Is the essence of a person the sum total of his atoms?

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Frankenfurter

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I think the answer is no.

The essence of a person cannot be described by the sum total of the atoms.

I believe this means that the atomists are wrong. We cannot look for the essence of a person (or any other thing) by reducing it to its atoms.

Instead, it is the way the the thing (or person) interacts with the rest of reality (and creation as a whole) that defines its essence.

I will take another step to say that the essence of Jesus is not his atoms, but his relationship to creation. I am therefore able to say that the essence of Jesus can exist in the Eucharist, and have no need to go and look for his atoms within the wafer.

I will ask another related question. Is the essence of the song ‘America’ the vibration of atoms between the speaker cone and my ear? Or, is the relationship of the song to my life, and the life of millions of others its essence.

I believe these two example show how the modern anatomist theory misses the point on what the essence of a thing is.
 
I’m not sure anybody would maintain atomism as described.

Atoms and molecules get exchanged by the human body continuously.

ICXC NIKA
 
OK, by atoms, I mean material, physical constitutive particles.

By essence, I mean the information required to completely reproduce the person or thing so that you cannot tell the difference between the original and a facsimile created from this information.

The materialist would say that he can derive the essence from the material (the atoms).
 
Frankenfurter said:
OK, by atoms, I mean material, physical constitutive particles.

By essence, I mean the information required to completely reproduce the person or thing so that you cannot tell the difference between the original and a facsimile created from this information.

The materialist would say that he can derive the essence from the material (the atoms).
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I am having a guess here, but would suggest that a facsimile cannot be created from the material because certain atomic particles are personal to the individual and Almighty God and cannot be located or destroyed - even after earthly death.

But you do raise an interesting question.🙂

paduard
 
Philosophy of India says the world is an illusion, but The Matrix philosophy has only limited possibility. If someone is in a car crash he knows that matter is real and than life is fragile. Modern cosmologists who disregard even Descartes (such as Stephen Hawking) take the Chinese idea, in a way, of yin and yang and say that what sprang from nothing at the big bang was composed of the universe and anti-universe, and since 1 and -1 is 0, something did and could come from nothing. It’s totally in everyway against intuition though!
 
There is a modern implied philosophy of materialism where we assume that only the physical observable world exists. This leads to my conclusion that the materialist (and most people are by default) would claim that the essence of a person can be described by the constitutive material.

From this point of view it would be impossible to grasp the Eucharist since the essence (or substance) that we are referring to is not an observable physical material thing. Hence people say that it does not exist or that it is supernatural, or perhaps an old fashion kind of philosophy before we knew about atoms.

But if the essence of a thing (or person) cannot be described by its materials, then perhaps the essence of Christ in the Eucharist can be more real than most folks perceive.

But there are many other implications to essence being non-material, that are not theological.
 
Frankenfurter said:
I think the answer is no.

The essence of a person cannot be described by the sum total of the atoms.

I believe this means that the atomists are wrong. We cannot look for the essence of a person (or any other thing) by reducing it to its atoms.

Instead, it is the way the the thing (or person) interacts with the rest of reality (and creation as a whole) that defines its essence.

I will take another step to say that the essence of Jesus is not his atoms, but his relationship to creation. I am therefore able to say that the essence of Jesus can exist in the Eucharist, and have no need to go and look for his atoms within the wafer.

I will ask another related question. Is the essence of the song ‘America’ the vibration of atoms between the speaker cone and my ear? Or, is the relationship of the song to my life, and the life of millions of others its essence.

I believe these two example show how the modern anatomist theory misses the point on what the essence of a thing is.
Click to expand...
The analytic method is flawed because it overlooks the need for synthesis. It is also flawed because it is retrospective and restricts explanations to past events. It is more logical to have a panoramic view of reality and take the future into account as well. A complete explanation consists of purposes as well as causes. To attribute every event to a previous situation is to ignore our power to determine - to some extent - what happens in the future. That is where science loses its grip on the nature of reality!
 
Frankenfurter said:
I will ask another related question. Is the essence of the song ‘America’ the vibration of atoms between the speaker cone and my ear? Or, is the relationship of the song to my life, and the life of millions of others its essence.

I believe these two example show how the modern anatomist theory misses the point on what the essence of a thing is.
Click to expand...
The concept of essences isn’t materialist, it sounds hylomorphist, but even there I’m not sure they’d talk of the essence of a song as if it were an objective substance. Surely you just have memories of the song which evoke feelings when you hear it?

There is extremist propaganda which paints the materialist as looking at her baby and only seeing a sack of atoms, but it’s obviously wrong, designed to divide. A popular form of materialism/physicalism, for instance, is emergence, the idea that new entities, such as a baby, cannot possibly be reduced to their parts, as in Aristotle’s “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts”.
 
inocente said:
There is extremist propaganda which paints the materialist as looking at her baby and only seeing a sack of atoms, but it’s obviously wrong, designed to divide. A popular form of materialism/physicalism, for instance, is emergence, the idea that new entities, such as a baby, cannot possibly be reduced to their parts, as in Aristotle’s “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts”.
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Very well said. An simple example is 6 carbon atoms. When they are arranged in a flat, hexagonal form, we get graphite. When they are arranged in the form of an octahedron, we get a diamond. The same building blocks, an very different result. Not even a very simple molecule H[sub]2[/sub]O can be reduced to the corresponding atoms. And there is no need to posit some “supernatural soul”.

The whole CAN be different than the sum of its parts. Piling up sand, and you get a bigger sand-pile. Piling up uranium atoms, and you will get a detonation - IF the number of the atoms reaches a certain limit.
 
tonyrey said:
A complete explanation consists of purposes as well as causes. To attribute every event to a previous situation is to ignore our power to determine - to some extent - what happens in the future. That is where science loses its grip on the nature of reality!
Click to expand...
Excellent point. You have pointed to something I was only dimly grappling with.

Purposes exist. We have a voice in what happens and this decision cannot be be predetermined from the past state. Creation unfolds, and we are part of it.
 
inocente said:
The concept of essences isn’t materialist, it sounds hylomorphist, but even there I’m not sure they’d talk of the essence of a song as if it were an objective substance. Surely you just have memories of the song which evoke feelings when you hear it?

There is extremist propaganda which paints the materialist as looking at her baby and only seeing a sack of atoms, but it’s obviously wrong, designed to divide. A popular form of materialism/physicalism, for instance, is emergence, the idea that new entities, such as a baby, cannot possibly be reduced to their parts, as in Aristotle’s “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts”.
Click to expand...
OK. But I am trying to get to a specific place, which is to say that the essence of Jesus (in the Eucharist) is not a material substance and therefore we don’t have to go looking for his atoms.

But this emergence is new to me. Thank you for that.
 
zyzz said:
Very well said. An simple example is 6 carbon atoms. When they are arranged in a flat, hexagonal form, we get graphite. When they are arranged in the form of an octahedron, we get a diamond. The same building blocks, an very different result. Not even a very simple molecule H[sub]2[/sub]O can be reduced to the corresponding atoms. And there is no need to posit some “supernatural soul”.

The whole CAN be different than the sum of its parts. Piling up sand, and you get a bigger sand-pile. Piling up uranium atoms, and you will get a detonation - IF the number of the atoms reaches a certain limit.
Click to expand...
OK. But if I had a record that the 6 carbon atoms had moved from one configuration to the next, that is ALL the information that I would need to exactly recreate the same event. Hence the essence of the final diamond or explosion has been captured.

Is there anything about this diamond or explosion that you have created that I cannot capture this way?
 
Frankenfurter said:
OK. But if I had a record that the 6 carbon atoms had moved from one configuration to the next, that is ALL the information that I would need to exactly recreate the same event. Hence the essence of the final diamond or explosion has been captured.

Is there anything about this diamond or explosion that you have created that I cannot capture this way?
Click to expand...
Whatever that concept of “essence” might be in your vocabulary. To “move” from graphite to diamond you will need a tremendous amount of pressure to force the atoms from one configuration to the other. The “explosion” is simply due to the free electrons in the pile of uranium atoms, which will trigger the change from a quantitative modification to a qualitative change.

You need to understand that the “2 + 2 = 4” is only correct in the abstract world of mathematics. In real life, “2 + 2” does not necessarily equal 4, it might be less than or more than 4. The real world is NOT linear. If you are interested, read some essays of Isaac Asimov, especially in the collection of the “Tragedy of the Moon”. He explains the questions you are interested in a form suitable for laymen, like you and me…
 
inocente said:
The concept of essences isn’t materialist, it sounds hylomorphist, but even there I’m not sure they’d talk of the essence of a song as if it were an objective substance. Surely you just have memories of the song which evoke feelings when you hear it?

There is extremist propaganda which paints the materialist as looking at her baby and only seeing a sack of atoms, but it’s obviously wrong, designed to divide. A popular form of materialism/physicalism, for instance, is emergence, the idea that new entities, such as a baby, cannot possibly be reduced to their parts, as in Aristotle’s “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts”.
Click to expand...
It has never been explained how entities such as persons have emerged from impersonal particles.
 
Frankenfurter said:
Excellent point. You have pointed to something I was only dimly grappling with.

Purposes exist. We have a voice in what happens and this decision cannot be be predetermined from the past state. Creation unfolds, and we are part of it.
Click to expand...
Indeed. Self-determinism is a fact determinists cannot ignore without refuting themselves!
 
Frankenfurter said:
OK. But if I had a record that the 6 carbon atoms had moved from one configuration to the next, that is ALL the information that I would need to exactly recreate the same event. Hence the essence of the final diamond or explosion has been captured.

Is there anything about this diamond or explosion that you have created that I cannot capture this way?
Click to expand...
Configurations of atoms cannot control themselves!
 
zyzz said:
Whatever that concept of “essence” might be in your vocabulary. To “move” from graphite to diamond you will need a tremendous amount of pressure to force the atoms from one configuration to the other. The “explosion” is simply due to the free electrons in the pile of uranium atoms, which will trigger the change from a quantitative modification to a qualitative change.

You need to understand that the “2 + 2 = 4” is only correct in the abstract world of mathematics. In real life, “2 + 2” does not necessarily equal 4, it might be less than or more than 4. The real world is NOT linear. If you are interested, read some essays of Isaac Asimov, especially in the collection of the “Tragedy of the Moon”. He explains the questions you are interested in a form suitable for laymen, like you and me…
Click to expand...
Free electrons cannot produce free persons unless they have supernatural power. 🙂
 
Frankenfurter said:
There is a modern implied philosophy of materialism where we assume that only the physical observable world exists. This leads to my conclusion that the materialist (and most people are by default) would claim that the essence of a person can be described by the constitutive material.

From this point of view it would be impossible to grasp the Eucharist since the essence (or substance) that we are referring to is not an observable physical material thing. Hence people say that it does not exist or that it is supernatural, or perhaps an old fashion kind of philosophy before we knew about atoms.

But if the essence of a thing (or person) cannot be described by its materials, then perhaps the essence of Christ in the Eucharist can be more real than most folks perceive.

But there are many other implications to essence being non-material, that are not theological.
Click to expand...
In other words the parts do not explain the whole! Atomism fragments reality without explaining unity. Without synthesis nothing makes sense…
 
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