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- Sep 21, 2007In a message dated 15/09/07 12:41:54 PM Mountain Daylight Time, pluviosilla@... writes:
Ah yes, this makes sense. When a dog sees food, for instance, he obviously “judges” it to be food at some level, even though he does not have an intellectual soul. Would this correspond to our “estimative power”?KEVIN: Simpler judgments may be the results of our sensory powers. I say, "may be", because of what I regurgitated from both Aristotle and Aquinas about intellectual souls having the same powers as vegetative (plant) and sensitive (non-human animal) souls
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JOHN:
REPLY:
No to your question.
EXPLANATION:
The dog obviously "judges" what he smells to be good, at the level of his sense of smell and at the level of his memory of eating things before which have smelled like what he senses in the present. The dog judges what he smells to be desireable, rather than "food". He has a sensitive soul with an "estimative power". The "estimative power" of a dog's sensitive soul has an analog in human cogitative powers, or in what Aquinas calls the "particular reason", quote
AQUINAS (from Summa I, Q. 78., Article 4.):-
"...Furthermore for the apprehension of intentions which are not received through the senses the estimative power is appointed: and for their preservation the memorative power which is a storehouse of such intentions. A sign of which we have in the fact that the principle of memory in animals is found in some such intentions, for instance that something is harmful or otherwise (eg. OTHERWISE as in good to eat. KB) And the very character of something as past, which memory observes, is to be reckoned among the intentions.
Now we must observe that as to sensible forms there is no difference between man and other animals; for they are similarly immuted by external sensibles. But there is a difference as to the above intentions: for other animals perceive these intentions only by some sort of natural instinct, while man perceives them also by means of a certain comparison. Therefore the power which in other animals is called the natural ESTIMATIVE power, in man is called the COGITATIVE, which by some sort of comparison discovers these intentions. Therefore it is also called the particular reason to which medical men assign a particular organ, namely, the middle part of the head, for it compares individual intentions, just as the intellectual reason compares universal intentions. As to the memorative power...(etc.)[Summa I, Q. 78. Article 4. I answer...]
So our cogitative powers are analogous to a dog's or other "brute" animal's instinctual "estimative powers" according to Aquinas.
Kevin
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