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

[tonyrey]

If a man looses his hand in an accident…he is still 100 percent the same person as he was before the accident

Indeed. We can lose our entire body but there is no reason to believe we cease to exist! All the things we consider most precious are intangible: persons, truth, goodness, freedom, justice, beauty and love…

 

[tonyrey]

I think you’re missing the point. But I think you are wrong in any case.

To push your example a little further so it’s easier to comprehend, what if the man lost both arms?

His attitudes, his demeanour, his outlook, his expectations, his abilities, his mental state would be different. One can easily imagine someone saying of that person: ‘He’s not the same man anymore’.

There would be two men. Joe, with all his faculties intact and Joe who has had to change his life drastically.

He is still Joe and it is still** his **life regardless of any changes.

 

[Bradski]

Purgatory

But Tony was talking about making good here. There’s no chance if you only repent at death.

And you are saying that whatever your sins, however evil you have been, whatever your crimes, not having compensated anyone whilst alive for them, if you repent you get eternal bliss (via Purgatory).

Do you consider that to be justice?

Where is the killer of my children?
Well, he repented, so he’s heading for heaven and eternal bliss.

 

[tonyrey]

Purgatory

That presupposes we survive after death but it is logical if we believe in justice at all. If life is unjust it doesn’t make sense to believe it is any more than a human convention we can ignore with impunity. That is one of the perks of materialism - although not all materialists are consistent, I’m glad to say.

 

[Bradski]

He is still Joe and it is still** his **life regardless of any changes.

But a different man to the one who didn’t have the accident that we could say ‘changed his life’.

We are the products of our experiences.

 

[St_Redemption]

I think you’re missing the point. But I think you are wrong in any case.

To push your example a little further so it’s easier to comprehend, what if the man lost both arms?

His attitudes, his demeanour, his outlook, his expectations, his abilities, his mental state would be different. One can easily imagine someone saying of that person: ‘He’s not the same man anymore’.

There would be two men. Joe, with all his faculties intact and Joe who has had to change his life drastically.

He’s still Joe. He’s the same person. The same guy. Things change him…extra atomical phenomenon change him also.

I guess I need to understand what you mean by “essence” exactly. And moving beyond that, what conclusion you draw from that. I think a lot of these discussions come down to language games.

Also, “sum total” is a quantitative value. A man could lose his hand…but then grow extremely long hair and more than make up for a sum total of atoms lost in his hand in this fashion. But then the atom type would have changed “qualitatively” speaking.

And there is no way to predict how a man would respond to losing his limb. He may become a far better man than he was before. Loss sometimes incurs dramatic change for the better in a man. Gain sometimes brings out a worse person. Of course atoms affect demeanor in this regard. But a person is not defined by his gain or loss of mass in this regard. He is defined by how he RESPONDS to this loss or gain.

Atoms would affect him, then he would respond accordingly. And then become who he is. There is no mathematical formula for determining what sort of person he is after losing two arms

 

[tonyrey]

But Tony was talking about making good here. There’s no chance if you only repent at death.

And you are saying that whatever your sins, however evil you have been, whatever your crimes, not having compensated anyone whilst alive for them, if you repent you get eternal bliss (via Purgatory).

Do you consider that to be justice?

Where is the killer of my children?
Well, he repented, so he’s heading for heaven and eternal bliss.

He has to suffer first before he is exonerated - like the refugee trafficker who was confronted with the bodies of the children he caused to drown… Or the mental agony of Judas who hanged himself when he realised he had betrayed innocent blood and couldn’t bear to go on living with that dreadful sense of guilt and remorse.

 

[tonyrey]

He’s still Joe. He’s the same person. The same guy. Things change him…extra atomical phenomenon change him also.

I guess I need to understand what you mean by “essence” exactly. And moving beyond that, what conclusion you draw from that. I think a lot of these discussions come down to language games.

Also, “sum total” is a quantitative value. A man could lose his hand…but then grow extremely long hair and more than make up for a sum total of atoms lost in his hand in this fashion. But then the atom type would have changed “qualitatively” speaking.

And there is no way to predict how a man would respond to losing his limb. He may become a far better man than he was before. Loss sometimes incurs dramatic change for the better in a man. Gain sometimes brings out a worse person. Of course atoms affect demeanor in this regard. But a person is not defined by his gain or loss of mass in this regard. He is defined by how he RESPONDS to this loss or gain.

That is the key word. In the words of an atheist, Sartre, we have to commit ourselves whether we like it or not!

 

[Bradski]

He has to suffer first before he is exonerated - like the refugee trafficker who was confronted with the bodies of the children he caused to drown… Or the mental agony of Judas who hanged himself when he realised he had betrayed innocent blood and couldn’t bear to go on living with that dreadful sense of guilt and remorse.

Well, we don’t really know this, do we Tony. This is all supposition.

Nevertheless, I have been told more times than I care to remember that a miserable life in this world is more than compnated for by eternal bliss.

So the child murderer still gets eternal bliss. Whereas perhaps the mother who does some evil, perhaps as a result of her anguish, and doesn’t repent, gets hell.

Again, I don’t see anything in these concepts that even comes close to my idea of justice.

 

[Solmyr]

On the contrary. A finite crime doesn’t deserve an infinite punishment. If we repent and do everything we possibly can to help others for the rest of our lives it would be unjust not to forgive us for having done wrong on one occasion. Such as harsh judgment is itself an evil which deserves to be punished! We should always get a taste of our own medicine whether we like it or nor!

Nothing will “undo” the rape or murder. To change and do good deeds is something in the right direction, but it does not help the actual victim of the deed. To beat your oldest child to a bloody pulp will not be making amends to give your other child a lollipop, or even a Ferrari and a few million bucks.

The authority exists in the reality of love:

“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Everything without love is indeed worthless, meaningless and fruitless and it was expressed by the founder of Christianity who chose to live and die for all of us.

Love is a nice and positive emotion to be practiced. But it has NOTHING to do with our “essence” - whatever it is.

 

[Frankenfurter]

**
Love is a nice and positive emotion to be practiced. But it has NOTHING to do with our “essence” - whatever it is.**

That is certainly not a Catholic understanding of Love. Love itself is the essence of the first two commandments:.

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind, and with thy whole strength;
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

St. Bernard gives the best definition of Love that I can understand: christianhistoryinstitute.org/study/module/bernard/

Since God describes Love as the whole key to our purpose in being - what we are supposed to do! And, Bernard further describes in detail how this process of Love forms a scaffolding that lifts us from mere material to higher levels of participation in creation with God, it is very hard for me to think of love as a feeling or emotion.

Instead I am inclined to think that Love itself is part of the essence of what makes us who we are.

Perhaps this is yet another example of how the physicalist bias in our modern, culturally acceptable philosophy has reduced the concept of Love back down to an emotion that plays out on the meat of our physical being.

I am seeing more and more that things that we commonly accept in our modern thinking have a physicalist philosophy built in to them.

 

[inocente]

I get that. But this again is an example of how the abstract thing is where the essence actually is. In your example, the letters are like atoms. But it seems absurd to describe essence of of the story of Christianity as being made up of letters, and that all of the story of Christianity supervenes on the letters? It is the abstraction from these letters where the meaning is contained. In fact, the letters are not needed at all. We could write up Christianity in other languages, some of which don’t even use letters at all, but could contain the same essence of the story.

So I could ask you, is the essence of a story the sum total of the letters? You would say no. Me too.

Can we agree then?

As long as we’re agreed that saying physicalists reduce everything to atoms is as silly as saying Christians reduce everything to the letters of the alphabet.

 

[inocente]

Personally, my sense of justice would say that Braski Mark II needs to do the time, whatever his position in society is today. But my sense of justice is retributive.

But what would happen if I repented twenty years later? Divine punishment seems to be all or nothing.

He has to suffer first before he is exonerated - like the refugee trafficker who was confronted with the bodies of the children he caused to drown… Or the mental agony of Judas who hanged himself when he realised he had betrayed innocent blood and couldn’t bear to go on living with that dreadful sense of guilt and remorse.

Though neither of you get to the heart of why so many take hope from the Message. The justice is that we’re not mere pawns acting out our fate. Just as the cells and atoms in our bodies get changed over time, we too can change, be born again, rebel against being a slave to our past.

 

[inocente]

Christianity was born being immersed in Aritsotle and Plato, so the notion of forms being the real essence of Christ, of people, of things was part of the essence of Christianity. Replace Plato’s forms with the notion of physicalism, and Christianity becomes hard to comprehend by many people, much less believe it to be true.

Hang on, be careful. You’re either claiming that God had to send Aristotle and Plato to prepare the way for Christ, or else that Jesus merely synthesized some existing philosophies. Very few in Palestine were immersed in philosophy, just as throughout history most Christians can make perfect sense of it without knowing anything about Aristotle or Plato. Paul himself says this. To quote a little of him:

*"Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.

…]Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong." - 1 Corinthians 1*

 

[inocente]

inocente;13580675:

You seem to be describing an emasculated version of atomism there. I’ll quote some public definitions of physicalism by way of contrast:

“Physicalism: The doctrine that the real world consists simply of the physical world.” - oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/physicalism

“In philosophy, physicalism is the ontological thesis that “everything is physical”, that there is “nothing over and above” the physical, or that everything supervenes on the physical.” - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicalism

“Physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical, or as contemporary philosophers sometimes put it, that everything supervenes on the physical. The thesis is usually intended as a metaphysical thesis, parallel to the thesis attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Thales, that everything is water, or the idealism of the 18th Century philosopher Berkeley, that everything is mental. The general idea is that the nature of the actual world (i.e. the universe and everything in it) conforms to a certain condition, the condition of being physical. Of course, physicalists don’t deny that the world might contain many items that at first glance don’t seem physical — items of a biological, or psychological, or moral, or social nature. But they insist nevertheless that at the end of the day such items are either physical or supervene on the physical.” - plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/

Hopefully you can see from the above definitions that you’re not describing physicalism as it is believed, but are instead attacking a strawman of your own devising.
You are still confusing emergent with reductive materialism/physicalism.

I didn’t make up those definitions, I quoted them verbatim. The third and longest is from a PhD professor of philosophy who has written a book on physicalism. No doubt he’ll be pleased to have your comments, send them to the email at the bottom of the linked article.

 

[Frankenfurter]

Hang on, be careful. You’re either claiming that God had to send Aristotle and Plato to prepare the way for Christ, or else that Jesus merely synthesized some existing philosophies. Very few in Palestine were immersed in philosophy, just as throughout history most Christians can make perfect sense of it without knowing anything about Aristotle or Plato. Paul himself says this. To quote a little of him:

*"Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.

…]Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong." - 1 Corinthians 1*

I agree with all of that. Jesus and the ancient Greeks happened separately and did not know each other. Still, I believe that truth is universal and there are truths common to us all including the Greeks and Jesus. I also note that it was the Greeks that embraced Christianity (I assume because it jibed so well with Plato, etc.) and gave us the first translation of the Bible that is still used today as the, well, bible. I note also that Greeks got many things right, like math, etc. and that many of these truths are universal. I also note that today, even modern Greece is still one of the most Christian nations of the world.

So I don’t accept your two choices (God sent Aristotle or Jesus incorporated Aristotle) . There is a third choice, namely that Jesus and the Greeks happened independently, but have common ground of truth.

 

[Frankenfurter]

As long as we’re agreed that saying physicalists reduce everything to atoms is as silly as saying Christians reduce everything to the letters of the alphabet.

By their own definition though the physicalists say:

An important concept within Physicalism is that of supervenience, which is the idea that higher levels of existence are dependent on lower levels, such that there can only be a change in the higher level if there is also a change in the lower level (the higher level is said to supervene on the lower level).

I interpret that to mean therefore that a person (a higher form) cannot change unless there is also is a change to his atoms (lower form)?

So if we talk about the dynamics of a person’s essence then, the Physicalist says that all changes to the person’s essence MUST also be a change in his atoms. There would be no way to change a person’s essence without also having a change to his atoms in some way.

To me this is like saying then that all changes to our understanding of the story of Christianity MUST include changes to the letters. That seems utterly absurb to me because the story of Christianity is NOT contained within the letters, it is much larger than that. But you say it is absurd to you too?

 

[Solmyr]

That is certainly not a Catholic understanding of Love. Love itself is the essence of the first two commandments:.

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind, and with thy whole strength;
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

I am aware of that. But any behavior which will not interfere and prevent “evil” cannot be called “love” in my vocabulary. The usual Christian definition of “love” is: “to will the good of the other”. This is not acceptable. One can “will” the good of the other and not act on that “will” and that cannot be called “love”. The other definition “to act in the best interest of the other” would be much better.

But none of that has anything to do with “what we are” - our “essence”. A bad or an indifferent person is still a person.

 

[Frankenfurter]

I am aware of that. But any behavior which will not interfere and prevent “evil” cannot be called “love” in my vocabulary. The usual Christian definition of “love” is: “to will the good of the other”. This is not acceptable. One can “will” the good of the other and not act on that “will” and that cannot be called “love”. The other definition “to act in the best interest of the other” would be much better.

But none of that has anything to do with “what we are” - our “essence”. A bad or an indifferent person is still a person.

Indeed. Some say that Love must always contain sacrifice. And Jesus certainly gave us that example.

*“Love between man and woman cannot be built without sacrifices and self-denial.”

"“Limitation of one’s freedom might seem to be something negative and unpleasant, but love makes it a positive, joyful and creative thing. Freedom exists for the sake of love.” *

St John Paul II, Love and Responsibility

Looks like you and St John Paul II are in agreement.

 

[Solmyr]

Indeed. Some say that Love must always contain sacrifice. And Jesus certainly gave us that example.

*“Love between man and woman cannot be built without sacrifices and self-denial.”

"“Limitation of one’s freedom might seem to be something negative and unpleasant, but love makes it a positive, joyful and creative thing. Freedom exists for the sake of love.” *

St John Paul II, Love and Responsibility

Looks like you and St John Paul II are in agreement.

Nice, but hardly relevant. EVERYTHING limits our freedom. The gravity limits my freedom to fly like a bird. The lack of money takes away my freedom to have a different colored Lamborghini for every day of the week. The existence of my wife takes away my freedom to have mistresses.

None of these are “sacrifices”. Limitation of our freedom has nothing to do with “love”.

And most importantly, love cannot be limited to a relationship between a man and a woman.