Welcome

Any reader of Aquinas will eventually encounter the terms 'internal senses' and 'cogitative power,' as well as 'passive intellect' and 'particular reason.' The primary goal of this website is to facilitate understanding of Aquinas's view of the internal senses in general and the cogitative in particular. With the topic of the cogitative perhaps more than with any other in Thomas’s psychology, one cannot fully understand Aquinas’s assertions without taking into account three philosophers between Aristotle and Aquinas, namely Avicenna, Averroes, and Albert.
This site presents my research, which focuses on (though is not limited to) the accounts of the soul and of the internal senses in these five thinkers.
I will also present links to other relevant sources on the cogitative power that would not come up immediately via a standard search engine.
Secondarily, since I am a philosopher by profession, I will post non-cogitative related philosophical or theological material for any who might be interested.

Monday, September 10, 2012

Recent work on the Cogitative Power

For my published work on the cogitative power and the internal senses in Aquinas, see: 
  • Barker, Mark J. “Aquinas on Internal Sensory Intentions: Nature and Classification. International Philosophical Quarterly 52.2 (June 2012): 199-226.
  • available here
  • Barker, Mark J. “Experience and Experimentation: The Meaning of Experimentum in Aquinas.” Thomist 76.1 (January 2012): 37-71.
  •  available here


These studies originated in two chapters of my dissertation: “The Cogitative Power: Objects and Terminology” (final draft August 2006,  defended May 2007, Center for Thomistic Studies, Houston). Here is an abstract: 
 
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B0CjaoSjGC9iLThQWmt1cWJSY00


I am posting chapters 2 (download) and 7 (here) from my dissertation for two reasons:
  1. For didactic purposes. They serve this purpose, insofar as the treatment is simpler and less detailed than in the corresponding scholarly articles. Given the frequent lack of familiarity with the internal senses, they may be worth reading prior to looking at the definitive published treatments. The investment of time and effort is minimal, given the chapters' brevity, but they  serve to highlight the points I have expanded on in the articles. They also contain references to secondary sources omitted from the articles so as not to over-burden the reader.
  2. For archaeological reasons. That is, they indicate the point of research attained as of 2007, and thus serve to show some of the more obvious (relatively speaking) points about intentions and experience, as well as points that were later corrected. 
For scholarly purposes, these documents are entirely superseded by the aforementioned two articles, respectively.