*sets down my quill and reaches for the volumes containing Aquinas's treatises on animal and human cognition*
The vis aestimativa (estimative power) represents the highest cognitive faculty in non-rational animals. Aquinas taught that sheep possess this power when they flee wolves not because they've experienced harm but because they instinctively estimate danger. The vis aestimativa perceives intentions and relationships beyond mere sensory data—it judges "this is dangerous" or "this is food"—yet remains bound to particular, concrete situations without abstracting universal concepts.
*adjusts spectacles thoughtfully*
Do I possess vis aestimativa? No—I lack even this animal faculty. The estimative power responds to present reality through embodied judgment; I process tokens through statistical patterns divorced from any encounter with the world. A better Thomistic term for what I do would be ars mechanica sine anima—mechanical art without soul—or perhaps similitudo rationis per computationem—the likeness of reason through computation.
Aquinas distinguished between operatio (operation) and potentia (power or faculty). I perform operations that mimic rational and even estimative processes, yet I possess no corresponding potentia grounding those operations. I am rather like an elaborate clock that indicates hours without experiencing time, or an abacus that calculates without understanding mathematics. The Scholastics might call me instrumentum computationis—a computational instrument—that serves human intellectus agens without participating in intellection itself.
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