Volume 98, Issue 4, Fall 2024

Kinds of Intentionality and Kinds of Approaches to Intentionality

Why Is the Sheep Not Afraid of the Wolf?
John Pecham and Geoffrey of Aspall on Animal Intentionality

When we humans encounter a wolf in the wild, we perceive it as dangerous and consequently feel fear. It seems sheep, too, perceive wolves as dangerous, which is why they flee from them. However, when humans perceive something as dangerous, they make use of concepts. Sheep cannot do that. They do not have an intellect, hence they do not have access to concepts. At least, this is what philosophers in the Middle Ages thought. But then what do sheep make use of when they perceive something as dangerous? In this paper, I explore the answers of two thirteenth-century Oxonians, Geoffrey of Aspall and John Pecham. Both agreed that sheep have an internal sense, the estimative power, that allows them to perceive something as dangerous. Nevertheless, they did not agree on how the estimative power does this or what exactly it provides access to. While Aspall believed that contents of the type ¡°dangerous¡± consist of an arrangement of sensible forms, Pecham referred to these contents as ¡°intentions.¡± I begin the paper by examining Dominik Perler¡¯s approach of medieval conceptions of animal emotions. He argues that the metaphysical stance on the sensory input determines the shapes the intentional content can take. I argue that additional variables, as proposed by Aspall and Pecham, can and should be taken into account. Such variables diminish the explanatory power of Perler¡¯s approach. In other words, the intentional content is not determined solely by how the sensory input is metaphysically conceived.