Animal Rationality <UN> Investigating Medieval Philosophy Managing Editor John Marenbon Editorial Board Margaret Cameron Simo Knuuttila Martin Lenz Christopher J. Martin volume 12 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/imp <UN> Animal Rationality Later Medieval Theories 1250–1350 By Anselm Oelze leiden | boston <UN> This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0 license, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. Further information and the complete license text can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc/4.0/ The terms of the CC license apply only to the original material. The use of material from other sources (indicated by a reference) such as diagrams, illustrations, photos and text samples may require further permission from the respective copyright holder. 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This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. <UN> To all animals ∵ <UN> <UN> Contents Preface xi Introduction 1 1 What are and Why Study Later Medieval Theories of Animal Rationality? 5 2 How to Study Later Medieval Theories? 12 3 Structure and Key Questions 16 Part 1 Animals and Rationality in the Middle Ages Introduction to Part 1 20 4 The Role of Animals in the Middle Ages 21 5 Animal Souls and Sensory Cognition 28 6 Human Souls and the Triad of Intellectual Operations 36 7 Grey Areas 44 Part 2 Universal Cognition and Concept Formation Introduction to Part 2 52 8 Estimation, Conceptualisation, and Categorisation (Thomas Aquinas) 57 9 Intentions and Quiddities (Albertus Magnus) 70 <UN> viii Contents 10 Elevated Intentions and Common Forms (Pseudo-Peter of Spain) 78 11 Vague Particulars as Universals (Roger Bacon) 82 12 Universal Desire and Experience (John Buridan) 88 13 General Mental Representations (Peter of John Olivi) 95 Part 3 Judging Introduction to Part 3 100 14 The Idea of Sensory Judgments 102 15 Natural Judgments (Thomas Aquinas) 106 16 Erroneous Judgments and Differences in Estimation (Albertus Magnus) 112 17 Reflective and Experimental Judgments (Peter of John Olivi, John Buridan) 116 18 The Ascription of Judgments and the Problem of Anthropomorphism (William of Ockham, Adam Wodeham, Gregory of Rimini) 121 Part 4 Reasoning Introduction to Part 4 132 19 Quasi-Reasoning (Thomas Aquinas, Gregory of Rimini, John Duns Scotus) 134 20 Quasi-Reasoning and Cogitation (Roger Bacon) 142 21 Imperfect Argumentations and Practical Syllogisms (Albertus Magnus) 150 <UN> Contents ix 22 Material Souls and Degrees of Reasoning (John Buridan, Nicole Oresme) 156 Part 5 Prudence Introduction to Part 5 164 23 Memory vs. Recollection (Albertus Magnus) 168 24 Incomplete and Complete Memory (Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon) 175 25 Foresight and Provision (Albertus Magnus, Bonaventure) 178 26 Quasi-Foresight and Quasi-Hope (Thomas Aquinas) 183 27 Operating for and towards the Future (Roger Bacon, Peter of John Olivi) 189 28 Imperfect or Particular Prudence (Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas) 193 29 Prudence by Analogy (Giles of Rome, John Duns Scotus) 199 Part 6 Rationality without Reason? Introduction to Part 6 204 30 Medieval and Contemporary Theories: The Differences 206 31 Medieval and Contemporary Theories: The Commonalities 209 32 Towards a Classification: Differentialist and Assimilationist Explanations 217 33 Room for Rationality or Rationality without Reason 227 <UN> x Contents Conclusion 234 Bibliography 239 Index of Names 264 Index of Subjects 266 <UN> Preface This book is about animals. About animals like you and me but also – and mainly – about the members of other animal species such as dogs, cats, apes, or ants. A topic like this may not seem very original these days, because inter- est in animals has grown immensely over the past few decades. It has grown to the extent that some even say that we are currently observing an ‘animal turn’ across various disciplines. Regardless of whether or not this is true, there is undoubtedly much research being done on animals, their mutual relation- ships, common history, differences, and commonalities at the moment and this interest is shared by people working in different fields, including philosophers. The philosophers’ main interest in this context lies, as many people think, in animal ethics, that is, the question of the moral status of humans in compari- son to other animals. The answers given to this question surely matter, as they affect the way in which we interact with and act on other animals. However, there is also a second field that is philosophically relevant and this is the field of animal cognition. One might even argue that this field is more fundamen- tal than animal ethics since arguments regarding the moral status of animals often rely on what we think about their cognitive capacities. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that the topic of animal cognition has a long philosophical history. In recent years, several studies have shed light on this history. Some peri- ods, however, have received considerably more attention than others. While the views of ancient, early modern, and contemporary philosophers have been studied a great deal, the views of medieval thinkers have yet to attract as much attention as they might. A very general reason for this lack of attention is that, despite all efforts, medieval philosophy still leads a relatively shadowy exis- tence within contemporary (history of) philosophy. Yet, there is also a more specific reason, namely, the widespread opinion that there is not much to say about animal cognition in the Middle Ages. Medieval philosophers, it is often said, granted various sensory capacities to nonhuman animals, such as sight, hearing, imagination, and memory. Still, they denied them anything related to the possession of a rational soul, such as concept formation, judging, rea- soning, or prudence. Consequently, nonhuman animals are non-rational ani- mals and their cognition is nothing but a deficient version of human rational cognition. Although this view contains more than a grain of truth, it fails to capture the depth and diversity of the medieval discussion. As this study shows, medi- eval philosophers did not stop at the ascription of sensory cognition to other <UN> xii Preface animals. Rather, they wondered whether one can coherently account for many complex behaviours in nonhuman species without granting them complex cognitive processes. In particular, the question was whether those processes that were taken to be rational processes always require rational faculties or whether they can also exist without a rational soul. This question might, of course, seem to be heretical in at least two regards. First, it seems to contra- dict the basic idea of Aristotelian faculty psychology, according to which every psychological process requires a particular type of soul or faculty of the soul. Rationality without reason thus seems to be impossible. Second, it seems to undermine the Aristotelian definition of the boundary between humans and nonhuman animals because, in Aristotle’s view, rationality is what sets humans apart from all other animals. Yet, despite these dangers for Aristotelian psy- chology and anthropology (which, incidentally, went hand in hand with the Christian idea of human nature), medieval philosophers did not refrain from asking these questions and the answers they gave were quite different. It is these answers that shall be called theories of animal rationality and they are the subject of this book. It is important to note, however, that this book does not cover the whole range of medieval theories from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries. Rather, it focuses on the theories of Latin authors from roughly 1250 to 1350. This pe- riod is a particularly rich and interesting period because the transmission of Aristotle’s writings had been largely completed by that time. Aristotle’s trea- tises on psychology and zoology as well as his works in other fields, such as metaphysics or ethics, gave a major boost to theorising in the Latin West. In a sense, this was a late-medieval precursor of the modern animal turn because animals became the subject of various debates not only in zoology but also in psychology and philosophy. Still, one must not forget that there are many theo- ries that were developed before and after that period and outside the Latin cultural area, especially in the Islamic world during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Many Islamic thinkers paved the way for the Latin discussion. Yet in the present book their theories will be considered only insofar as they had a notable influence on the ideas of Latin thinkers. This is not to say, of course, that they are less relevant or less interesting but they go beyond the scope of this book and definitely deserve a study in their own right.