I’m glad we agree on those parts.
What do you mean though, that ‘learning’ is not your preferred method? I understand that you believe that there we are sentient because God gave us a soul. Fine. But then, how does the sentient soul integrate with the nonsentient mind? Show me the bridge between the spiritual and the physical.
Archistrage
Archistrage.
You seem like a person that knows how to engage in a discussion by asking questions, so I will contribute my thoughts relative to your questions. Let me begin with a quote by Teilhard de Chardin in “
The Phenomenon of Man” pg.56
“It is impossible to deny that, deep within ourselves, an ‘interior’ appears at the heart of beings, as it were seen through a rent. This is enough to ensure that, in one degree or another, this ‘interior’ should obtrude itself as existing everywhere in nature from all time. Since, the stuff of the universe has an inner aspect at one point of itself, there is necessarily a double aspect to its structure, that is to say in every region of space and time–in the same way, for instance, as it is granular: co-extensive with their
Without, there is a
Within to things” –
Upon this single quotation I have built a personal philosophy of life and I have done it, in my view at least, without seriously contradicting either science or my Catholic religion. Teilhard’s quote induced me to answer the question you are asking: how is the spiritual commingled with the material? I have worked out a model that answers the question to my own satisfaction but (to my knowledge) to no one else’s satisfaction in this forum. The answer is based on a model described in this forum in an abbreviated thesis described in the thread entitled “God Exist, But How?” now on page 9.
Here is a brief summary of my thoughts that are pertinent to your questions:
Like Teilhard I believe the cosmos is immersed in a sea of the spirit. So when matter corpusculates, i.e., when if forms a corpus, a particle of the universal spirit, the
nomos, is captured by each cell to give it life. I refer to the particle of the spirit that is captured by a cell as
bios. I won’t go into how I explain life on the basis of my model, but will jump to the next step in the path of actualization and point out that when a multicellular corpus is formed, another particle of the spirit is captured and concentrates in the brain. The brain consists of a multitude of cells (neurons) immersed in a particle of the spiritual that I refer to as
nous.
Sentience is associated with the cellular bios; consciousness is associated with the cephalic nous. All living things are sentient; only multicellular animals possess consciousness. Consciousness allows animals learn to some degree; only humans think. So what can we say about the mind, about the soul?
As animals, we humans behave perceptually. That means most of our time is spend reacting to sensory (name removed by moderator)uts. However humans are the only member of the animal kingdom that can behave rationally, we can think and what makes thinking possible is language. Language is an inherited trait; it is organized in the neuronal circuitry of the brain, thus forms the “material” aspect of the mind. Only humans have symbolic language; only humans have minds. Language and other symbols are stored in the neuronal circuits; “meaning” and “qualia” are stored in the nous. Thus the mind is the interface between the material brain and the spiritual nous. The mechanism that links the material and the spiritual is a form of the holonomic mechanism described in the thread referenced above. The human’s ability to manipulate symbols (mainly words) to extract meaning from the nous then to act is called free will. Free will allows a person to control perceptual behavior and to act rationally and even transcendently. In addition to the ability of the nous to store meanings and qualia, it also deals with concepts and abstractions. As a result, the nous takes on a form unique to each individual; we call this unique form: the soul. Only humans have souls.
So, in my view, there is no direct connection between sentience and the soul. Sentience is an emergent property of the cells. The soul is an emergent property of the mind, the interface between the material brain and the spiritual nous. (Nous is manifested as consciousness).
Yppop
