Can There Be Intellect Without Soul? The Case of Animals
Animals don’t have a soul in the same sense we do, so what is it that they can’t do, precisely because they don’t have one?
Animals still have a brain, they can sense, move, even learn simple behaviours. They can process information, react to its surroundings, even solve simple problems. Animals can understand basic patterns, solve practical problems (like fitting a square peg into a square hole), or use hard or sharp objects as tools or weapons. These abilities involve logic, imagination, memory, and understanding, and are categorized as concrete abstract activities rooted in the material mind or brain.
However, because animals do not possess a soul, they lack the capacity for immaterial cognition. This means they cannot grasp or conceive fundamental abstract notions such as the concept of “1”, a geometric point, or the idea of gravity. Without access to such immaterial cognition, animals are incapable of developing comprehensive abstract concepts. The development of such concepts requires the process of rationalization, which, according to St. Aquinas, is only possible when the immaterial soul collaborates with the material mind.
Following this, animals are therefore not capable of simple concrete abstract activities such as counting or using simple geometric shapes for random useful purposes or use gravity to their advantage that are outside what nature allows them to do.
Even though they may not be able to count, they can conclude which is less or more without needing to count but by simply observing the space occupied by seeing or observing a distinct number of sounds by hearing. But this way of conclusion of which is less or more is not based on fundamental abstract notions or comprehensive abstract notions. Now, even if you manage to teach an animal a mathematics related mental task like recognizing numbers on a screen and recalling them in ascending order, it may look like the animal is doing something intelligent. But what’s really happening is not rooted in understanding. The animal isn’t grasping the fundamental abstract concept of ‘1’. It isn’t forming a comprehensive abstract understanding of numbers, order, or quantity.Instead, it’s just recognizing patterns, visual sequences it has been trained to respond to. It reacts, but it doesn’t understand. Add part about how animal still have lower intellect and so as many scientific experiment show they show material based reason n logic by which in those experiments they put square peg in square hole etc There’s no awareness of meaning, no reflection, no insight. And that’s because abstract notions of both fundamental and comprehensive type require immaterial cognition and rationalization, respectively. Both of the functions are something the animal cannot perform without a soul.
Later on, I’ll talk about artificial intelligence. Just like animals, it doesn’t have a soul. But while animals have a brain, AI has something similar, a processor chip. It can do many impressive things, but there are also important things it simply can’t do, because it doesn’t have a soul.