Memory

[Pete_1]

If the soul is the product of conscious experience and emotion, how can memories of these non-physical things be stored? How can we remember something non-physical?

 

[Katholish]

The soul is not the product of experience and emotion.

Neither can the memory store non-physical/material things. When men think of immaterial reality, they create a material phantasm to help them understand the immaterial. This phantasm can be stored by the memory, but the immaterial reality cannot.

 

[Pete_1]

The soul is not the product of experience and emotion.

Is this Church teaching?

Neither can the memory store non-physical/material things. When men think of immaterial reality, they create a material phantasm to help them understand the immaterial. This phantasm can be stored by the memory, but the immaterial reality cannot.

Ok

 

[Katholish]

Yes. That the soul is not the product of experience and emotion can be considered a teaching of the Church. It wouldn’t be considered a dogma properly speaking, but in so far as ideas about the soul have an implication for what has been divinely revealed, the Church passes definitive judgment on certain aspects of philosophy. Included in the Church’s teaching on the soul is that the soul is immortal, it is infused by God in a special act of creation, the soul did not pre-exist the body, the soul is immaterial, the soul is substantial in so far as it can exist without the body even though it would do so in an imperfect state, etc.

Philosophically, we understand that the soul is the animating principle of the body. It would be impossible to have sensation if a soul were not present. The soul is what makes the body be one thing as opposed to just a massive pile of cells.

 

[EasterJoy]

If the soul is the product of conscious experience and emotion, how can memories of these non-physical things be stored? How can we remember something non-physical?

If you are aware of your body, you will realize that your memory of emotions is very much a physical memory. If you bring yourself back to experiencing the memory of something that made you angry, for instance, you will feel the change in your breath, in your heart rate, in your flushed skin, in the tenseness in your muscles. You do not become peaceful or anxious or enraged without your body being very much aware of it. The problem is more that we become so distracted by the thoughts going through our minds that we are not aware of how much our experience of emotion is taking place in our bodies. If we only pay attention to our thought stream, we may not even realize it when we’re angry, but our bodies know!

Our souls are the seat of our wills. By the dictates of our souls, we may choose actions and attitudes different from what external stimuli acting only on our bodies would produce. The problem is that so many of us are divorced from the (name removed by moderator)ut of our own souls, from the part of us that can be aware of and listen to God, that is capable of discerning and conforming to the divine will. We have this thought stream of sensory (name removed by moderator)ut and interpretation physically going on in our bodies–the synapses are just firing like mad!–and we pay attention to that and react to that. Our wills are anesthetized and impotent, our contact with the voice of God cut off. Because we are being run by the reactive thought stream that doesn’t show in the mirror, but whose workings a psychologist can predict almost as easily as a physicist can predict the fall of a physical object, we think we are in touch with our souls, but in fact we allow our bodies to run our lives. We ignore our souls, choosing to be enslaved to our reactive physical brains.

This is not to say that there is no overlap between psychology and spirituality, but that the people who are divorced from their souls are enslaved to physical reaction, rather than being spiritually free enough to follow the dictates of the soul.

As for the original question, the soul and the body do not operate independently. Just as Jesus is both fully God and fully man, we also have a fully spiritual and a fully physical nature, while being single individuals. You might say that human beings were uniquely made to physically accomodate the Incarnation. In Jesus, the human and the divine natures fully co-exist; in us, the divine image is expressed in our created spiritual being: i.e., in our souls. (That’s the way I look at it, not the catechism!)

 

[CHRISTINE77]

Yes. That the soul is not the product of experience and emotion can be considered a teaching of the Church. It wouldn’t be considered a dogma properly speaking, but in so far as ideas about the soul have an implication for what has been divinely revealed, the Church passes definitive judgment on certain aspects of philosophy. Included in the Church’s teaching on the soul is that the soul is immortal, it is infused by God in a special act of creation, the soul did not pre-exist the body, the soul is immaterial, the soul is substantial in so far as it can exist without the body even though it would do so in an imperfect state, etc.

Philosophically, we understand that the soul is the animating principle of the body. It would be impossible to have sensation if a soul were not present. The soul is what makes the body be one thing as opposed to just a massive pile of cells.

Could one’s soul become more pure by experience and action? For example, if one becomes more and more concious of God and Christ and lives more in them, doesn’t one’s soul change?

 

[Katholish]

While the nature of the soul could not change, as a being, or at least part of a being, existing in time, it is subject to certian kinds of changes. The example you give of “purification” or becoming more truly united to God is a fine example.

Man’s immaterial intellect and will are more proper to the soul than to the body (though, as it is, the body is necessary for their exercise). Thus, a soul could gain in knowledge and virtue. This is another, but related example of change.