Ben_West🔸 comments on Why Animals Matter for Effective Altruism

[Ben_West🔸]

One philosopher in the 17th century, René Descartes, ruthlessly illustrated his view by performing a live autopsy on his wife’s dog. He used this experiment as evidence for his belief because he found no soul inside the poor animal’s body.

This is tangential but Gina asked me an interesting question: my understanding is that Descartes thought that the pineal gland was where the soul was in humans. Dogs also have pineal glands. Why didn’t he think that the soul interacted with the body through the dogs pineal gland? Was it just too small for him to see?