Are Animal Machines? Gómez Pereira and Descartes on Animal Minds

Abstract

Forty two years before Descartes’ birth, in his Antoniana Margarita (Medina del Campo, 1554), Spanish physician and philosopher Gómez Pereira explicitly argues the following assertions: (1) Animals lack reason (2) Animals lack understanding (3) Animals do not think (4) Animals cannot feel (Bruta non sentire) (5) Animals cannot see as we do (6) Animals are machines (7) Animals have no rational soul (8) Animals have no indivisible soul (9) Animals have no language The above claims on animal automatism are commonly thought to have originated with Descartes. In this paper I will expound Gómez Pereira’s arguments, contra the School and common sense, in favor of animal automatism and discuss their possible influence on Descartes’ so-called bêtemachine doctrine