Michael van der Galien considers whether dogs have souls. Note also that in the post Michael includes a picture of his dog and his extemely pretty fiancee.
I left the following observation in the comments to his post.
Augustine taught that animal souls were not rational ones and, consequently, were not immortal but vanished when the animal died. Aquinas followed Augustine in this.
We have greater knowledge of the science of consciousness and reasoning than the ancients did and it’s pretty clear that at least some animals have consciousness and the ability to reason, notably elephants, porpoises, and chimps. I think that at the very least that some dogs have consciousness and the ability to reason, too.
If there are such things as souls and human beings have them, can anyone conceive of the possibility that animals with consciousness and the ability to reason don’t have souls?
My own take: if dogs don’t have immortal souls, then neither do I. Or, as Will Rogers put, if dogs don’t go to heaven, when I die I want to go whereever it is that they went.
If there are souls, dogs have them. And any well-run heaven would let my Lab in before me.
Aquinas didn’t believe that women had any souls at all—right?
No, Aquinas definitely believed that women had immortal souls. However, he did believe that women were intellectually inferior to men. Despite this he also believed that some women would occupy a position in heaven superior to practically all men.
This is a bit off-topic, but does anyone have any idea where the expression “gone to the dogs” comes from? And why does it have a negative connotation?
In answer to your question, Marc, it’s obscure—no one really knows.
I’ve heard all sorts of explanations but they all share the idea that dogs were kept in very poor conditions or treated as outcasts.
Consider, everything on the world has a “spiritual background”.
This could mean that all you see and can experience as a physical being, like minerals, plants, animals and humans, are in someway a material expression of a spiritual existence.
Then you could consider that as the mineral is only for a small part of his spiritual entity in a material presence on earth, the human is far the most materialised spiritual entity at present on the moment on earth.
A human is an individualised specimen, one of a kind.
That is why we consider a human as an individual, a personality.
A human is gifted with the ability to think about his thoughts, and by this can objectively become awareness of him or herself.
Animals are not as far materialised spiritualities, and when you look at dogs one could consider a dog itself is not a personality, but the total of that special dog specimen itself is the personality that did not enter (in this moment of evolution) materialisation till the level of selfawareness.
A dog can think – we call this instinct – but limited compared to humans, a dog cannot think about his thoughts, so cannot have selfawareness.
But because dogs are more in spiritual world, dogs – like other animals – feel more about energies that are working in nature. That is why dogs – and other animals – have awareness of coming danger.
We love dogs and other animals for their qualities as a specimen, that we for instant encounter in one or more representations in or near our home. what
“If there are such things as souls and human beings have them, can anyone conceive of the possibility that animals with consciousness and the ability to reason don’t have souls?” (Michael van der Galien)
Have consciousness and ability to reason however impressive in animals is different from what Aquinas calls the “rational immortal soul”. Certainly, some creatures are aware of themselves and do problem-solving tasks, like humans do, but Aquinas said that the rational soul is created directly by God. The human soul performs the functions of the vegetative and sensitive life (found in animals), but besides these functions it has activities which do not depend upon the body, i.e., understanding and volition. The intellect has for its object the knowledge of the universal, and operates by judging and reasoning. The will is free; that is, it is not determined by any particular good, but it determines itself. From an analysis of the intellect and the will, Aquinas proves the spirituality, the simplicity, and the immortality of the soul. The intellect has, in fact, for its proportionate object the universal, the understanding of which is a simple and spiritual act. Hence the soul from which the act of understanding proceeds is itself simple and spiritual. Since it is simple and spiritual, it is by nature also immortal. While animals observe and are aware of the particular, they do not without an intellect make the leap to the universal, therefore their souls are not by nature “simple”, a philosophical term, loosely meaning anything without composition or complexity, and so are not immortal.
The same conclusion is reached through an analysis of the will, which, is free, i.e., not determined by any cause outside itself. In the physical world everything is determined by causal necessity, and hence there is no liberty. The faculty which is not determined by causal motives declares its independence of these causes and hence is an immaterial faculty. The soul upon which such a faculty depends must be of the same nature as the faculty; that is, the soul must be immaterial.
The human soul, since it is immaterial and performs acts which are not absolutely dependent upon the bodily organs, does not perish with the body, therefore, animals don’t have immortal souls and even good dogs don’t go to heaven.
Thank you Mr. Wallace for disentangling the issue about dogs “going to heaven”. That places my mind at ease. I know that as a human with the ability to reason I now have a choice where I want to go after my time in this earth comes to an end. I will choose to go to whatevewr place they went.