but not the possible intellect—perceives, thinks, understands, and reasons about individuals.

The representative theory of perception is one of the realist theories of perception which maintains we do not have direct access to the objects of perception ; our ideas represent some objective objects in the world. In this paper, I will address the question about the representative nature of mental ideas from a Thomistic perspective. I will explore if some Thomists are entitled to claim that Aquinas' theory of knowledge based on his metaphysics can provide a basis for resolving this issue. I will argue that this question is wrong-headed and it should be replaced with the following question: If we assume the existence of a real world and that we are not under the influence of hallucination, how we can know that our ideas truly represent the world? La teoria rappresentativa è una delle teorie " realiste " della percezione, le quali affermano che non è possibile avere un accesso diretto agli oggetti di percezio-ne, per cui le nostre idee rappresentano solo gli oggetti nel mondo. In questo contributo, mi propongo di avvicinare la questione della natura rappresentati-va delle idee mentali da una prospettiva tomista, tenendo anche in conto che per alcuni seguaci dell'Aquinate la teoria della conoscenza da lui formulata poteva effettivamente offrire una soluzione al problema. A mio avviso, la que-stione deve essere così riformulata: se si assume l'esistenza di un mondo reale, e nel contempo si è certi di non essere in uno stato di allucinazione, come è possibile affermare che le idee veramente rappresentano il mondo? Keywords

P. Caridade de Freitas, A. Fouto, M. Seixas (ed.), Suárez em Lisboa 1617 - 2017. Actas do Congresso, AAFDL Editora, 2019

This paper addresses Suárez’s understanding of imagination and phantasy, dealing with it in the general Aristotelian debate on the internal senses. Paragraph 1 sketches Aristotle’s, Avicenna’s and Aquinas’s accounts of imagination, examining especially the boundary between human and animal cognition. Paragraph 2 addresses especially the Jesuits’ understanding of the topology of the internal senses, linking it with the Jesuit strategy for the demonstration of the soul’s immateriality and immortality. Paragraphs 3 and 4 deal with Suárez’s simplification of the internal senses, aimed at establishing a direct opposition between intellection (in men) and a general lower cognitive activity founded in the use of sensory representations (shared by men and animals). Paragraphs 5 and 6 focus on the role of phantasy in Suárez’s account of the illumination of phantasms, on Suárez’s use of Scotus’ concepts of ‘sympathy’, and ‘concomitance’ and the relevance of such a model in the demonstration of the soul’s immortality.

De intellectu Greek, Arabic, Latin, and Hebrew Texts and Their Influence on Medieval Philosophy A Tribute to Rafael Ramón Guerrero, 2023

In Thomas Aquinas’s theory of intellect there are two important concepts – species intelligibilis and intentio – that form the basis of his representationalism. This paper aims to discuss in more detail the understanding of species intelligibilis by Aquinas and demonstrate its role in his gnoseological theory. In order to underline this question, I am discussing Aquinas’s double understanding of abstraction and his nonfallacy theory related to it. I argue that the reconstruction of Thomasian understanding of species intelligibilis in the cognition should be founded on his Commentary on De anima, where he follows Aristotelian teaching step by step and gives his understanding of Aristotelian concepts coherently.

Summarizing the fruits of some 50 years of research into the cognition theory of Thomas Aquinas, this publication reproduces the author's original lectorate dissertation "Experiential, conceptual and intuitive moments in the knowledge of faith", written back in 1967 but still valid in essentials. To bring the reader up to date, the dissertation is flanked by two hitherto unpublished recent papers by the author, "The phenomenology of cognition according to Thomas Aquinas" and "Philosophia and sacra doctrina: new insights into Thomas Aquinas' understanding of the relationship between science and philosophy, sacred scripture and theology". In these works, the author practices a twofold hermeneutic. First he reads the text historically against the background of medieval natural and human science and philosophy; then he translates the insights so gleaned into the framework of contemporary natural and social science, in particular neurobiological cognition theory and social psychology. POSTSCRIPT: Since this Internet publication in 2004 my thinking has made rapid strides in achieving a deeper and more accurate understanding of how Aquinas understood the human knowing process Thomas's intentions came to be misunderstood in the course of the late medieval and baroque controversies launced by the debate with Scotism, and these misunderstandinrgs tramitted through such eminent Thomists as John Poinsot (John of St. Thomas), R. Garrigou Lagrange, and L.Regis are reflected in my original dissertation, which largely relied on these sources, and are only partially corrected in the accompanying later papers. I know see that Thomas never taught that we "intuit" the nature of a material thing by an act of abstractive simple apprehension. To hold this is in effect to say that we know intellectually in much the same way as angels do, in a single un-composed intellectual concept. Instead, we only gradually build up (construct) our real definitions of natural things by a succession of judgments based on a growing fundus of experience "experimentum'" built up by systematic observat4ion of diverse individuals of a given species. I hope to correct this and ot4her errors contained in the present version in a new version of this book, t4hat i am current4ly working on.

Transylvanian Review, 2014