Human soul vs. animal soul

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Hello, all. I’ve only been Catholic for about a year, and while I’ve utilized Catholic Answers for learning all kinds of things about the faith, I’m new to the forum, but I have a question I couldn’t really find addressed anywhere so I figured I may as well ask it myself.

The Church teaches that the human soul is differentiated from the soul of an animal (and a plant) because it is spiritual and intellectual in nature. What many of us think of as a soul is traditionally referred to as a spirit; the soul is simply the life a thing has, whereas the spirit is an immortal “self”.

What I’m struggling with is the fact that several animals have been found to have intelligence that seems effectively of the same nature as our own, and is different not in kind but in degree. Apes can use sign language, and along with dolphins and elephants they can recognize themselves in mirrors. Several different animal species have also evidently demonstrated things akin to culture, like creating games or various other ways of passing down information.

So it begins to look like this hard line drawn between animals and man by traditional philosophy and theology isn’t so hard after all, and I don’t know what to make of it. It seems like the Church’s view on this is actually based on outdated science. And if it’s truly the case that the intelligence of animals and humans are different only in degree, why would we have any reason to differentiate between a human and an animal soul? If it’s conceivable that a mere animal could one day evolve to the point of having self-awareness, thought, imagination, reasoning, a somewhat free will, etc., then wouldn’t it show our possession of these things doesn’t actually signify our possession of immortal spirits? That such propensities evolve naturally? It begins to seem like human beings are arrogantly setting ourselves apart from the rest of the animals based on premises that aren’t justified, that this idea of us possessing a unique immortal spirit is actually just wishful thinking which doesn’t line up with what we observe in nature.

If anyone has some insight to share, I’d appreciate it. Thanks.
 
I’m certainly not well versed on this, but for what they are worth, here are a few thoughts:

It is rationality (tempered with the grace of free will) that separates a creature of God from one having a soul, and one merely having a spirit.

Our spirit deals with programmed entities. It runs all the programming operations in our mind and body; our soul, on the other hand, is what relates us to He Who programmed it.

So, an animal being an irrational being, and angels and mankind being rational, both have spirits, but only man has a soul.

St. Augustine, in his writings on the fall of man, notes that the punishment given to man and woman because of the fall was not toiling at work, or pain associated with giving birth, but the loss of immortality…a soul, not a spirit, is in need of perfection for immortality…so, he notes that from the fall, women would give birth in pain, just like the animal who cries in labor, because of the loss of immortality.

Thankfully, through the New Covenant, and the grace of God, we have the means to recapture the immortality God originally gave us and we squandered through disobedience!

Rejoice!
 
dscath said:
So, an animal being an irrational being, and angels and mankind being rational, both have spirits, but only man has a soul.
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You’ve got the spirit/soul distinction backwards.


" The soul is the principle of life. Since animals and plants are living things, they have souls, but not in the sense in which human beings have souls. Our souls are rational–theirs aren’t–and ours are rational because they’re spiritual, not material."

Also, angels do not possess souls because souls are material; they are pure spirit. It’s similar to how animals don’t possess spirits because spirits are immaterial and animals are purely material. So, essentially, humans are like a cross between animals and angels, because we possess both the material soul of life and the immaterial spirit/intellect.

 
The degree to which apes can use sign language is questionable. Associations are not the same as grasping a universal form in the mind. We do not see apes passing on any learned signs to other apes, nor do we see two apes that both know signs use them with each other. Play and self-recognition are also not solely intellectual activities, insofar as they don’t require the intellect to take on universal forms to accomplish.
 
rdj69 said:
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dscath:
So, an animal being an irrational being, and angels and mankind being rational, both have spirits, but only man has a soul.
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You’ve got the spirit/soul distinction backwards.

Do Animals Have Souls like Human Beings? | Catholic Answers

" The soul is the principle of life. Since animals and plants are living things, they have souls, but not in the sense in which human beings have souls. Our souls are rational–theirs aren’t–and ours are rational because they’re spiritual, not material."

Also, angels do not possess souls because souls are material; they are pure spirit. It’s similar to how animals don’t possess spirits because spirits are immaterial and animals are purely material. So, essentially, humans are like a cross between animals and angels, because we possess both the material soul of life and the immaterial spirit/intellect.

Intellect | Catholic Answers
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A spirit isn’t something we have in addition to a soul. I’d more say that human souls are spiritual while the souls of non-rational animals are not.

The soul is the form of a living thing. In human beings it brings to the table intellectual and material operations. In other animals it only brings material operations.
 
Mental mechanisms we share with animals are imagination and memory. In the animal, the reproduction of the images from memory corresponds exactly to the reality perceived before by the senses. So, even In the absence of the exact objects, the imagination drawing on memory reproduces them and moves the animal to act.

Unlike the animal, man can also abstract, that is, unite or separate the images in his imagination from the particulars and combine them in diverse ways. By associating these novel combinations, man develops alternative options to adapting his behaviors in order to satisfy his desires in creative ways not possible for animals.
 
Here is what I have learned from various Catholic sources:
  1. Humans - rational soul
  2. Animals - sensitive soul
  3. Plants - vegetative soul
Only one is created in the image and Likeness of God.
 
o_mlly said:
Mental mechanisms we share with animals are imagination and memory. In the animal, the reproduction of the images from memory corresponds exactly to the reality perceived before by the senses.
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I’m not correcting, I’m just bouncing off of this comment with my own understanding of Thomist philosophy of the mind.

Memory, imagination, estimation, and all of the raw data of the senses being compiled into a common sense experience are understood to be sensitive or material powers which would be common with other animals. This includes the mental “images” (or “sounds/smells/touch/taste”) that we perceive or bring to mind. All of these images are referred to as “phantasms” (phantasy/fantasy the ability of the mind to create them…). Emotions and feelings are also understood to be material powers.

Now, when humans remember or feel things we also do additional intellective activities with them which involve grasping the universal forms of things beyond just particular instances (even particular mental instances), but the base faculties referred to above are considered sensitive faculties (and more broadly material faculties). Thomist philosophy of the mind is not like Cartesian philosophy of the mind. Cartesian philosophy of the mind relegated a lot of what I noted above to being human-only powers, and animals were likened to just empty machines.

EDIT: All of the material powers can vary by degree in animals, but we would say that the intellective power (which specifically involves the immaterial intellect taking on the universal form (in a hylemorphic sense) of the known object) is a difference in kind, not degree.
 
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There’s lots of very helpful information here, so thank you all.

But this still doesn’t answer how we reconcile these ideas with evolution as a gradual process; how are we to draw a definitive line between an animal soul and a human soul when we cannot draw a definitive line between a human and our closest animal ancestor? Or between an animal and their closest plant ancestor?
And what would we say about bacteria, for instance - does a bacteria have an animal soul? What about other microorganisms? Does it make sense to think of these creatures as having sensitive souls?
What about individual cells? Cells are alive, yes? So do cells each have a soul? Since living organisms are made up of a collection of smaller living organisms (animals are made up of cells), then does it make sense to think of an ecosystem as an organism in itself? After all, an animal’s body is really an ecosystem - several ecosystems, in fact. So does that mean an ecosystem has a soul? And if ecosystems the size of our bodies have souls, why not ecosystems that are bigger?
The lines we draw seem almost entirely arbitrary, don’t they? “This collection of living organisms is one entity with a soul, but this larger or smaller collection of living organisms isn’t and doesn’t.”

This is all very stream of consciousness so these questions may have easy answers, I haven’t really thought them through, they just came to me now.
 
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rdj69 said:
There’s lots of very helpful information here, so thank you all.

But this still doesn’t answer how we reconcile these ideas with evolution as a gradual process; how are we to draw a definitive line between an animal soul and a human soul when we cannot draw a definitive line between a human and our closest animal ancestor? Or between an animal and a plant?
And what would we say about bacteria, for instance - does a bacteria have an animal soul? What about other microorganisms? Does it make sense to think of these creatures as having sensitive souls?
What about individual cells? Cells are alive, yes? So do cells each have a soul? Since living organisms are made up of a collection of smaller living organisms (animals are made up of cells), then does it make sense to think of an ecosystem as an organism in itself? After all, an animal’s body is really an ecosystem - several ecosystems, in fact. So does that mean an ecosystem has a soul? And if ecosystems the size of our bodies have souls, why not ecosystems that are bigger?
The lines we draw seem almost entirely arbitrary, don’t they? “This collection of living organisms is one entity with a soul, but this larger collection of living organisms isn’t and doesn’t.”

This is all very stream of consciousness so these questions may have easy answers, I haven’t really thought them through, they just came to me now.
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A bacteria would have a soul. A cell in a larger organism does not. Let me simplify the example.

A hydrogen atom is composed of a proton, a neutron, and an electron in a scientific sense. But in a metaphysical sense the whole substance is governed by one substantial form: that of a hydrogen atom. A proton, neutron, and electron as substances don’t actually exist, they are only virtually in the hydrogen atom. If the atom were ever split such that the proton, neutron, and electron went they’re separate ways, they would then exist as three separate substances with three substantial forms.

The same would apply to all the individual cells that make up an organism. That organism is one substance (in a metaphysical sense, not chemical) with one substantial form. That form is the form of everything in that substance, governing it from the top down in a mereological sense.

While it’s not the language necessarily used by the hylemorphist, in a general sense something is a substance and not just an aggregate of separate substances when it has operations and properties that are more than the just sum of its parts. We are looking for a substantial unity in a thing in terms of its being and operation. An army of men, or an ecosystem of multiple organisms, is a type of unity, yes, but that unity is accidental.
 
rdj69 said:
The Church teaches that the human soul is differentiated from the soul of an animal (and a plant)
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I would contend that animals (and plants) do not have souls, for they are subordinate according to God’s creation story (Gen 1:26).

“If it’s conceivable that a mere animal could one day evolve to the point of having self-awareness, thought, imagination, reasoning, a somewhat free will, etc., then wouldn’t it show our possession of these things doesn’t actually signify our possession of immortal spirits?”

The standard, in my view, is for mankind to consider the devastating impact abortion and birth control has had on our relationship with God and what we can do to change it before it consumes us! Just my views.
 
rdj69 said:
There’s lots of very helpful information here, so thank you all.

But this still doesn’t answer how we reconcile these ideas with evolution as a gradual process; how are we to draw a definitive line between an animal soul and a human soul when we cannot draw a definitive line between a human and our closest animal ancestor? Or between an animal and their closest plant ancestor?
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Just a heads up here, rd. Some of the posters here do not believe in evolution so they don’t consider there to be a problem. And the others that do will hold that God instilled a soul into Man at a specific time and rationality comes with it. So the parents of that person who had the first soul were not, by definition, rational.

Easily explained in one short sentence!
 
Only humans have free will. An animal in the wild will always reproduce, it is an instinct they cannot avoid. Only a human person can choose not to reproduce.
 
Wesrock said:
… when humans remember or feel things we also do additional intellective activities
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Humans remember much in the same way as animals. The senses perceive, the image formed by the senses is sent to the memory, the memory returns a match. For instance, one’s mother enters the scene. The recognition of that being as “mother” to an animal or man may seem instantaneous but relies on the mental gymnastic described above. In this way, the union with another without destruction, as required in plant life, occurs.

However, unlike animals, humans can think “mother” as opposed to simply recognizing a particular mother. Rather than draw one concrete image from memory, when thinking “mother”, the mind brings forward the universal concept of “mother”. In the act of thinking “mother” humans can unite and love all mothers. Humans, though participating in matter, can transcend matter through their souls.

Man stands between animals and angels in creation. Through his body and senses he summarizes all the lower orders of life. He also touches the angels in being and existence. Both seek communion with their Creator.
 
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