Is An Organism's Soul the Same as Its Species

[lbadiola]

Is an organism’s soul the same as its species? I ask because the soul is the form of the body. Since the soul is the form of the body, what makes some matter a cat’s body is that it has a cat soul in it. So it would seem that an organism’s soul is the same as its species.

 

[ahs]

I think you’ve got it backwards, but still correct. The soul has no form, so it cannot be the form of anything. The body, then, would “be the form” of the soul within it. No?

 

[ServusDei1]

He’s speaking in a new platonic/Thomistic sense. Yes, the soul is the form of the body.

 

[ahs]

Oh. So, the answer is still yes, right? The soul matches the species…as well as the sex?

 

[ServusDei1]

What do you mean?

 

[Nigel7]

Animal and vegetable souls are dependent entirely on matter for their operation and being. They cease to exist at death. (There’s no “doggie heaven.”)

Human souls, by contrast, aren’t material. They’re spiritual. Only a spirit can know and love, a spirit’s two chief faculties being the intellect (which knows) and the will (which loves). We know human souls are spiritual since humans can know and love.

From this article > Do Animals Have Souls like Human Beings? | Catholic Answers

 

[ahs]

I mean, if “the soul is the form of the body” (and I don’t pretend to understand this platonic/Thomistic view), then it is logical to conclude that the soul matches the species (i.e. a Homo sapiens can only have a soul of a Homo sapiens, and not that of a Canis canis). It would also seem logical to assume that my soul, if I am a male, would be sexed as a male, and not as a female…and my physical male body would be reflective of the male-sexed soul within it. Or am I completely off base on this?

 

[John_Martin]

The human species is “male and female as he created them” - the soul has no “sex”, but animates the body which has one or the other sex.
The soul with its human material body is an individual of the human species; the human species is all animals being animated (formed) by a rational soul (the form).
The “form” is kind of like a “living definition that puts life and movement and activity to work in an assembly of matter called a ‘body’.” “Form” is a technical term also used colloquially as simply the shape of an object - but a “shape” means that the object is not the object if the shape is damaged or broken. When a form is gone the object is no longer what it was… a thought for contemplation.

John Martin

 

[Wesrock]

Is an organism’s soul the same as its species? I ask because the soul is the form of the body. Since the soul is the form of the body, what makes some matter a cat’s body is that it has a cat soul in it. So it would seem that an organism’s soul is the same as its species.

I’d maybe say our scientific categories of “genus species” (and other classifications in that hierarchy) could be called an attempt to speak to/model forms by empirical science. But there is a distinction between the principle of form and our attempt to model it. We lack 100% knowledge, which means our model is open to revision. Our categories may be even making further distinctions beyond substantial form.

 

[ahs]

The human species is “male and female as he created them” - the soul has no “sex”, but animates the body which has one or the other sex.

But isn’t the Thomistic view such that the soul has a sex? In answering in regards to the integrity of the human body at the resurrection (a side topic, but his answer includes what we are discussing here), he answers:

“I answer that, As stated in De Anima ii, 4, “the soul stands in relation to the body not only as its form and end, but also as efficient cause.” For the soul is compared to the body as art to the thing made by art, as the Philosopher says (De Anim. Gener. ii, 4), and whatever is shown forth explicitly in the product of art is all contained implicitly and originally in the art. In like manner whatever appears in the parts of the body is all contained originally and, in a way, implicitly in the soul. Thus just as the work of an art would not be perfect, if its product lacked any of the things contained in the art, so neither could man be perfect, unless the whole that is contained enfolded in the soul be outwardly unfolded in the body, nor would the body correspond in full proportion to the soul…”.

“Reply to Objection 1. The members may be considered in two ways in relation to the soul: either according to the relation of matter to form, or according to the relation of instrument to agent, since “the whole body is compared to the whole soul in the same way as one part is to another” (De Anima ii, 1). If then the members be considered in the light of the first relationship, their end is not operation, but rather the perfect being of the species, and this is also required after the resurrection: but if they be considered in the light of the second relationship, then their end is operation. And yet it does not follow that when the operation fails the instrument is useless, because an instrument serves not only to accomplish the operation of the agent, but also to show its virtue. Hence it will be necessary for the virtue of the soul’s powers to be shown in their bodily instruments, even though they never proceed to action, so that the wisdom of God be thereby glorified.” (Summa Theologica Suppl., q. 80, art. 1; emphasis mine.)
http://newadvent.org/summa/5080.htm

Here is a response on a related topic from a few years ago:

Do souls have genders? Philosophy

From the Catechism: “Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person in the unity of his body and soul. It especially concerns affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way the aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others.” (C.C.C. #2332) I don’t know if this is a strong enough statement to be considered an official teaching on the idea of the soul having gender, but in elaborating on this line from the Catechism, Dr. Peter Kreeft states: “Our sexual …

 

[John_Martin]

It is genetics that dictates gender, not a movement of the will from the soul to actuate male or female development of the body.
The soul “learns” its material makeup via the senses, and reasoning about what is sensible in the self and in others. This then, via phantasms, is an intelligible knowing of the self in the soul.
The soul is in no way material / physical. The soul is rational, intellectual; the individual person learns all it knows about all it knows, including itself, via its body by reasoning about what is “sensible”. That is why sexual perversions are such - incorrect or defective reasoning does not pay attention to the sensible object of the self (the body) but pays attention to imaginations of what might feel better than what is seen.

As social individuals, we know that we cannot perceive the contents of the soul of another, nor even our own soul - that, too, is hidden from empirical examination. True shared or social recognition of sex / gender must be reasoned from the only sensible object that is sensible to all - the actual physical makeup, not some fleeting emotion or imagination that is not present to all to sense and therefore for all to know the individual’s reality.

There is a repeated phrase in the Summa: “The object known is in the knower.” That includes the self, as a known intelligible object. And Thomas goes to exceedingly great lengths to describe the becoming of that object in the intellect of the soul from the equivalent external sensible object.

“For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.”

From the Catechism: "Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person in the unity of his body and soul. It especially concerns affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way the aptitude for forming bon…

That is true - but not because the soul is itself sexual, but because it knows the composit self as “having” (habitus) sexuality. Moral acts are “moral” due to the knowing about the doing that is done. I have written about that here https://softvocation.org/2018/05/24/knowing/ to explain the way sexuality is a “human” act in the knowing that happens rather than in the physical and emotional feelings that happen, whereas those feelings are actually signals to know something. And the real satisfaction is in what is known - if it is a truth about human reality.

John Martin

 

[Richca]

Yes, an organism’s soul is the substantial form of the thing’s body or matter and which determines the kind or species of thing it is such as a horse, dog, or oak tree.

 

[ahs]

Interesting. I’ll have to study this some more. I have heard from a number of people, some Priests, who interpret Thomas as intending to say that the soul does have gender (that gender not being dependent upon material, aside from the fact that a person is both body and soul…that soul being spirit). I suppose the Church has never definitely addressed the matter?

 

[rom]

Is an organism’s soul the same as its species?

My answer is NO, and here is why.

Species is one of Aristotle’s predicables. It is a universal concept that is predicable of several distinct individuals and which completely expresses their essence. For example, consider the statement, “Peter is a man.” Since the word “man” completely expresses the essence of Peter, then it is predicated of Peter as a species. Peter is an individual or “inferior” of the species, “man.”

As a predicable, the species must completely express the essence of the individual subject. Now, the essence of an organism includes both matter and form, whereas soul refers only to the substantial form of the organism. Since the species must completely express the essence of the organism, it cannot be equated with the soul of the organism.

Sometimes people confuse the substantial form of an organism with its essence. It is true that the substantial form is the perfection that determines matter to a particular kind of being. But the essence of the organism, say a cat, – or the principle by which a cat is a cat, – is not the substantial form of the cat alone, but matter as actualized by the substantial form of the cat.