Man (Spirit and Matter)

[utunumsint]

I’d like to start out a thread exploring Aquinas’ Man (Spirit and Matter) part in the Summa Theologica. This will encompass questions 75 to 102 newadvent.org/summa/1.htm

My primary goal is to understand Aquinas, so any help folks can provide that would further this end would be appreciated. I will attempt to avoid engaging too much in disagreements and debates about better view points or how Aquinas is wrong on this or that. Not that I don’t want you to express a view point on the material in question, so long as you focus your initial comments on what Aquinas may be thinking first so as to help in my primary goal.

So without further delay, lets get started and have some fun while we are at it

Question 75. Man who is composed of a spiritual and a corporeal substance: and in the first place, concerning what belongs to the essence of the soul

Is the soul a body?

Objection 1. It would seem that the soul is a body. For the soul is the moving principle of the body.

Soul as principle of motion. I can see that. In the Aristotelian sense, vegetation has souls because it experiences the motion of growth and the motion of the taking in of nutrition. Animals in the same way, in addition to locomotion. Human beings in the same way as vegetation and animals, but with the additional component of reason and intellect which this objection ignores.

Nor does it move unless moved.

Ah - another application of the principle that nothing is moved unless moved by another used in the five ways! So here we start with the fact that the human body is in motion, and reason back that it must have a mover that is physical.

First, because seemingly nothing can move unless it is itself moved, since nothing gives what it has not; for instance, what is not hot does not give heat.

I think this is the principle of proportionate causality. You can’t give what you don’t have. The effect must be in the cause. But there are multiple ways in which the effect can be in the cause which are formally, virtually, or eminently. I suspect this argument here is focusing too much on formal causation, but I will wait and see what Aquinas says in his reply.

Secondly, because if there be anything that moves and is not moved, it must be the cause of eternal, unchanging movement, as we find proved Phys. viii, 6; and this does not appear to be the case in the movement of an animal, which is caused by the soul.

Humm. The movements of animals does not seem to be the sort that stems from an unmoved mover. Seems true to me.

Therefore the soul is a mover moved. But every mover moved is a body. Therefore the soul is a body.

What is implied here is that only that which is not composite can be unmoved since everything that has parts can go from potency to act and therefore be moved. Either by bringing the composite into composition, or by breaking the composition into its parts. Therefore the soul must be a body.

I believe Aquinas said the soul is the form of the body. I wonder if he really did say this? I will move on to his reply to this objection.

God bless,
Ut

 

[utunumsint]

Reply to Objection 1. As everything which is in motion must be moved by something else, a process which cannot be prolonged indefinitely, we must allow that not every mover is moved. For, since to be moved is to pass from potentiality to actuality, the mover gives what it has to the thing moved, inasmuch as it causes it to be in act. But, as is shown in Phys. viii, 6, there is a mover which is altogether immovable, and not moved either essentially, or accidentally; and such a mover can cause an invariable movement.

This is the unmoved mover argument in Physics book 7 part 6. The key parts it describes is that it is not moved either essentially or accidentally. I think Aristotle describes this as something that is essentially (by nature) unmoved and does not have an cause of its existence (accidental).

There is, however, another kind of mover, which, though not moved essentially, is moved accidentally;

Some thing as above. There are created things that are unmoved, but they do have a cause of their coming to be, even though they are by nature unmoved movers. I believe Aristotle and Aquinas would have classified the celestial spheres this way.

and for this reason it does not cause an invariable movement; such a mover, is the soul.

Right. Unmoved mover essentially, but coming into existence accidentally.

There is, again, another mover, which is moved essentially–namely, the body.
And because the philosophers of old believed that nothing existed but bodies, they maintained that every mover is moved; and that the soul is moved directly, and is a body.

What is implied in this entire argument is that God (both essentially and accidentally unmoved) and human beings (essentially but not accidentally unmoved) have immaterial principles of movement without parts. It is only the body that is essentially subject to change.

God bless,
Ut

 

[utunumsint]

Objection 2. Further, all knowledge is caused by means of a likeness. But there can be no likeness of a body to an incorporeal thing. If, therefore, the soul were not a body, it could not have knowledge of corporeal things.

I think this is an application of the principle of proportionate causality in the formal sense, which Aquinas will dispatch by bringing in the other types of proportionate causality.

Reply to Objection 2. The likeness of a thing known is not of necessity actually in the nature of the knower;

Right - because if it was, then the our knowledge of a chair would actually be a chair in our minds.

but given a thing which knows potentially, and afterwards knows actually, the likeness of the thing known must be in the nature of the knower, not actually, but only potentially; thus color is not actually in the pupil of the eye, but only potentially.

For example, in a world were the colour red is never experienced, red only exists in the eye only potentially. If redness were a part of the eye, then that knowledge would always be there.

Hence it is necessary, not that the likeness of corporeal things should be actually in the nature of the soul, but that there be a potentiality in the soul for such a likeness. But the ancient philosophers omitted to distinguish between actuality and potentiality; and so they held that the soul must be a body in order to have knowledge of a body; and that it must be composed of the principles of which all bodies are formed in order to know all bodies.

I’m not exactly sure how this eliminates the objection.

God bless,
Ut

 

[utunumsint]

Objection 3. Further, between the mover and the moved there must be contact. But contact is only between bodies. Since, therefore, the soul moves the body, it seems that the soul must be a body.

Reply to Objection 3. There are two kinds of contact; of “quantity,” and of “power.” By the former a body can be touched only by a body; by the latter a body can be touched by an incorporeal thing, which moves that body.

For example, two billiard balls colliding with each other causes change to happen in one another through physical contact. I have a power to type, but I am not always exercising that power. My power to type has to be distinguished from this or that instance of my typing.

Anyway, the objecting that is being answered here is that the cause of a motion in a body must be another body, and Aquinas simply answers, no, it can be a power. I suppose that in the case of an immaterial soul, that soul has a power to initiate actions that create an effect in the body.

This reminds me of the placebo and nocebo effect. What our minds think can literally have an impact on our health. It has causal powers.

God bless,
Ut

 

[utunumsint]

I answer that, To seek the nature of the soul, we must premise that the soul is defined as the first principle of life of those things which live:

Like vegetation, animal life, and human life.

for we call living things “animate,” , and those things which have no life, “inanimate.”

Anima=soul

Now life is shown principally by two actions, knowledge and movement

Movement as displayed by vegetation, animals, and humans, and knowledge with humanity alone (also angels and God).

The philosophers of old, not being able to rise above their imagination, supposed that the principle of these actions was something corporeal: for they asserted that only bodies were real things; and that what is not corporeal is nothing: hence they maintained that the soul is something corporeal. This opinion can be proved to be false in many ways; but we shall make use of only one proof, based on universal and certain principles, which shows clearly that the soul is not a body.

Here we go!

It is manifest that not every principle of vital action is a soul, for then the eye would be a soul, as it is a principle of vision; and the same might be applied to the other instruments of the soul:

Instruments of the soul. This is a new idea for me.

but it is the “first” principle of life, which we call the soul.

I wonder if what he means by first is that it is the controlling principle. The one that is the basis for all other principles?

Now, though a body may be a principle of life, or to be a living thing, as the heart is a principle of life in an animal, yet nothing corporeal can be the first principle of life.

Why?

For it is clear that to be a principle of life, or to be a living thing, does not belong to a body as such; since, if that were the case, every body would be a living thing, or a principle of life.

OK. So a body alone is not enough to constitute life. I suppose to modern minds, you would need DNA and such building blocks.

Therefore a body is competent to be a living thing or even a principle of life, as “such” a body. Now that it is actually such a body, it owes to some principle which is called its act. Therefore the soul, which is the first principle of life, is not a body, but the act of a body; thus heat, which is the principle of calefaction, is not a body, but an act of a body.

Hylemorphic dualism. The idea that form is that through which the actuality of a substance comes. The example makes no sense to us moderns.

I suppose that most folks understand form as shape. But that isn’t want Aquinas means. He means the act of a substance. That includes the shape, but it also includes all the other powers of the human person, including the intellect.

I think this needs more unpacking… It seems that to most people, the default assumption is that all powers must have somehow evolved from something simpler. But for Aquinas, there are things that are irreducible to something simpler. Powers like intellect.

God bless,
Ut

 

[utunumsint]

I found this in summa contra gentiles where he is specifically arguing that the intellect is not a body: dhspriory.org/thomas/english/ContraGentiles2.htm#49

Which makes me wonder if the content I have been analyzing in the previous posts is not more generic, such that all souls, whether vegetative, animal, or human would be covered in the statement that that the soul is not the body.

God bless,
Ut

 

[utunumsint]

I think I want to go deeper to his “I answer that…” statement where he defines that the soul is the first principle of life of those things which live."

He states that life is shown principally by two actions - knowledge and movement. The old philosophers believed that the principle of these actions were corporeal - knowledge and movement. Notice his claim is not that every action that a living organism takes must have the soul as its principle of action. Only knowledge and movement. He classifies this third category as instruments of the soul. But the soul is not their principle. It is only the principle of motion and knowledge.

Soul is something else. It is the first principle of life and he makes the further claim that nothing corporeal can be this first principle of life. So that rules out the body and any of its organs.

How does he prove this? By a reduction ad absurdam. " if that were the case, every body would be a living thing, or a principle of life."

But this is essentially what many modern philosophers are starting to say. That there is nothing to distinguish inanimate mater from life. Now most people accept that there must be a distinction intuitively. There must be something that differentiates inorganic matter from life. But that intuition is not in itself a proof.

What about his move to bring in hylemorphic dualism? Here he specifically identifies the first principle of life with form which is that which causes the body to be in act.
This is a very top down approach. It isn’t the matter that gives form to life, but form that gives life to matter. And form is not a body.
And for human beings, the principle actions that this form enables (or is the principle of) are motion and knowledge. Motion, as he has defined more broadly, is the moving of something from potency to act. Now all the instrumental principles in a human body depend on this underlying principle for their actions. Knowledge, on the other hand, is not so easily reduced to some instrumental cause. I think he will probably tackle this topic in more detail in the other questions.

God bless,
Ut

 

[balto]

I’d like to start out a thread exploring Aquinas’ Man (Spirit and Matter) part in the Summa Theologica. This will encompass questions 75 to 102 newadvent.org/summa/1.htm

My primary goal is to understand Aquinas, so any help folks can provide that would further this end would be appreciated. I will attempt to avoid engaging too much in disagreements and debates about better view points or how Aquinas is wrong on this or that. Not that I don’t want you to express a view point on the material in question, so long as you focus your initial comments on what Aquinas may be thinking first so as to help in my primary goal.

So without further delay, lets get started and have some fun while we are at it

This thread is a good idea. I was thinking about doing something similar with interesting articles that Prof. Feser periodically posts, but studying Aquinas is probably more enriching. And it gives people the ability to collaborate on an academic philosophical exercise.

Soul as principle of motion. I can see that. In the Aristotelian sense, vegetation has souls because it experiences the motion of growth and the motion of the taking in of nutrition. Animals in the same way, in addition to locomotion. Human beings in the same way as vegetation and animals, but with the additional component of reason and intellect which this objection ignores.

I think this needs to be explained since most readers are coming from a post-Cartesian, post-Newtonian conception of matter. Modern talk of souls cannot help but elicit a view of the soul as some kind of thing that has to get into contact with matter, like two billiard balls striking each other, only one of them, the soul, happens to be ghostly. That is what Descartes thought but not what Aquinas thought (although to be fair Descartes’ view wasn’t as crude as a “ghostly object”).

One thing I realized recently is that one defining difference between modern philosophy of nature and Thomist philosophy of nature is the concept of laws of nature. Moderns speak of matter as if, considered by itself, it is essentially inert and does not do anything at all. The only reason why matter has activities is not due at all to the nature of the matter, but because there are laws of nature that require that it behave in certain ways. So matter and laws are two separate things that are somehow associated with each other even though it is not an essential association. Which has led to interminable issues with how to explain why certain laws hold rather than others, where did matter come from, what is matter, what is a law of nature, does matter even exist, what’s God’s role in all of this, is God necessary to explain laws of nature and/or matter etc.

Thomists deny that matter is inert and affirm that it behaves according to regularities, but just essentially unite the law to the things that exist. That is what is meant by a “nature”. It has the same scientific explanatory power as a law of nature (i.e. there’s no reason why scientific knowledge cannot be interpreted in light of natures, since a nature fills the same role that the notion of a “law of nature” currently fills), but does not presume that the law is something external to things that exist. The nature is an aspect of the things that exist. A soul is just the nature of living things. There’s nothing anymore spooky about it than talking about the “law of segregation” or the “central dogma of molecular biology” or “natural selection”. You can open any biology textbook and learn all about the essential nature of living things, i.e. souls. For some reason moderns just have a phobia of the English word “soul” for some odd reason.

 

[balto]

Ah - another application of the principle that nothing is moved unless moved by another used in the five ways! So here we start with the fact that the human body is in motion, and reason back that it must have a mover that is physical.

I think this is the principle of proportionate causality. You can’t give what you don’t have. The effect must be in the cause. But there are multiple ways in which the effect can be in the cause which are formally, virtually, or eminently. I suspect this argument here is focusing too much on formal causation, but I will wait and see what Aquinas says in his reply.

Right, a body cannot really behave as a living body unless it is actually a living thing (i.e. has a soul). The soul is the mover that makes it actually a living thing, such that it actually does perform characteristically living actions and has living properties.

What is implied here is that only that which is not composite can be unmoved since everything that has parts can go from potency to act and therefore be moved. Either by bringing the composite into composition, or by breaking the composition into its parts. Therefore the soul must be a body.

I believe Aquinas said the soul is the form of the body. I wonder if he really did say this? I will move on to his reply to this objection.

God bless,
Ut

Well I think this specific objection he considers is basically the modern one. It rests on thinking the soul is some kind of separately-existing thing. Well if that’s true then it must be moved (unless it’s pure act but no one claims that it is). I don’t think that necessarily leads you to believe that the soul must be a body simply because it is moved (immaterial things can be moved, but the soul is not an immaterial thing but possibly the nature of one). But it certainly can be used to support the thesis that the soul must really be another word for the body. This misunderstanding is probably why moderns typically reject the idea of a soul, because even if the soul existed you still would have to explain its own motion and how it causes the motion of the body, so we still have not solved any of the issues with explaining bodily motion and have just introduced more things to explain. By the principle of parsimony the soul is shaved away, but I think for Aquinas the soul is the form of the living thing, so it is not an extra thing at all but more like a law of nature that is being proposed.

 

[balto]

I think this is an application of the principle of proportionate causality in the formal sense, which Aquinas will dispatch by bringing in the other types of proportionate causality.

Right - because if it was, then the our knowledge of a chair would actually be a chair in our minds.

For example, in a world were the colour red is never experienced, red only exists in the eye only potentially. If redness were a part of the eye, then that knowledge would always be there.

I’m not exactly sure how this eliminates the objection.

God bless,
Ut

I think you are correct in interpreting the objection properly. The opponent is arguing that having knowledge of something requires that the likeness of the thing “get inside” the nature of the knower somehow. His reply does eliminate the objection due to the actuality/potentiality distinction. Take your example of experiencing red. An apple by its very nature really does have the ability to generate the experience of seeing red, an eyeball by its very nature really does potentially have the ability to receive this experience. The eyeball does not actually need to become red to know the red of the apple.

It seems that when he speaks of an incorporeal soul he has in mind a rational soul, since rational souls have an intellect, which is immaterial. There is no need for the intellect to become corporeal to understand corporeal things, since the universal nature of the physical object really has the universal nature and the intellect really has the power to abstract it. It will be more interesting to examine his view on intellectual activity, since the intellect plays an active role in abstraction whereas the eyeball does not play an active role in sensation.

 

[balto]

For example, two billiard balls colliding with each other causes change to happen in one another through physical contact. I have a power to type, but I am not always exercising that power. My power to type has to be distinguished from this or that instance of my typing.

Anyway, the objecting that is being answered here is that the cause of a motion in a body must be another body, and Aquinas simply answers, no, it can be a power. I suppose that in the case of an immaterial soul, that soul has a power to initiate actions that create an effect in the body.

This reminds me of the placebo and nocebo effect. What our minds think can literally have an impact on our health. It has causal powers.

God bless,
Ut

Again, this response from Aquinas is a response to the modernist. The modernist thinks that all matter is purely quantitative. That’s our intellectual patrimony from Descartes et al.. This is why something like qualitative, subjective experiences are such an issue for the materialist. All matter is quantitative only, so where do the qualitative features come from? Can’t be matter since matter is quantitative. So it must come from some separate mindstuff, since we undeniably experience it. That’s how we ended up with Cartesian substance dualism.

Qualitative experiences are no problem for the Thomist. Matter is not purely quantitative, but also powerful (i.e. it does certain things by its very nature, it is not inert stuff under the control of external laws). Certain matter really has the ability to cause subjective experiences and certain corporeal organs really have the power to receive them by their very nature.

It’s the same thing with the soul. The soul is basically the reason why the object in question has living features and powers.

 

[balto]

How does he prove this? By a reduction ad absurdam. " if that were the case, every body would be a living thing, or a principle of life."

But this is essentially what many modern philosophers are starting to say. That there is nothing to distinguish inanimate mater from life. Now most people accept that there must be a distinction intuitively. There must be something that differentiates inorganic matter from life. But that intuition is not in itself a proof.

Well modern philosophers say that nothing is living because they are generally committed to materialistic reductionism. They may as well say everything is alive rather than that nothing is. Our experience tells us that there is a difference between living things and non-living things. They claim that this is an illusion since they know that reductionism is true.

But how do we know that reductionism is true? They’d probably appeal to the success of modern physics. “Physics is more predictive than any other tool, and physics only deals in atoms, electrons, quarks, etc.” This doesn’t establish reductionism though. All it says is that we understand the natures of atoms very well and/or the nature of an atom is such that it is extremely quantifiable and hence subject to mathematical prediction more readily than other things.

Then they’ll say that “well all living things are really composed of atoms”, so that establishes reductionism. But so what? Saying that X is composed of Y does not by itself prove that X is nothing but Y. Atoms do not behave the same way in living things as they do in inorganic things. To be sure, their activities in living things are not anti-physical in any sense (their physical natures are not being violated), but there is an extra level of organization on top of the bare physical organization that directs it specifically towards sustaining the living thing. It is hard to see how you have eliminated life if every time you attempt to explain this or that living feature in terms of the actions of atoms you have to presuppose the intrinsic meaningfulness of the feature you are attempting to eliminate.

The only other alternative is to just claim it is all due to random accidental chance. But then we have no real knowledge of biology since biological order is an illusion. Why exactly should we suppose that our knowledge of physics is real? Simply claiming physics is real and biology is only an illusion that’s really physical is special pleading. Maybe that physical order is all an illusion as well. And that is why many modern philosophers since Kant have become idealists. There is order obviously, since we experience it, but since it’s not in matter than it is only in our mind. So we should eliminate matter instead of mind.

BTW, the difference between inorganic and organic substances is typically held to be the fact that living things act to preserve themselves (so-called “immanent causation”) and non-living things do not. Atoms do not by their nature “care” what end towards which they are directed. In living things, their activities are directed towards sustaining the organism. In non-living things there is no such organization. The soul is the principle of this organization.

 

[utunumsint]

This thread is a good idea. I was thinking about doing something similar with interesting articles that Prof. Feser periodically posts, but studying Aquinas is probably more enriching. And it gives people the ability to collaborate on an academic philosophical exercise.

Fantastic! Good to have your insight Balto. Its funny you mentioned Feser. I just reviewed his chapter in Aquinas on psychology. Very interesting. He goes into the topic of immanent versus transiunt causation which helped me connect what Aquinas meant by something that is moved or unmoved essentially and accidentally. He is definitely my go to source in trying to make sense of Aquinas.

I think this needs to be explained since most readers are coming from a post-Cartesian, post-Newtonian conception of matter. Modern talk of souls cannot help but elicit a view of the soul as some kind of thing that has to get into contact with matter, like two billiard balls striking each other, only one of them, the soul, happens to be ghostly. That is what Descartes thought but not what Aquinas thought (although to be fair Descartes’ view wasn’t as crude as a “ghostly object”).

Agreed.

One thing I realized recently is that one defining difference between modern philosophy of nature and Thomist philosophy of nature is the concept of laws of nature. Moderns speak of matter as if, considered by itself, it is essentially inert and does not do anything at all. The only reason why matter has activities is not due at all to the nature of the matter, but because there are laws of nature that require that it behave in certain ways. So matter and laws are two separate things that are somehow associated with each other even though it is not an essential association. Which has led to interminable issues with how to explain why certain laws hold rather than others, where did matter come from, what is matter, what is a law of nature, does matter even exist, what’s God’s role in all of this, is God necessary to explain laws of nature and/or matter etc.

Very true. I think it is possible to philosophically prove that the Thomistic perspective makes more sense. This is one of those unexamined philosophical postulates that creep into such conversations.

Thomists deny that matter is inert and affirm that it behaves according to regularities, but just essentially unite the law to the things that exist. That is what is meant by a “nature”. It has the same scientific explanatory power as a law of nature (i.e. there’s no reason why scientific knowledge cannot be interpreted in light of natures, since a nature fills the same role that the notion of a “law of nature” currently fills), but does not presume that the law is something external to things that exist. The nature is an aspect of the things that exist. A soul is just the nature of living things. There’s nothing anymore spooky about it than talking about the “law of segregation” or the “central dogma of molecular biology” or “natural selection”. You can open any biology textbook and learn all about the essential nature of living things, i.e. souls. For some reason moderns just have a phobia of the English word “soul” for some odd reason.

Right. Its a matter of looking at the same thing from a different perspective.

God bless,
Ut

 

[utunumsint]

Right, a body cannot really behave as a living body unless it is actually a living thing (i.e. has a soul). The soul is the mover that makes it actually a living thing, such that it actually does perform characteristically living actions and has living properties.

Well I think this specific objection he considers is basically the modern one. It rests on thinking the soul is some kind of separately-existing thing. Well if that’s true then it must be moved (unless it’s pure act but no one claims that it is). I don’t think that necessarily leads you to believe that the soul must be a body simply because it is moved (immaterial things can be moved, but the soul is not an immaterial thing but possibly the nature of one). But it certainly can be used to support the thesis that the soul must really be another word for the body. This misunderstanding is probably why moderns typically reject the idea of a soul, because even if the soul existed you still would have to explain its own motion and how it causes the motion of the body, so we still have not solved any of the issues with explaining bodily motion and have just introduced more things to explain. By the principle of parsimony the soul is shaved away, but I think for Aquinas the soul is the form of the living thing, so it is not an extra thing at all but more like a law of nature that is being proposed.

Right. The soul is not something material that you can separate from body and examine under a microscope or some hadron collider. It can be considered an a universal abstraction in the mind. The modern tendency, that I admit I also have, is to assume this is something unreal. But it isn’t unreal. It is the actuality of a substance. I’m still struggling with what that means though. I mean, why does an electron work the way it does? Why is it that it circles an atom? Why not cube it? Why does it have the law-like behavior that it has and not some other behavior altogether? Perhaps this composite of matter and the form that gives it shape as well as its distinctive powers (as opposed to laws) is a really good way to look at these things. Its just another way to describe the regularities we see in nature I think, as you are suggesting Balto.

God bless,
Ut

 

[utunumsint]

I think you are correct in interpreting the objection properly. The opponent is arguing that having knowledge of something requires that the likeness of the thing “get inside” the nature of the knower somehow. His reply does eliminate the objection due to the actuality/potentiality distinction. Take your example of experiencing red. An apple by its very nature really does have the ability to generate the experience of seeing red, an eyeball by its very nature really does potentially have the ability to receive this experience. The eyeball does not actually need to become red to know the red of the apple.

It seems that when he speaks of an incorporeal soul he has in mind a rational soul, since rational souls have an intellect, which is immaterial. There is no need for the intellect to become corporeal to understand corporeal things, since the universal nature of the physical object really has the universal nature and the intellect really has the power to abstract it. It will be more interesting to examine his view on intellectual activity, since the intellect plays an active role in abstraction whereas the eyeball does not play an active role in sensation.

Makes perfect sense. What one perceives is an instance of the universal redness that the mind has a potentiality for.

I agree that it will be interesting to examine his view on intellectual activity. All these things are so tightly bound together, that one article naturally leads to the next. What fun!

God bless,
Ut

 

[utunumsint]

Well modern philosophers say that nothing is living because they are generally committed to materialistic reductionism. They may as well say everything is alive rather than that nothing is. Our experience tells us that there is a difference between living things and non-living things. They claim that this is an illusion since they know that reductionism is true.

But how do we know that reductionism is true? They’d probably appeal to the success of modern physics. “Physics is more predictive than any other tool, and physics only deals in atoms, electrons, quarks, etc.” This doesn’t establish reductionism though. All it says is that we understand the natures of atoms very well and/or the nature of an atom is such that it is extremely quantifiable and hence subject to mathematical prediction more readily than other things.

Then they’ll say that “well all living things are really composed of atoms”, so that establishes reductionism. But so what? Saying that X is composed of Y does not by itself prove that X is nothing but Y. Atoms do not behave the same way in living things as they do in inorganic things. To be sure, their activities in living things are not anti-physical in any sense (their physical natures are not being violated), but there is an extra level of organization on top of the bare physical organization that directs it specifically towards sustaining the living thing. It is hard to see how you have eliminated life if every time you attempt to explain this or that living feature in terms of the actions of atoms you have to presuppose the intrinsic meaningfulness of the feature you are attempting to eliminate.

The only other alternative is to just claim it is all due to random accidental chance. But then we have no real knowledge of biology since biological order is an illusion. Why exactly should we suppose that our knowledge of physics is real? Simply claiming physics is real and biology is only an illusion that’s really physical is special pleading. Maybe that physical order is all an illusion as well. And that is why many modern philosophers since Kant have become idealists. There is order obviously, since we experience it, but since it’s not in matter than it is only in our mind. So we should eliminate matter instead of mind.

Agreed. Perfect summary of the problem of reductionism from the materialist and the idealist perspective. It seems to prove the fact that all philosophy ends up being a footnote since Plato (I would add Aristotle and Aquinas).

BTW, the difference between inorganic and organic substances is typically held to be the fact that living things act to preserve themselves (so-called “immanent causation”) and non-living things do not. Atoms do not by their nature “care” what end towards which they are directed. In living things, their activities are directed towards sustaining the organism. In non-living things there is no such organization. The soul is the principle of this organization.

Right, and as Aquinas mentions in this article, that immanent principle’s main actions are motion and knowledge in living things. The immanent causation is also goal oriented - it is motion towards some end and knowledge toward some good. It exhibits final causality. For human beings, that final end for the facility of knowledge is the knowledge of God. For motion, I would presume, that would manifest itself as will in human beings, and the goal of that will is union with God.

Too cool!

God bless,
Ut

 

[thinkandmull]

How can it be said by a Catholic that “nothing gives what it has not; for instance, what is not hot does not give heat.” God created the world from nothing, He didn’t use anything from Himself.

But that is not really what I wanted to talk about. What are you guess opinions on the idea that computers can be made to think and feel. Can life come from non-life? Not human life, but someting else? God infuses a soul into children from adultery, so maybe he would tolerate us making living machines?

 

[balto]

Right, and as Aquinas mentions in this article, that immanent principle’s main actions are motion and knowledge in living things.

Yeah, that’s something I meant to comment on earlier but forgot about. I was confused by what he meant by saying that one of the goals of living things is knowledge, since I tend to associate knowledge with rational thinking. I guess Aquinas must be using a more broad definition of knowledge. Perhaps what he has in mind is that in purely vegetative life forms, they have knowledge of themselves, since at a minimum their activities are directed towards their own self-preservation. But this is not conscious knowledge. At the level of sentience you would gain external knowledge of particulars only, through sensible forms, so it is conscious at this level. And then rationality would add knowledge of universals on top of all of that.

The immanent causation is also goal oriented - it is motion towards some end and knowledge toward some good. It exhibits final causality. For human beings, that final end for the facility of knowledge is the knowledge of God. For motion, I would presume, that would manifest itself as will in human beings, and the goal of that will is union with God.

Yes, but I think everything is to a certain extent goal-oriented, otherwise you could not make sense of objective causal regularities. The more I think about the Thomist doctrine of final causality the more it seems to be correct. The difficulty is dispelling all the caricatures!

Do you want to post the next article that Aquinas considers if we’re satisfied with everything up to this point?

I hope you have a blessed Easter tomorrow!

 

[balto]

How can it be said by a Catholic that “nothing gives what it has not; for instance, what is not hot does not give heat.” God created the world from nothing, He didn’t use anything from Himself.

Yes, but the Thomist would argue that God just is pure actuality, so God has the ability to create anything that is logically possible. It’s not a matter of forming things out of His own nature, such that a piece of Him is lost and gained by His creation. The Thomist would probably argue that creation is a participation in God’s nature, i.e. it participates in being itself. As St. Paul says, “in Him we move, live, and have our being.”

But that is not really what I wanted to talk about. What are you guess opinions on the idea that computers can be made to think and feel. Can life come from non-life? Not human life, but someting else? God infuses a soul into children from adultery, so maybe he would tolerate us making living machines?

Perhaps it would be more effective to start a new thread on this topic? It has been discussed on these forums before but that was at least a year or so ago. I hope you enjoy your Easter as well thinkandmull!

 

[thinkandmull]

Same to you balto! If anyone nows where the thread is that was on life from non-life, computers thinking, let me know

On the subject from the Thomists, does not God through His power make nothing “gives what it has not”, that is, swan creation, in a sense???