Cartesian metaphysics has been problematic and disastrous in many ways, but many modern philosophers hold fast to some variation of Cartesianism. For instance,

Cartesian metaphysics has been problematic and disastrous in many ways, but many modern philosophers hold fast to some variation of Cartesianism. For instance, materialists are still Cartesians in the sense that they still hold to a Cartesian view of matter, having dispensed with the Cartesian view of mind. This has left them either seeking in vain for a way to account for things like so-called qualia within matter while preserving an essentially Cartesian view of matter, or left denying the reality of things like qualia altogether (eliminativism). On the other hand, Aristotle (who is only mentioned by the author in passing) and his philosophical heirs like Aquinas do not deny the common sense view that animals are conscious, have emotions, show affection, etc. However, Aristotelians and Thomists (A-T) don't always appear to be comfortable with the word "soul" perhaps because of the connotations it has acquired in the modern era, Cartesian or otherwise (think ectoplasm or ghost in the machine). For A-T philosophers, the "soul" is the form of the organism, that is to say, that which makes the organism what it is (by analogy, the form of a bronze sphere is sphericity). Thus, at the moment of death, the form is no more and what we have is not an organism nor even a body but the remains of the organism (here, A-T philosophers would say that the substantial form had ceased to enform the organism while the accidental form may persist and hence why the remains of the organism continue to hold the shape and structure of the living organism for some time after death). In any case, according to this view, all living things have "souls" because the soul is just the form of the organism. However, what A-T philosophers do accept is that the known non-human animals lack immaterial faculties like the intellect (i.e., the faculty by which humans beings abstract univerals from particulars). Thus, animals do not possess general or universal concepts like "Man" or "Number" or "Triangularity". But none of this is to deny that non-human animals are conscious, experience emotion, form bonds, and so on.