Hi Candide West,
I think you’ve made some errors in your exegesis of Catholic teaching. To correct them:
Ok, thanks for writing.
*The soul does not ‘inhabit’ the body; the human person is a hylomorphic, psychosomatic unity of ‘primary matter’ and substantial form, the latter of which we call the soul…
Ok, afraid this may be a bit deep for me, what exactly do you mean by “substantial form”.*
*One has no direct access to the soul via the scientific method (though scientists study plenty of things to which they have no direct access), but there are ‘scientifically accessible correlates,’ in the words of one theologian.
Right,*‘scientifically accessible correlates,’ sounds like the kind of thing I was talking about in the OP. Things we can detect that tell us there is something there other than just physical stuff.
It has been suggested that the emergent properties of the whole are just such correlates.*
This seems rather weak, since as far as I can tell it is not possible to detect the difference between emergent properties which come from physical stuff and emergent properties coming from a “soul”.
For instance, man is not reducible to the sum of his parts, nor is his mind reducible to his brain (or his soul): consciousness broadly, and specifically top-down causality…
And how can we tell the difference between emergent properties from a “substantial form” and emergent properties which come from astonishingly complex arrangements of physical particles? Or perhaps those arrangements are what you call the form?
*A whole is a different kind of being or substance than its parts, and it exerts a kind of ‘top-down’ causality on its parts.
Indeed, paint is made up of billions of atoms, every one of which has no colour, yet paint does have a colour.*
*The I sees, self-reflects, breathes, and in other ways directs the body; the I is not merely a macroscopic agglomeration of deterministic efficient-causal forces acting on subatomic particles.
Again, there is the problem, how can we tell the difference between “macroscopic agglomeration of deterministic efficient-causal forces acting on subatomic particles.” and a soul. Clearly the former will cease at the point of death and that means that the person ceases (hence no afterlife) while the latter may be detectable which is the subject of this thread.
Indeed, and the brain and our bio-chemistry affect the individual (man).
*The ‘primary matter’ of which he is composed remain a unity just because of man’s formal, organizing principle.
Interesting, this seems to be reversing the position that the soul goes elsewhere when the body dies.
*There is a good reductio ad absurdum argument against reductivism if you do not already grant emergent phenomena…
Indeed, this is emergent properties and doesn’t seem substantially different to the colouredness of paint emerging from the properties of combinations of non-coloured atoms.
*The reductio asks whether you are alive because your organs, muscles, bone, blood, etc., are alive, or whether your organs, etc., are alive because you are alive. *The latter is correct. *If the former, the reductio continues by asking whether your organs, etc., are alive because their cells are alive, or whether their cells are alive because they are alive…
Indeed, but none of this seems to be about a “soul”, just emergent properties of immensely complicated combinations of physical particles. If that is what you are referring to as the “soul” then it cannot go anywhere after death. It just ceases. As far as I can see at least.
*Also, it is wrong, in an important sense, to think of the soul as ‘non-physical’ in contradistinction to the ‘physical’ body. *The substantial form is the organizing principle of matter, providing so to speak its structure and configuration, and as such it can be regarded as a physical principle…
Interesting, however if the “soul” is just the organisation of matter into a body, and the body disintegrates following death. The the “soul” (the form of the body) must dissipate upon death and thus cannot go to heaven or hell. This doesn’t appear to be a very catholic position. Perhaps I am misunderstanding you. I suspect this all goes back to how you define a substantial form.
*…But it is important, too, to understand that this way of speaking has its roots in Aristotle, not in the relatively modern philosophical positivism which seems to have encroached into many areas of science. *For Aristotle, all substances on earth are matter and form; ‘prime matter’ is the possibility of being actualized by form.
Is this related to the idea that “forms” have an existence independent of any instantiation of that form? Ie red paint instantiates redness. Etc.
*Plenty more can be said, but hopefully this helps the discussion.
Thanks, always interested to learn.
