Per uno studio sull’intelligenza animale nella Scolastica medievale: facoltà estimativa, inferenze e segni tra XIII e XIV secolo

Discussions about animal intelligence play an important role in defining the peculiarities of sensitive knowledge during the Middle Ages, in both Arabic and Latin cultures. In what follows I will try to reconstruct, based on an examination of the sources and secondary literature, the outlines of these discussions starting from the reflections of Avicenna, al-Ghaza ̄l ̄ı and Averroes (but as we will see, a peculiar role must also be recognized to Alhazen’s optics), to continue with Al- bert the Great, Thomas Aquinas and, in particular, Roger Bacon, who presents the most advanced theory of perception and animal intelli- gence: he ascribes to the inferior (and organic) levels of human knowl- edge and to the higher levels of animal one inferential abilities related to both syllogistic and to sign based reasoning. This contribution will be concluded by a look into the 14th century and the novelty introduced by the partial translation of some writings of Sextus Empiricus and the dissemination of relevant topics and examples.