Elena Baltuta

Im Folgenden werde ich einige der möglichen Interpretationen der thomistischen Intentionalitätstheorie darstellen. Zuerst werde ich die Mechanismen der menschlichen Erkenntnis und der Beziehung zwischen phantasmata, species sensibile und species intelligibile bei Thomas von Aquin beschreiben. Danachwerde ich die verschiedenen Interpretationen des Problems der Intentionalität bei Thomas darstellen; genauer gesagt geht es um drei reduktive Interpretationenund eine nicht-reduktive. Am Ende dieses Beitrags werde ich mich für eine dieser Interpretationen entscheiden und meine Gründe dafür angeben.

When we humans encounter a wolf in the wild, we perceive it as dangerous and consequently feel fear. It seems sheep, too, perceive wolves as dangerous, which is why they flee from them. However, when humans perceive something as dangerous, they make use of concepts. Sheep cannot do that. They do not have an intellect, hence they do not have access to concepts. At least, this is what philosophers in the Middle Ages thought. But then what do sheep make use of when they perceive something as dangerous? In this paper, I explore the answers of two thirteenth-century Oxonians, Geoffrey of Aspall and John Pecham. Both agreed that sheep have an internal sense, the estimative power, that allows them to perceive something as dangerous. Nevertheless, they did not agree on how the estimative power does this or what exactly it provides access to. While Aspall believed that contents of the type “dangerous” consist of an arrangement of sensible forms, Pecham referred to these contents as “intentions.” I begin the paper by examining Dominik Perler’s approach of medieval conceptions of animal emotions. He argues that the metaphysical stance on the sensory input determines the shapes the intentional content can take. I argue that additional variables, as proposed by Aspall and Pecham, can and should be taken into account. Such variables diminish the explanatory power of Perler’s approach. In other words, the intentional content is not determined solely by how the sensory input is metaphysically conceived.

Im Folgenden werde ich einige der möglichen Interpretationen der thomistischen Intentionalitätstheorie darstellen. Zuerst werde ich die Mechanismen der menschlichen Erkenntnis und der Beziehung zwischen phantasmata, species sensibile und species intelligibile bei Thomas von Aquin beschreiben. Danachwerde ich die verschiedenen Interpretationen des Problems der Intentionalität bei Thomas darstellen; genauer gesagt geht es um drei reduktive Interpretationenund eine nicht-reduktive. Am Ende dieses Beitrags werde ich mich für eine dieser Interpretationen entscheiden und meine Gründe dafür angeben.

The paper argues in favour of a direct realist reading of Aquinas’s theory of intelligible species, in opposition to the recent representationalist challenges. In order to secure the direct realist reading, the paper follows three steps: a short description of Aquinas’s process of cognition, a survey of the direct realist arguments and the analysis of the representationalist interpretation. The final step consists of investigating the representationalist reading as it is suggested by two scholars, Claude Panaccio in Aquinas on Intellectual Representation and Robert Pasnau in Theories of Cognition in the Latter Middle Ages. Thus, the paper can be construed as a reply to these two authors, due to the thorough attention paid to their argumentative trails. With regard to Panaccio’s reading the paper focuses on the identity between the intelligible species and the essence of the extra-mental object and argues that Panaccio understands identity in a very narrow sense. Concerning Pasnau’s line of reasoning the focus is on the primum cognitum status of the intelligible species, and the main argument is that intelligible species is understood by Aquinas as the quo and not the quod of cognition. As the paper shows, neither one, nor the other interpretation poses a threat to the direct realist reading of Aquinas’s intelligible species.