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Animal sentience and Descartes's dualism: Exploring the implications of Baker and Morris's views

The debate on the issue of whether Descartes held to the notorious doctrine of the bête-machine continues to be heated. While some commentators still defend the view that Descartes saw animals essentially as non-conscious pieces of clockwork machinery, others have argued that, while Descartes ruled out the possibility of rational thought in animals, he did indeed ascribe to them sentience and feelings. Among those who hold that Descartes allowed animals sentience and feelings, a secondary debate of some importance has ensued: viz., on whether Descartes’s account of animals as sentient and passional is consistent with his dualism of mind and matter. For Descartes, minds are thinking and non-extended, while body is extended and non-thinking. Descartes clearly holds that animals do not think (cogitare) and hence do not have a mind, so it seems they must belong wholly to the realm of matter. But if Cartesian matter is (as commonly portrayed) extended and non-conscious, animals with their feelings and sensations cannot belong wholly to the realm of matter. This being so, commentators have suggested that a Cartesian ascription of sentience and feeling to animals is incompatible with Cartesian dualism. For example, in an influential paper that argues that Descartes attributes feelings such as anger and joy to animals, Cottingham concludes that ‘the truth, perhaps, is that Descartes was never completely comfortable with strict dualism’.