Linus wrote:
That part was a joke.
Ha, ha.
Huh? You know about your soul through introspection (defined passively here), which is seemingly more ontologically central than physical perception, since introspection is the way you have physical perceptions… .
Of course, the soul is ontologically prior to both sense perceptions and the ideas the intellect forms of them and judges about. There is nothing " passive " about introspection. I prefer not to use the word " introspection " since thinking and judging has nothing to do with introspection. I prefer to use the term thinking to describe the intellects consideration of the phansasims it forms from the unifying/colating sense center of the intellect. And of course all of this is dependent on the data the senses receive from outside the mind. Thinking is absolutely dependent on the data received from the outside from things.
Exactly my point. Abstracts are not substantive. And forms, while they may not in your terminology be “abstracts”, they are, in the literal sense, “abstract”.
Words have multiple meanings. I was not speaking of abstract in the legal sense, I was using the philosophical meaning of to " separate or divide from. " The abstracted data from the data of the senses. This abstracted data is colated into an image or idea representing a universal form of the being outside the mind which has provided the data. The intellect then makes a judgment as to whether this " form " is the identifiable with the particular thing revealed by the senses.
My point was that for free will to exist the soul would have to be able to do these things without a physical cause back to which the making of a judgement can be causally traced.
And I disagree with you, so does Thomas and Aristotle. Idealism is not a viable philosophy, I thought it had died with Kant, but apparantly not.
I fully agree that the body depends on the soul and not vice versa, but you see, this dependence is causal. hylomorphism claims a metaphysical dependence of the soul on the body, which is clearly ridiculous.
The relationship of the soul and the body has two levels to consider. At the metaphysical lever the body is the matter or the passive principle, the soul is the substantial form or the active principle. Together they compose the being we call man, neither causes the other, together they are man’s nature. Together they from a human nature, a man, a human person. This is what we know as an example of hylomorphism.
At the operational lever or the ontological lever, each depends on the other. As a functioning human nature, it is the source of all mans operations, the vegatative, the sentient and the intellectual. The soul however performs some purely intellectual functions independently of the body. You can read ST. Thomas’ commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima here:
dhspriory.org/thomas/english/DeAnima.htm
[QOTE]Yes, it is. I tire of your groundless assumptions every time we argue this point. And if you care to read my post more carefully, it should be perfectly clear what I meant by it.
The reason I object to your description of daily life as an " algorithm " is that an algorithm is a mathematical entity and human life is not governed by mathematics. That would imply that mathematics came before human life which is clearly incorrect.
You are confusing " perceptions " with reality. What is real is the source of those perceptions.
Then God is ultimately the source, because He designed the algorithm, and He is perfectly real.
If you are suggesting that he founded the universe on scientific principles, you are probable correct but only in a sense. He certainly did not creat Angels and the human soul according to those principles. Both are beyond any science. Neither can be detected by any of the tools science now has or ever will have because both are spirits which are beyond scientific detection. And each operates according to the nature God gave each.
And all the material beings in the remainder of creation have their own natures created by God which function according to the " laws " he has given each. I suppose it wouldn’t be entirely wrong to refer to these as having a mathematical character at some level but I wouldn’t care to speculate about that and I don’t see how anyone can.
Well guess what, it is true, and we can know reality. This if-then assertion is another one of your outrageous ungrounded assumptions.
I never denied that we can and do know reality. I disagreed with your analysis about how we know it. It is not an " ungrounded " assertion. Just read De Anima or Aquinas by Feser, or Science before Science by Anthony Rizzi, an award winning Physicist/Philosopher.
What? It is not “chick” at all to claim to be an idealist! Idealism is the least common metaphysic ever, except for perhaps neutral monism and other obscure stuff like that.
And I do not live like a realist. I live as though my actions will, by the algorithm, factor into the experiences of other souls, which is exactly the case. This makes no implications whatsoever about realism.
If you go around telling people you live by algorithms, they will avoid you like the plague. Realism is the nature of the universe we live in. So said Aristotle, St. Thomas and many great men and women after them. I realize it isnt " cool " now but that is due to four hundred of positivism, naturalism, idealism, etc. along with the propagandists in the media and the educational systems.
Linus2nd
