Master of One's Own Acts: Thomas Aquinas and Delegated Decision in Generative Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

This essay argues that generative artificial intelligence can displace students from the very act that, according to Thomas Aquinas, makes an action human: deciding with deliberation. For Aquinas, the human being differs from irrational creatures in being master of his own acts, and is so through reason and will (Summa theologiae I-II, q. 1, a. 1). The medieval controversy over the unity of the intellect, as Aquinas reconstructs it against the Averroists, also offers a structure for thinking about what happens when an intellectual operation is entrusted to a system that is external and shared by millions of people. The argument is a functional analogy: it attributes neither intellect nor will to the machine. Recent empirical literature shows that generative AI supports critical thinking when it is used in guided and reflective ways, and weakens it when it replaces the student's deliberation. The argument does not oppose delegation as such, since learning has always relied on external supports; it distinguishes supports that expand the student's capacity to understand and decide from uses that replace it. The essay proposes a pedagogical response that recovers the scholastic disputatio: the AI raises objections, and the student answers, verifies, and decides. The proposal is complemented by objectives, competencies, and an assessment at three points: before, during, and after the use of the tool. Preprint v1.0, not peer reviewed. Author: Antonio Carlos González-López, independent researcher (ORCID 0009-0004-4568-3842).