Peter of Jean Olivi, animals and rational or non-rational judgement
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77
If we take rationality in the strict, medieval sense of the term, animals are not “rational”. But on a broader and more current meaning of this notion, medieval authors agree in attributing to animals particularly sophisticated cognitive abilities that can be described as rational. So it is that Pierre de Jean Olivi notes that the common sense of animals constitutes a power of judgment capable of gathering, composing and even comparing information in order to respond adequately to a situation or to solve a problem. He nevertheless considers that man alone is a rational and free animal, who is therefore not reducible to an “intellectual animal”, this famous expression designating nothing other than the fiction of a human being who would be intelligent but deprived of free will.
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