Do animals have anything that is not material?

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I want to know what Catholicism thinks about these questions:

Do animals (except human beings) have anything that is not material? Or are they fully material?

If they don’t have anything that is not material, then it will be strange to me, because it will imply that consciousness can derive from matter, which I think is strange. (I assume that animals have consciousness, which I think is a reasonable assumption.)
 
Edward Feser argues (here) that animals have sensory and imaginative powers which are material, but lack the intellectual and immaterial ability of abstract thought and reasoning that humans have. So it’s true to say that animals are conscious and some kinds of consciousness can derive from matter. Humans who have immaterial souls possess higher immaterial powers in addition to the material powers animals do.
 
I only experience myself as conscious and that is all i have to go by in terms of consciousness, and having the capacity for self-awareness is what it means for me to be conscious. if animal consciousness is anything like my experience, even if to a limited degree, then I must confess i too have difficulty with the idea that any kind of conscious self-awareness is material in nature. Either animals are not conscious of what is happening at all, or they are conscious to varying degrees. If they are conscious then that would imply they have an immaterial nature. .

Otherwise i do not know what is meant by animal consciousness.
 
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someone429 said:
Do animals (except human beings) have anything that is not material? Or are they fully material?
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Aquinas argues that they have souls. However, they’re not eternal souls, and therefore they perish when the animal perishes.
 
someone429 said:
I want to know what Catholicism thinks about these questions:

Do animals (except human beings) have anything that is not material? Or are they fully material?

If they don’t have anything that is not material, then it will be strange to me, because it will imply that consciousness can derive from matter, which I think is strange. (I assume that animals have consciousness, which I think is a reasonable assumption.)
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EWTN answer: “But the souls of animals, not being spirits, do not survive their separation from the body. Their souls exist until the animal dies. Then they are no more.” - Dr. Geraghty
http://www.ewtn.com/v/experts/showmessage.asp?number=623233&Pg=&Pgnu=&recnu=
 
You are asking if there is anything in the material universe which is held to be less than human that is transcendent rather than merely immanent. I think that in the case of animals there is, but I also think there is a cut-off point below which everything is immanent. Fruit flies, bacteria, and all present and future computers based on the Von Neumann architecture are immanent rather than transcendent, or at least that is what my intuition about the nature of the physical world tells me.

I think the church says that everything less than human is excluded from heaven, but I think there may have been prominent members of the church who have disagreed with that view in the past, and not the distant past either.

While not quite the same thing as being transcendent, I think that angels can, if they so choose, inspire animals to act in ways that would be improbable if they were solely immanent. It has also been said that there are angels in charge of entire species of animals, although animals are not thought to have individual guardian angels as humans do. If this is so, then God may think more highly of animals than is the conventional wisdom, and He may have a rather poor opinion of those who cause them pointless suffering.
 
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There is nothing about conciousness itself which transcends matter. Only intellection, the power of comprehending universals, requires an immaterial soul.
 
Awareness (not self-awareness, just awareness of anything whatsoever)
 
But what is awareness without self-awareness? What does that even mean? That which is aware must be aware that it is aware, and that is a form of self-awareness. It is evidence of some sort of mind. Some animals can identify themselves in mirrors. They might not be intelligent enough to realize that it is a mirror made by a human. But the evidence suggests that they are aware that they are looking at themselves. That is self-awareness. It just doesn’t make sense to me that a physical process can be aware of it’s self.

True, only humans can be in a personal relationship with God, but i don’t see that as a reason to preclude the possibility that animals have an immaterial nature in regards to their consciousness or awareness of anything…

Perhaps Aquinas meant something different when he spoke of matter in comparison to what scientists mean by the word today. But i don’t think he was correct on this one.
 
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