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wussup
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Curious to what the RC doctrine towards man’s best friend and Jesus is.
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Katholish
Guest
Dogs and all non-rational animals do not have immortal souls, so when they die, they cease to exist. Thus, the notion of “Doggy Heaven” isn’t really consistent with a sound philosophical understanding of the soul.
However, Heaven is a place where a person directly possesses the Greatest Good, and in this way, there is no good lacking in him. Whatever was good or whatever brought man joy from his relation with his “best friend/dog” will be their in greater degree in Heaven.
However, Heaven is a place where a person directly possesses the Greatest Good, and in this way, there is no good lacking in him. Whatever was good or whatever brought man joy from his relation with his “best friend/dog” will be their in greater degree in Heaven.
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wussup
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That is in essence the real question, Do Dogs and all non-rational animals have immortal souls? Actually, your response brings up another question, is there a ‘rational’ animal not a human that would have a soul?
Any particularly favorite arguments you choose to suggest that non-rational animals do not have an immortal soul?
The predicate to your your argument sounds much like that William of Auvergne, Bishop of Paris gave in his de Anima.
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Image_of_God
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1.As I explained on another subject, animals lack reason, an intellect and a will, which are required to have a rational soul.
2.Animals cannot contemplate their own existence nor can they contemplate abstract principles. If they could contemplate such a thing as justice, then I have never heard of any animal acting on it and therefore, it is unlikely that it could ever think about such a concept. I also doubt that animals think about themselves.
3.Animals cannot act contrary to their instincts. In other words, they have no will. Humans can. Think about. Humans who chose to be chaste are resisting an instinct to have sex (or immoderate sex). Humans who chose to fast are resisting an instinct to eat. I doubt an animal could fast or be chaste. An animal will always look for food when it’s hungry and only not eat when it cannot find food. An animal will always try to mate. I might be wrong, but I have never heard of a chaste, or even celibate animal (that is not asexual). Celibacy, from my knowledge, is a purely human idea and achievement because only humans can resist instincts because they have an intellect, a will and reason, faculties of the soul that can be detached from the passionate appetite.
**Main Point: In order to have a rational soul, the potential to act contrary to natural passions must be present. **
I could be wrong again, but these are my ideas.
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EverestFox
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My mother used to be sad when I told her, “dogs shouldn’t be in Heaven.” She would ask, “do you think I’ll get my dog back in Heaven?” She always said it with sadness, like her dog was the world to her, and couldn’t live without it. She scared me that she might love her dog more than God, so I proposed my thinking to her. She told me that wasn’t the case! But I always used to worry about her…
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Katholish
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All living things have souls. A soul is a principle of unity, operation, and life. Some souls are material, some are immaterial. If a soul is material, it is by definition corruptable and not immortal. If a soul is immaterial, it is not subject to corruption, snd would by necessity be immortal.
The only reason that we know man has an immaterial soul is his capacity for rational thought which involves immaterial forms. If something can comprehend an immaterial form, it must at least in part, be immaterial. Non-rational animals have no contact or comprehension of immaterial forms.
Futhermore, any “living” or operative immaterial thing would have to have intellect and will. We know that non-rational animals do not have these, therefore they are not animated by immaterial souls.
If there was some kind of rational animal that wasn’t human, would it have an immortal soul? Yes, by necessity.
William of Auvergne was a major part of the restoration of Aristotle in the early 13th Century. He was the predecessor St. Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas who perfected Aristotle’s re-integration into Christian philosophy and made it standard as it remains today. Thus, there may easily be a similarity insofar as everything I have said is from Aristotle.
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liquidpele
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Rarer_Way_Prior
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The apologists have answered this so many times…
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wussup
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I see two primary points and would like to ask a third to add to the mix.
First, IOG says,“In order to have a rational soul, the potential to act contrary to natural passions must be present.” Withholding the ‘passionate appetite’ such as sex is an example of such. By point of agreement, I think animals are clearly not as intelligent as humans, and the intelligence of a human allows the human to express a far more intense imagination than an animal. Humans suppress instinctive appetites because of a multitude of reasons, social morays, taboos, social laws, and sanctions thereby. Would you also include with sexual abstinence, fasting (eating abstinence) or other passionate appetites?
Second, Katholish said, “The only reason that we know man has an immaterial soul is his capacity for rational thought which involves immaterial forms.” YECH! I remember studying immaterial forms. Please expound briefly what you mean by this.
Further from Katholish (and others) an agreement is made that if a being was rational it would of necessity have an immortal soul. Is this a condescension of an argument for which no proof can be made or do you have any beings other than human that might have a soul?
First, IOG says,“In order to have a rational soul, the potential to act contrary to natural passions must be present.” Withholding the ‘passionate appetite’ such as sex is an example of such. By point of agreement, I think animals are clearly not as intelligent as humans, and the intelligence of a human allows the human to express a far more intense imagination than an animal. Humans suppress instinctive appetites because of a multitude of reasons, social morays, taboos, social laws, and sanctions thereby. Would you also include with sexual abstinence, fasting (eating abstinence) or other passionate appetites?
Second, Katholish said, “The only reason that we know man has an immaterial soul is his capacity for rational thought which involves immaterial forms.” YECH! I remember studying immaterial forms. Please expound briefly what you mean by this.
Further from Katholish (and others) an agreement is made that if a being was rational it would of necessity have an immortal soul. Is this a condescension of an argument for which no proof can be made or do you have any beings other than human that might have a soul?
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wussup
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Dude (or Dudette). That is fotflmao funny
! My soul-less damned to hell or doomed-to-a-Jehovah-Witness-like-obliteration Dogs were concerned in a very uncharacteristic (for a soul-less being) manner as a response to my unrestrained hilarity.Rarer Way Prior (RWP), the question is deeper than a simple fondness for dogs. It deals with first what is a soul, which souls are worthy of immortality and what does that immortality consist of, and if not what separates us from them, and if God the Father created another being with a soul, what consequence does this have on theology. The questions that tie into this question are exceedingly deep and meaningful. Quite a risk to a good catholic boy.
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Katholish
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Sure. It has to do with the basic question of how we come to know things. Plato was one of the first to some imperfect understanding of the “problem of universals”. How is it that you and I both know what “tree” is or what a triangle is. Furthermore, this is knowledge that all of mankind has access to. Somehow, every person in the world can come to an understanding of triangle and all “know it the same way”. How is that possible? Plato concluded that the knowledge of triangle or tree cannot be limited to any particular material thing. You and I might see a hundred different trees, but yet I would not have seen the same trees that you have, yet we both understand what it is to be a tree. Furthermore, that knowledge isn’t corruptable-and does not change. Any given person’s understanding might change, but what it is to be a triangle does not. It is a fixed thing. It must therefore not be a material thing because it is universal and incorruptable. Ultimately Plato didn’t get the whole question of knowledge or the soul entirely correct, but this basic principle, that knowledge is universal and immaterial is the very foundation of Western philosophy in many ways. His student Aristotle then came along and perfected this notion explaining that all things have a nature or form and that man’s intellect has the capacity to abstract universal ideas from the multitude of similar material objects. Thus, we can come to an immaterial knowledge through material things.
Both philosophers agreed (and the Western tradition with them) that because man could have an immaterial idea of triangle in his mind, his mind must in part be immaterial. Plato made the mistake of thinking that the immaterial soul was the only real part of man, but Aristotle corrected that pointing out that man is a composite of soul (immaterial) and body (material) and that the two parts work together to create the whole.
The point is that an intellect implies immateriality which necessarily means immortality. There are two other kinds of being that have intellects. There is God and the angels, both of which are immortal by necessity of having an intellect (in God this is more of a complex thing since He is being itself). This is perhaps beside the point though, because philosophical proofs are proofs from logical necessity, not empirical evidence necessarily, yet that doesn’t make the proof any less valid.
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wussup
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Thanks Katholish, I am getting a flood of really bad memories form 30 years ago…I love studying philosophy, but gaining the tools for rational thought was a difficult one for me. Forms and formal fallacies were a couple of my biggest challenges. I wanted to make sure your understanding of forms was the classical construct.
Simplistically speaking and in the context of this discussion, do you think Forms are essential to an immortal soul? As I recall, one of the key aspects of Forms was the concept of Universalism. It is the problem of Universals that addresses how we construct in our mind a single concept to correlate to a broader subject. ‘book’ means more than one single volume, but a host of written articles. Is it your contention that only God, Angels, and Man are capable of the concepts of Forms?
Simplistically speaking and in the context of this discussion, do you think Forms are essential to an immortal soul? As I recall, one of the key aspects of Forms was the concept of Universalism. It is the problem of Universals that addresses how we construct in our mind a single concept to correlate to a broader subject. ‘book’ means more than one single volume, but a host of written articles. Is it your contention that only God, Angels, and Man are capable of the concepts of Forms?
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wussup
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Incidentally, your explanation was brief, concise, and easy to read.
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Image_of_God
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I might be reading your last question incorrectly, but fasting is not a passionate appetite. Passionate appetites are those instincts or uncontrolled compulsions we feel. Fasting is the ability to act contrary to the instinct or compulsion of eating. In order to act contrary to instincts or compulsions, there must be a will. No one can deny that humans and animals have instincts that tell them when they need to eat. But I have never heard of animals willingly starving themselves, such as humans do when they participate in hunger strikes. Whenever animals feel compelled to eat something, unless they cannot find it or get it, they will eat.
Things such as anger, lust, hunger and thirst are passionate appetites. These are things we do not think about. We just experience them. But since we as humans have wills, we can suppress or act contrary to these passions. Humans can practice mildness, which is the resistance to the instinct of anger. That an animal can practice mildness is unheard of. They do not have reason or a will. Monkeys are considered to be one of the closest animals to humans in terms of intelligence. I can’t remember, but there is one monkey that when it looks directly into the face of a human or other primate, it can’t help but be angry. It simply cannot control its instinct to become angry. It will always be angry when it looks in the face of a human because it has no will to control its anger. If it can access the human that looks it in the face, the monkey will brutally kill the human. I wish I knew what monkey it was, but I just can’t remember. I read it somewhere. If I find it, I will definitely show you.
Katholish has answered these two sufficiently, I think.
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Image_of_God
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In the case, I hope my answers are clear and concise as well.
I would not like it if my answers are too heady because then it’s just a bunch of nonsense then.
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Katholish
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Well thanks.
Let me just clarify one thing, when we talk about the classical understanding of “forms” this can mean two different (though related) things. Plato thought that forms actually existed independently on their own somewhere in the “realm of the forms”. Aristotle taught that forms are real, but don’t exist completely independently even though they are still universal. As far as I am concerned, Platonic Forms bad, Aristotelian forms good.
That doesn’t mean that other animals are not capable of “recognizing” similarities in things that they sense. Animals like dogs, dolphins, and chimps are extremely advanced and capable of all sorts of sense recognition training. So much so that people have a tendency to anthropomorphize. While from the outside, the process by which a dog determines what is safe and what is not may appear like the similar human rational process, it is nevertheless an instinctual process and not a rational one.
Let me just clarify one thing, when we talk about the classical understanding of “forms” this can mean two different (though related) things. Plato thought that forms actually existed independently on their own somewhere in the “realm of the forms”. Aristotle taught that forms are real, but don’t exist completely independently even though they are still universal. As far as I am concerned, Platonic Forms bad, Aristotelian forms good.
People have tried to prove the existance of an immortal soul without referrence to immaterial forms, perhaps there is some valid argument, but I am unaware of it. I would say yes, that an independent being that is immaterial and immortal would have to be intellectual and any intellectual being would have to be immaterial and immortal.
They are the only beings we are aware of that can comprehend forms, however, it is theoretically possible at least that there be some other kind of rational or intellectual being that we are unaware of (like aliens).
That doesn’t mean that other animals are not capable of “recognizing” similarities in things that they sense. Animals like dogs, dolphins, and chimps are extremely advanced and capable of all sorts of sense recognition training. So much so that people have a tendency to anthropomorphize. While from the outside, the process by which a dog determines what is safe and what is not may appear like the similar human rational process, it is nevertheless an instinctual process and not a rational one.
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AndyF
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No animals in heaven, sorry.
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Katholish
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Except for us hopefully.No animals in heaven, sorry.
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Charlemagne_II
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THERE BETTER BE! 
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Detales
Guest
Mu!
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