  In this passage, it seems clear that for Olivi the species is a thing in itself and that there really are three things involved in the cognition of an object: the object, the species, and the cognizer. The species is on his view a representation, namely a thing that stands in for the object in the mind. The main problem he sees with the theory is hence epistemological. How can we be sure we are cognizing the object and not the species (see Toivanen 2009, Chap. 4). Olivi hence argues that this third representing thing is not needed and that the mind can attend to the object directly. Ockham is later on in the early fourteenth century to repeat a similar argument against the species theory.