COGITATIVA. — In Thomistic psychology, the cogitativa is that internal sense which collaborates most directly with the intellect, and whose object is indicated in the contents of “lived experience” or inesistent intentions. While in animals such contents are made present immediately “by instinct,” in man, who is endowed with intelligence, their acquisition is gradual and depends on the exercise of the cogitativa, which is guided thereto by the intellect.
The doctrine of the cogitativa developed very slowly in the Aristotelian tradition. It was the Arabs, and among them especially Averroes, who, drawing from the scant and vague allusions of Aristotle, Galen, and the Greek commentators, were able to construct a sufficiently organized theory. In Averroes, moreover, the cogitativa is assigned the decisive role of being the form of individual singulars and the intermediary through which the union between the single separated intellect and particular individuals is effected during the act of understanding (Averroes, *Colliget*, *Super I. III De anima*, tract. 6, Venice ed. 1662, f. 154v).
St. Thomas, while rejecting monopsychism, nevertheless adopted and deepened the Averroist theory, convinced that it was necessary to posit, between purely sensory contents and purely intellectual contents, a class of contents that partook of the nature of both and rendered their connection and penetration possible.
St. Thomas therefore attributes to the cogitativa the following functions: 1) to grasp “in concreto” the meaning of things; 2) to prepare the “phantasms” for intellectual abstraction; 3) to delineate in a concrete manner the fundamental classifications of things (categories); 4) to render possible the application of prudential syllogisms; 5) to know for the first time singular substances and their existence... The tasks entrusted to the cogitativa are therefore among the most delicate in the formation of the spiritual life.