Man (Spirit and Matter)

[utunumsint]

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?

 

[utunumsint]

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?

I’ll respond to the robot/soul question, but only in so far as the data is the article would allow me to. That way we can use this topic as a good application of Aquinas’ thinking.

Based on his first reply, I would say that Aquinas would not allow that a Robot has an essence, therefore the robot would have no principle of life since a robot is merely an amalgam of cleverly arranged parts.

Aquinas’ other objection and response have to do with whether knowledge is a physical thing. Aquinas’ response is no. The last one is whether an immaterial thing can move a material thing. Aquinas say yes, through a power.

God bless,
Ut

 

[utunumsint]

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.

I think he is talking about generally accepted markers of what constitutes a living thing. He said the soul is the principle of the action of movement and knowledge. I assumed he only included human beings in the later. But your explanation makes sense.

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!

We could go right into the next topic, but since this is such an important discussion for modern day folks, I would thinking a short detour into the summa contral gentiles might be helpful with regard to the body question. dhspriory.org/thomas/ContraGentiles2.htm#65 I don’t want to get too derailed by this side trip, but I’m not 100% happy with the extend to which Aquinas deals with this issue in the summa theologica.

God bless,
Ut

 

[utunumsint]

THAT THE SOUL IS NOT A BODY
[1] There were also others whose thinking was even wider of the mark, since they asserted that the soul is a body. Although they held divergent and various opinions, it suffices to refute them here collectively.
[2] For, since living things are physical realities, they are composed of matter and form. Now, they are composed of a body and a soul, which makes them actually living. Therefore, one of these two must be the form and the other matter. But the body cannot be the form, because the body is not present in another thing as its matter and subject. The soul, then, is the form, and consequently is not a body, since no body is a form.

Right, so this is repeating where we left off in the ST. Soul is the form, not the body.

[3] It is, moreover, impossible for two bodies to coincide. But, so long as the body lives, the soul is not apart from it. Therefore, the soul is not a body.

Makes sense. Two things can’t occupy the same space at the same time. Of course, the modern answer to this is that there is no soul at all. Only inert matter.

[4] Then, too, every body is divisible. Now, whatever is divisible requires something to keep together and unite its parts, so that, if the soul is a body, it will have something else to preserve its integrity, and this yet more will be the soul; for we observe that, when the soul departs, the body disintegrates. And if this integrating principle again be divisible, we must at last either arrive at something indivisible and incorruptible, which will be the soul, or go on to infinity; which is impossible. Therefore, the soul is not a body.

Hummm. This is an interesting one. What keeps the body integrated? Why is it that the human organism has all these parts and what keeps them together? Physically, we are simply a bag of moist organs floating in liquids. I remember a start trek episode where the silicon based life form calls us “ugly bags of mostly water”. I always found that funny. But it is true that we have skin, we have bones, we have tendons that keep the bones knit together. We have blood that transports nutrition to all the parts. What is the organizing principle behind all of these things? The DNA? Possibly. Or is it the information in the DNA? Is that information physical? Or is it immaterial? Is that information what Aquinas would call something indivisible and incorruptible? But we know that DNA can be corrupted. Mutations happen that sometimes can generate adaptations that can be selected for through evolution. So the information itself is not immutable or incorruptible…

But we know that when the body dies, it disintegrates. The ugly bags of mostly water fall apart. Is DNA the bottom layer to this integrating principle? Or is there something even beneath DNA that integrates the DNA, since DNA is itself divisible and corruptible? Perhaps the DNA is the physical representation of the underlying essence of humanity, which is itself immaterial. Even though the human being can mutate, there is a template that is immutable (although not absolutely so, since that can apply only to God) for what constitutes a human being.

I think what Aquinas is getting at here is what modern philosophers call essentialism.

More later.

God bless,
Ut

 

[utunumsint]

What most of this reduces to is the concept of formal causality. For example, the change from one form to another. Play-Doh can be shaped into a circle, then into a triangle, then into a square. But shape is just one particular kind of form. Aquinas also includes being blue, being hot, being soft, and so on.

These forms also limit matter by the universals they instantiate. The roundness of the Play-Doh is limited by the universal roundness. The squareness of the Play-Doh is limited by the universal squareness, and so on.

The closer the Play-Doh is to the form of roundness, the more actual it is or rather, the more it is actually round. Its potentiality to take on that form is its matter.

Matter is the principle of potentiality. Form is the principle of actuality. Together, they explain all change.

In living things, that principle of change is somehow internal to the living thing and Aquinas characterizes that change as motion. Specifically, self motion that stems from the living thing’s essence towards some actuality. As Feser says in Scholastic Metaphysics “Form in that intrinsic principle by which a thing exhibits whatever permanence, perfection, and identity that it does…Mater, by contrast, is that intrinsic principle by which a thing exhibits the changeability, imperfection, and diversity that it does.” (page 162)

Matter can’t exist without form, but form can exist, according to Aquinas and Aristotle, without matter. Specifically in human beings in the intellect, and also in angels and in God.

So when the composite of form and matter that is the human being dies, the material of the body loses its form, but the form, and specifically the intellect, lives on.

Sorry fort his excursion into Feser’s content. I think I am ready to move on to the next article in the ST.

God bless,
Ut

 

[thinkandmull]

I’ll respond to the robot/soul question, but only in so far as the data is the article would allow me to. That way we can use this topic as a good application of Aquinas’ thinking.

Based on his first reply, I would say that Aquinas would not allow that a Robot has an essence, therefore the robot would have no principle of life since a robot is merely an amalgam of cleverly arranged parts.

Aquinas’ other objection and response have to do with whether knowledge is a physical thing. Aquinas’ response is no. The last one is whether an immaterial thing can move a material thing. Aquinas say yes, through a power.

God bless,
Ut

But if man physically puts the right materials together, why would it not therefore have a new essence and potentially life come from non-life? If we are saying that God endows animals with souls, could we say that because God endows test-tube babies with souls, He may endow a robot with a soul?

 

[utunumsint]

But if man physically puts the right materials together, why would it not therefore have a new essence and potentially life come from non-life? If we are saying that God endows animals with souls, could we say that because God endows test-tube babies with souls, He may endow a robot with a soul?

I’m no expert, but you may have a point for animals and vegetation. But for Aquinas, every human soul is a special creation from God. Possibly, we might be able to create a robot with the right pre-requisites for intellectual ensoulment I suppose. I mean, that is one way of looking at the Adam and Eve story. There were hominids that evolved to the right state where God decided in his inscrutable will that intellectual ensoulment was what he wanted for those creatures. The same would be true for alien life. Perhaps, somewhere on planet B612, there is a race of creatures that have also reached this state, and God has decided to provide them with an intellectual souls. To be honest, I kind of like the idea. Perhaps those creatures never fell like we did.

[Edit]This actually reminds me of Milton’s Paradise lost (I think). When God revealed to the Angels that he planned on creating humanity, that was the occasion of their testing, where they said, “We shall not serve”. Perhaps we should be more open to the idea of God endowing a lower form of existence (from our perspective, whether robots, a la Matrix or apes, a la Planet of the Apes) with intellectual souls.

God bless,
Ut

 

[balto]

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???

Well the specific thread I was thinking of was this one: forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=837660. Although it mostly only discusses whether intelligent thinking can be ascribed to machines simply based on their performance.

I think it is certain that if a robot were to ever become intelligent, it would have to be due to a miracle. Rational thinking is arguably immaterial, so taking a purely physical object and adding more features to it is not going to get you to something immaterial. It would be like trying to get a circle from a polygon by continually adding more sides to the polygon. You may approximate the circle but you’re never going to get to a circle because a circle is just a different kind of thing from a polygon.

There seems to be some debate even in the Thomistic community about whether life needs a miraculous cause or not. It depends on whether inorganic materials are “potentially life” or not. If the nature of inorganic materials is such that life can naturally be drawn out of it under the right conditions, as for instance water can be drawn out of hydrogen and oxygen under the right conditions, then life does not need a miraculous cause. If organic materials do not point towards the generation of life, then life would have to be miraculously created (both of these assume that life is intrinsically meaningful, which most materialists deny either implicitly or explicitly). Personally I think that the former is more likely than the latter (although I do not deny the latter is possible). The “drawing out” hypothesis cannot be true of rationality though, because if rationality really is immaterial then you cannot draw an immaterial thing out of a thing that is material at least in part, because “you cannot give what you don’t have,” and a material thing does not have a purely immaterial power.

If robots were to ever become really alive (and not just very good at fooling people into thinking they are alive), it would have to be due to a miracle since metallic parts by their nature do not have the potential to become living.

 

[balto]

Hummm. This is an interesting one. What keeps the body integrated? Why is it that the human organism has all these parts and what keeps them together? Physically, we are simply a bag of moist organs floating in liquids. I remember a start trek episode where the silicon based life form calls us “ugly bags of mostly water”. I always found that funny. But it is true that we have skin, we have bones, we have tendons that keep the bones knit together. We have blood that transports nutrition to all the parts. What is the organizing principle behind all of these things? The DNA? Possibly. Or is it the information in the DNA? Is that information physical? Or is it immaterial? Is that information what Aquinas would call something indivisible and incorruptible? But we know that DNA can be corrupted. Mutations happen that sometimes can generate adaptations that can be selected for through evolution. So the information itself is not immutable or incorruptible…

But we know that when the body dies, it disintegrates. The ugly bags of mostly water fall apart. Is DNA the bottom layer to this integrating principle? Or is there something even beneath DNA that integrates the DNA, since DNA is itself divisible and corruptible? Perhaps the DNA is the physical representation of the underlying essence of humanity, which is itself immaterial. Even though the human being can mutate, there is a template that is immutable (although not absolutely so, since that can apply only to God) for what constitutes a human being.

I think what Aquinas is getting at here is what modern philosophers call essentialism.

More later.

God bless,
Ut

Yes, I think he is getting at essentialism. I don’t know that the essence reduces to only the DNA though. It’s probably “the whole package” so to speak. I think the modern tendency when one hears of talk of essences is to assume that there is an extra thing or force that is holding the parts together (something like gravity or electromagnetism, but just an “essence force”). Essence is probably getting at the underlying rationality that logically holds the materials together, such that a rational being like a human can look at a living thing and say “that is life” and utter a statement that is really true about the way things really are.

It seems that rationality is more fundamental to creation than material things are, since all material things have some really definable characteristics or patterns/regularities. Without form or essence, there’s no way we can give an objective basis for any of these definitions. You end up having to say that the definition of say, life, is a bundle of material things, including but not limited to DNA. But then what is so special about all of these individual material pieces that makes it really true that they ought to be bundled together? I think Prof. Feser discusses this in Scholastic Metaphysics somewhere (I seem to remember it being in conjunction with asking whether a stone is just a bunch of atoms arranged “stone-wise” and he gave reasons why it isn’t). Either there is a rational essence logically holding them together, or there isn’t, and if there isn’t then we have only given a purely subjective definition and haven’t said anything meaningful about the world. If there is an essence, then the Scholastics are correct to say that the material properties “flow” from the essence, since the essence is more fundamental than the properties. This flowing is not to be thought of as an efficient cause, such that the essence is a thing that causes another thing, the properties, to come into existence, but rather the formal cause of one thing which makes it really the case that the properties of that single thing are definable.

 

[thinkandmull]

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

Is Aquinas’s argument really valid? I mean a brain doesn’t have the same material components of a grain of sand, so one thinks and one doesn’t, right?

You said " not that every action that a living organism takes must have the soul as its principle of action". Can you give an example?

 

[thinkandmull]

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.

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.

“Thomists deny that matter is inert” Where do you get that from?

What you said about Descartes is incorrect. He said the soul is simple like Aquinas did. Whether he is more dualistic than Aquinas just depends on how you interpret him

 

[thinkandmull]

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.

Descartes believed that body had certain functions (imagination, movement), and the simple soul others. It not contrary to Thomas Aquinas, regardless of what Prof. Feser thinks. I read Descartes often. Augustine used an argument that was used by Descartes and Feser tried his best to say they were different but they were exactly the same thing!

 

[thinkandmull]

Another point we can discuss:

“Likewise, nothing acts except in keeping with its species, because in each and every thing the form is the principle of action; so that, if the intellect is a body, its action will not go beyond the order of bodies. It would then have no knowledge of anything except bodies. But this is clearly false, because we know many things that are not bodies. Therefore, the intellect is not a body.”

So angels cannot understand the functions of the human body Aquinas would say?

 

[utunumsint]

Article 2. Whether the human soul is something subsistent?

Objection 1. It would seem that the human soul is not something subsistent. For that which subsists is said to be “this particular thing.” Now “this particular thing” is said not of the soul, but of that which is composed of soul and body. Therefore the soul is not something subsistent.

So first off, I think what is meant by subsistent here is whether the soul is a substance. This objection states that the soul cannot be a substance because it is only the composite of soul and body which is a substance.

Objection 2. Further, everything subsistent operates. But the soul does not operate; for, as the Philosopher says (De Anima i, 4), “to say that the soul feels or understands is like saying that the soul weaves or builds.” Therefore the soul is not subsistent.

The claim here is that the soul has no proper operation, even though that seems to have been assumed in the previous article which Aquinas said the proper actions of the soul are motion and knowledge. It will be interesting to see how he answers this objection.

Objection 3. Further, if the soul were subsistent, it would have some operation apart from the body. But it has no operation apart from the body, not even that of understanding: for the act of understanding does not take place without a phantasm, which cannot exist apart from the body. Therefore the human soul is not something subsistent.

Right. We come to know things in their universals in the intellect through the phantasms or images deriving from the senses. The objector is reducing all intellectual activity to phantasm as the operative principle.

On the contrary, Augustine says (De Trin. x, 7): “Who understands that the nature of the soul is that of a substance and not that of a body, will see that those who maintain the corporeal nature of the soul, are led astray through associating with the soul those things without which they are unable to think of any nature–i.e. imaginary pictures of corporeal things.” Therefore the nature of the human intellect is not only incorporeal, but it is also a substance, that is, something subsistent.

So he is appealing to the Authority of Augustine here who accuses those who reduce soul to body as being led astray by being too tied to imaginary thinking.

I answer that, It must necessarily be allowed that the principle of intellectual operation which we call the soul, is a principle both incorporeal and subsistent. For it is clear that by means of the intellect man can have knowledge of all corporeal things. Now whatever knows certain things cannot have any of them in its own nature; because that which is in it naturally would impede the knowledge of anything else. Thus we observe that a sick man’s tongue being vitiated by a feverish and bitter humor, is insensible to anything sweet, and everything seems bitter to it. Therefore, if the intellectual principle contained the nature of a body it would be unable to know all bodies.

I think the key here is the idea that we can only have physical sensual knowledge of one thing at a time.

Now every body has its own determinate nature. Therefore it is impossible for the intellectual principle to be a body.

I suppose he means here that the body does not come to know things because bodies only have their natures. They cannot come to know other determinate natures as a physical process, because then it would have to have those natures within it. I am certainly not a giraffe.

It is likewise impossible for it to understand by means of a bodily organ; since the determinate nature of that organ would impede knowledge of all bodies; as when a certain determinate color is not only in the pupil of the eye, but also in a glass vase, the liquid in the vase seems to be of that same color.

Same thing.

Therefore the intellectual principle which we call the mind or the intellect has an operation “per se” apart from the body.

An operation through it’s self.

Now only that which subsists can have an operation “per se.” For nothing can operate but what is actual: for which reason we do not say that heat imparts heat, but that what is hot gives heat. We must conclude, therefore, that the human soul, which is called the intellect or the mind, is something incorporeal and subsistent.

Let me try to put this into my own words. I am sure Aquinas would agree that the eye can see colors, the body can feel sensations, the tongue can taste, the ears can hear, and the nose can smell. They have a determined nature and are attuned to receiving the kinds of (name removed by moderator)uts they receive. They can’t be the source of intellect, obviously, because they don’t perform that function. I think Aquinas would allow that we can make mental images within our minds, or recall smells, or physical sensations, and he would agree that these constitute further instances of these sensations. But they are still determined by the nature of the sense. They cannot know all things, like the intellect can. The intellect can abstract from particular instances of things and know them in their universality. It can also understand how different things are related to one another. It can also know the difference between what is true and what is false. The sense cannot perform such actions.

The key here is that determinate natures can only know determinate things. Therefore only an immaterial, indeterminate thing, could possible know indeterminate universal things. Therefore the soul must be such a substance. Because only that which subsists can have an operation.

God bless,
Ut

 

[utunumsint]

Reply to Objection 1. “This particular thing” can be taken in two senses.

Firstly, for anything subsistent; secondly, for that which subsists, and is complete in a specific nature. The former sense excludes the inherence of an accident or of a material form; the latter excludes also the imperfection of the part, so that a hand can be called “this particular thing” in the first sense, but not in the second. Therefore, as the human soul is a part of human nature, it can indeed be called “this particular thing,” in the first sense, as being something subsistent; but not in the second, for in this sense, what is composed of body and soul is said to be “this particular thing.”

So a soul, although subsistent, is not complete when separated from the body.

Reply to Objection 2. Aristotle wrote those words as expressing not his own opinion, but the opinion of those who said that to understand is to be moved, as is clear from the context. Or we may reply that to operate “per se” belongs to what exists “per se.” But for a thing to exist “per se,” it suffices sometimes that it be not inherent, as an accident or a material form; even though it be part of something. Nevertheless, that is rightly said to subsist “per se,” which is neither inherent in the above sense, nor part of anything else. In this sense, the eye or the hand cannot be said to subsist “per se”; nor can it for that reason be said to operate “per se.” Hence the operation of the parts is through each part attributed to the whole. For we say that man sees with the eye, and feels with the hand, and not in the same sense as when we say that what is hot gives heat by its heat; for heat, strictly speaking, does not give heat. We may therefore say that the soul understands, as the eye sees; but it is more correct to say that man understands through the soul.

Uggg. Not sure I’m getting this. I have to read it through again tomorrow.

Reply to Objection 3. The body is necessary for the action of the intellect, not as its origin of action, but on the part of the object; for the phantasm is to the intellect what color is to the sight. Neither does such a dependence on the body prove the intellect to be non-subsistent; otherwise it would follow that an animal is non-subsistent, since it requires external objects of the senses in order to perform its act of perception.

Nice response!

God bless,
Ut

 

[utunumsint]

Is Aquinas’s argument really valid? I mean a brain doesn’t have the same material components of a grain of sand, so one thinks and one doesn’t, right?

I think this argument is more geared towards life itself. I have to admit that for vegetation and animal life, my thinking is automatically reductionist. So that includes things like the five senses, imagination, fears, and appetites. I sort of buy the arguments that intellect is not reducible to material organs though.

I think Balto gave some helpful remarks about the controversy amongst Thomists about whether life itself needs a miraculous cause:

There seems to be some debate even in the Thomistic community about whether life needs a miraculous cause or not. It depends on whether inorganic materials are “potentially life” or not. If the nature of inorganic materials is such that life can naturally be drawn out of it under the right conditions, as for instance water can be drawn out of hydrogen and oxygen under the right conditions, then life does not need a miraculous cause. If organic materials do not point towards the generation of life, then life would have to be miraculously created (both of these assume that life is intrinsically meaningful, which most materialists deny either implicitly or explicitly). Personally I think that the former is more likely than the latter (although I do not deny the latter is possible). The “drawing out” hypothesis cannot be true of rationality though, because if rationality really is immaterial then you cannot draw an immaterial thing out of a thing that is material at least in part, because “you cannot give what you don’t have,” and a material thing does not have a purely immaterial power.

You said " not that every action that a living organism takes must have the soul as its principle of action". Can you give an example?

Well, that is just my repeating what Aquinas said. I’m not entirely sure what he means yet, but I’m hoping things will become clearer as I go. It is already starting to become clearer in the discussion of whether the soul is subsistent.

God bless,
Ut

 

[utunumsint]

Another point we can discuss:

“Likewise, nothing acts except in keeping with its species, because in each and every thing the form is the principle of action; so that, if the intellect is a body, its action will not go beyond the order of bodies. It would then have no knowledge of anything except bodies. But this is clearly false, because we know many things that are not bodies. Therefore, the intellect is not a body.”

So angels cannot understand the functions of the human body Aquinas would say?

I suspect that Aquinas would say Angels conceptually understand the functions of the human body through knowledge of universals. As immaterial creatures, they know immaterial things, such as forms.

God bless,
Ut

 

[thinkandmull]

I think this argument is more geared towards life itself. I have to admit that for vegetation and animal life, my thinking is automatically reductionist. So that includes things like the five senses, imagination, fears, and appetites. I sort of buy the arguments that intellect is not reducible to material organs though.

I think Balto gave some helpful remarks about the controversy amongst Thomists about whether life itself needs a miraculous cause:

Well, that is just my repeating what Aquinas said. I’m not entirely sure what he means yet, but I’m hoping things will become clearer as I go. It is already starting to become clearer in the discussion of whether the soul is subsistent.

God bless,
Ut

Aquinas could have been referring to a spasm,

On miraculous life, this seems to be about whether non-human living things have souls. Now the Summa seems to say yes, but then I read this dhspriory.org/thomas/ContraGentiles2.htm#51

I will get back to this subject a little latter

 

[thinkandmull]

Article 2. Whether the human soul is something subsistent?

So first off, I think what is meant by subsistent here is whether the soul is a substance. This objection states that the soul cannot be a substance because it is only the composite of soul and body which is a substance.

The claim here is that the soul has no proper operation, even though that seems to have been assumed in the previous article which Aquinas said the proper actions of the soul are motion and knowledge. It will be interesting to see how he answers this objection.

Right. We come to know things in their universals in the intellect through the phantasms or images deriving from the senses. The objector is reducing all intellectual activity to phantasm as the operative principle.

So he is appealing to the Authority of Augustine here who accuses those who reduce soul to body as being led astray by being too tied to imaginary thinking.

I think the key here is the idea that we can only have physical sensual knowledge of one thing at a time.

I suppose he means here that the body does not come to know things because bodies only have their natures. They cannot come to know other determinate natures as a physical process, because then it would have to have those natures within it. I am certainly not a giraffe.

Same thing.

An operation through it’s self.

Let me try to put this into my own words. I am sure Aquinas would agree that the eye can see colors, the body can feel sensations, the tongue can taste, the ears can hear, and the nose can smell. They have a determined nature and are attuned to receiving the kinds of (name removed by moderator)uts they receive. They can’t be the source of intellect, obviously, because they don’t perform that function. I think Aquinas would allow that we can make mental images within our minds, or recall smells, or physical sensations, and he would agree that these constitute further instances of these sensations. But they are still determined by the nature of the sense. They cannot know all things, like the intellect can. The intellect can abstract from particular instances of things and know them in their universality. It can also understand how different things are related to one another. It can also know the difference between what is true and what is false. The sense cannot perform such actions.

The key here is that determinate natures can only know determinate things. Therefore only an immaterial, indeterminate thing, could possible know indeterminate universal things. Therefore the soul must be such a substance. Because only that which subsists can have an operation.

God bless,
Ut

The fact that things outside get to the soul via the sense seems fatal to Aquinas argument.
“Now whatever knows certain things cannot have any of them in its own nature; because that which is in it naturally would impede the knowledge of anything else. Thus we observe that a sick man’s tongue being vitiated by a feverish and bitter humor, is insensible to anything sweet, and everything seems bitter to it.” A tongue can taste sweet and salty (yummy snacks!), and an eye can see many things at once. And his argument basically means that a black pupil cannot see black

 

[utunumsint]

Aquinas could have been referring to a spasm,

Wow, are you ever an Aquinas fanboy! LOL

On miraculous life, this seems to be about whether non-human living things have souls. Now the Summa seems to say yes, but then I read this dhspriory.org/thomas/ContraGentiles2.htm#51

I will get back to this subject a little latter

He is talking about the intellectual soul here as opposed to the the souls of animals and vegetation which depend on the matter for their existence. Or was there something else specifically that you see as contradictory?

God bless,
Ut