A SPECIES É UM INTERMEDIÁRIO COGNITIVO EM TOMÁS DE AQUINO?

Abstract

This article has as its primary purpose to attempt to establish a brief reflection on some issues relating to the functional status of the species and the concept in Thomas Aquinas's theory of the process of knowledge held by the human intellect when you consider the extra mental thing as its object of cognition. The problem arises from some propositions that Aquinas held to affirm the priority immediacy of thing knowledge (this is what is known directly by intellective act) in relation to the mental acts content, which in turn, can be considered as secondarily so objects. However, this thesis must be considered in the light of another one, according to which species and / or the concept are cognitive means for the cognition process of the extra mental thing. With that, species and / or concepts are means while known or means as mere mental events with some kind of relationship with the thing?