The Brain Can Be Split, but Not the Mind | EvolutionNews

it must be religious bias as he denies that the brain has anything to do with the mind and therefore also the brain volume argument that typically is used to claim only humans are capable of abstract reasoning falls away.

Where does he say this? My understanding is his position is hylemorphic dualism, which would make the brain rather important as humans are a combination of Form (soul) and Matter (brain).

IIRC until the Resurrection the soul exists in a somewhat weakened state, that or is provided a new heavenly body by God.

I do think abstract thinking is special - being a key part of the argument for the soul's immortality - but I would agree that it's odd to deny animals possess this ability.

I guess I meant that it isn't something especially unique to humans, when many other animals display it in many different forms. I perhaps believe that any form of reasoning about what happens in our sensory experiences, and our internal reactions to that, is abstract reasoning.

That is, a cat connects a can to the idea of food ~ and they'll get excited about it, anticipating food, because it reminds them of prior experiences. Cats are known to be perceptive about time ~ they know when their routine happens, and they're known to be very pushy, trying to get earlier. Feeding time is 7am? Well, I'm going to pester the human to make it 6am, 5am, 4am, whatever I can get away with. Same thing with tricking their human ~ or others in the household ~ to feed them multiple times, pretending that they haven't been fed yet. Or getting food from multiple households, playing the hungry one. Cats are therefore very clever and intelligent when it comes about reasoning about how to get what they want.

It seems to me the denial is based around religious reasons, to make humans the only ensouled biological forms, rather than anything based in actual Reason.

Indeed ~ and Darwinism took a similar approach for a very long time, given that it inherited the beliefs of Christianity, minus all of the spiritual parts. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that Darwinism inherits a lot from Descartian Dualism ~ that we're thinking machines in a dead and empty purely mechanical world, bereft of any animating power. In that regard, Materialism takes basically the same sort of approach.