>>24601132
One common rebuttal that some have is that man himself is only a machine in god’s eyes so where do you differentiate between machine and person? Both men and animals could be considered to be machines made by god, yet Cartesius is saying that animals have less soul to them based on faulty reasoning that they lack cognition (from my memory of reading discourse on method his main argument is parrots can talk yet they can’t form language proving they lack intellect).

As for souls residing in animals, plants and objects one interesting aside I have to give is that some ancients I had read, believed magnets contain souls because they can make metals move towards them- attributing soul to “whatever can cause motion” leads to some odd conclusions as does Descartes -“that which can’t properly form language must not have a soul.”