Metaphysics & knowledge (of Aquinas): Questions

[Qoeleth]

But of course this is exactly the problem I brought up. If we accept that man has parts (a soul and a body) then how is he essentially one? For he exists of heterogeneous and clashing essences and additionally, assuming your example is generalizable as a law of nature (that the separation of a thing into parts suffices to prove that it has no real unity), he dies when his parts are separated.

So your reply agrees with my problems and so they both accord in contradicting the parts of metaphysics that I’m trying to render non-contradictory.

I am with William of Ockham- names/concepts which designate unity are just that (mental concepts). In reality, there are only particulars. We may call something ‘one’, or think of it as ‘one’- but that is all.

I mean, take ‘one’ minute. There’s no oneness about it. I could equally call a unit of time lasting seventy seconds ‘one’ (if a name was invented for it). There is no unity in the thing itself.

Similarly, ‘forms’ are only in our minds. Take the form of ‘the good’. We have a word ‘good’, and the meaning attached to that word is ‘the form of the good’. If we slightly changed the definition of the word ‘good’, the ‘form of the good’ would change also.

Now, I am not diminishing the important of words/concepts- on the contrary, since our entire understanding of the ‘universe’, even down to the ‘oneness’ of any ‘object’ is a function of language and conceptualisation- it seems that even if ‘oneness’ is only a mental concept and a name, it still ‘exists’ (for us, who are exists within the web of language).

 

[fakename]

I am with William of Ockham- names/concepts which designate unity are just that (mental concepts). In reality, there are only particulars. We may call something ‘one’, or think of it as ‘one’- but that is all.

I mean, take ‘one’ minute. There’s no oneness about it. I could equally call a unit of time lasting seventy seconds ‘one’ (if a name was invented for it). There is no unity in the thing itself.

Similarly, ‘forms’ are only in our minds. Take the form of ‘the good’. We have a word ‘good’, and the meaning attached to that word is ‘the form of the good’. If we slightly changed the definition of the word ‘good’, the ‘form of the good’ would change also.

Now, I am not diminishing the important of words/concepts- on the contrary, since our entire understanding of the ‘universe’, even down to the ‘oneness’ of any ‘object’ is a function of language and conceptualisation- it seems that even if ‘oneness’ is only a mental concept and a name, it still ‘exists’ (for us, who are exists within the web of language).

In some sense though, I think one ought not to diminish the being of forms for to say that forms (that is, universals) don’t exist is to use universal concepts like “exist” and “nothing is such”. So I think that it is self-evidently true that universals are real and are impossible to avoid. As such, since everything has a purpose, I find it unlikely that nature would make it impossible for us to use forms and to make our forms disconnected from the real.

But of course I suppose you don’t have to be a nominalist and believe that nominalism is the best epistemological POV.

 

[andremiguel]

I did say man has a body and that soul needs it & I never said that the soul was one of the purely intellectual substances called angels.

Why do you think I implied it?

I highlighted the sentences that made my remark:

This seems to be a logical conclusion from my POV. But I think that it is wrong for isn’t it “of faith” that the soul is the form of the human body? Surely since form is distinct from matter then the soul is just a part and since soul is identical with essence (in that one is the definition and the other is the thing defined (the soul is defined as the form which manifests the essence of man which is reason and animal life)), then the essence is just a part of man.

 

[tonyrey]

I was reading some metaphysics by Aristotle and I can’t answer a rather basic question: how is one thing one?

One thing is one because the only alternative is an infinite regress! How could one thing be divided into smaller parts indefinitely?

How would we ever grasp the concept of unity if we never regarded things in terms of units? We may be mistaken but the success of science demonstrates that we can’t be far off the mark…

 

[fakename]

I highlighted the sentences that made my remark:

Just because the soul is the essence doesn’t mean that it is an angel.

Since the soul is just immortal rationality while an angel is immortal self-evident knowing and self-evident knowing is not the same as rationality (my definitions are a little off perhaps but that’s the gist of it). Also, the soul naturally needs a body.

 

[Gaber]

Just because the soul is the essence doesn’t mean that it is an angel.

Since the soul is just immortal rationality while an angel is immortal self-evident knowing and self-evident knowing is not the same as rationality (my definitions are a little off perhaps but that’s the gist of it). Also, the soul naturally needs a body.

How, especially by means of experience, do you find yourself qualified to make such an assertion?

 

[andremiguel]

Just because the soul is the essence doesn’t mean that it is an angel.

Since the soul is just immortal rationality while an angel is immortal self-evident knowing and self-evident knowing is not the same as rationality (my definitions are a little off perhaps but that’s the gist of it). Also, the soul naturally needs a body.

If the soul does not have a body is “like an angel” as Christ said.
Please define “self-evident knowing”.
" the soul naturally needs a body". Word the word “naturally”. The soul needs a body because Christ wanted it. But the soul can survive eternally without a body.

 

[fakename]

If the soul does not have a body is “like an angel” as Christ said.
Please define “self-evident knowing”.
" the soul naturally needs a body". Word the word “naturally”. The soul needs a body because Christ wanted it. But the soul can survive eternally without a body.

I’m not entirely sure what you are saying.

But on a reasonable interpretation I guess you want to know how a soul can be w/o a body and still not be an angel? (1) not everything w/o body is an angel for God is w/o body and forms are not bodies.

Self-evident knowing is just an inadequate rendering of what angels are, in that they are defined as things which know what we know as if all we know is in fact self-evident truth. So all of our contingent truths they understand as if they were self-evident. Self-evident itself of course means to know something which cannot be false because the denial of the thing is self-contradictory.

Yes, the soul can exist w/o the body but the soul does need the body because the soul is an imperfect substance: it is ordered towards the body as towards that which can fulfill its primary functions, just like the male is ordered towards the female as towards that which fulfills it though the male can survive w/o the female.

 

[JDaniel]

I think at least some of my questions can be answered by saying that form and matter are not beings aside from the beings that they compose, however that creates a bunch of other problems to be touched upon, like what is matter and form?

Fakename:

For a good description of how this system works, read the following: web.ics.purdue.edu/~brower/Papers/Matter,%20Form,%20&%20Individuation.pdf

(You might have to read it twice.)

God bless,
jd

 

[JDaniel]

But of course this is exactly the problem I brought up. If we accept that man has parts (a soul and a body) then how is he essentially one? For he exists of heterogeneous and clashing essences and additionally, assuming your example is generalizable as a law of nature (that the separation of a thing into parts suffices to prove that it has no real unity), he dies when his parts are separated.

So your reply agrees with my problems and so they both accord in contradicting the parts of metaphysics that I’m trying to render non-contradictory.

Fakename:

Creatures are either simple or composite. Non-living things seem to be simple, living things composite. But, as Aquinas reminds us, a man is NOT “a soul and a body.” A man is a compound of primary matter and form that is a soul. A soul is, therefore, simple. At the end of life, living creatures are subject to corruption, not simply death. As we are told, it takes “generation” to make a life and “corruption” end one. In other words, it would take annihilation to separate primary matter from its form, and this God will not do.

As you will notice if you read the essay I sent to you in my earlier post, (plain) matter is distinct from primary matter. Primary matter is more like a principle, i.e., a beginning.

Think of it in the following way: I suspect creatures (rocks, carbon, diamonds, trees, animals, etc.) are configurations (s-points in specified s-frames) of infinite space that receive their Forms directly from God (Infinite Space [not derogatory]). Thus God is not only doing the configuring, but also He is combining said configuratory stuff with its determinate and expected “form” (nous). In a sense, the s-frame configurations can be thought of a being prior to the compound-ment, which is the beginning of a living, unified thing. God does all things within an Eternal moment, so there is only a time separation (between “configuring” and “compound-ment”) according to our limited way of thinking.

God bless,
jd

 

[andremiguel]

I’m not entirely sure what you are saying.

But on a reasonable interpretation I guess you want to know how a soul can be w/o a body and still not be an angel? (1) not everything w/o body is an angel for God is w/o body and forms are not bodies.

Self-evident knowing is just an inadequate rendering of what angels are, in that they are defined as things which know what we know as if all we know is in fact self-evident truth. So all of our contingent truths they understand as if they were self-evident. Self-evident itself of course means to know something which cannot be false because the denial of the thing is self-contradictory.

Yes, the soul can exist w/o the body but the soul does need the body because the soul is an imperfect substance: it is ordered towards the body as towards that which can fulfill its primary functions, just like the male is ordered towards the female as towards that which fulfills it though the male can survive w/o the female.

Yes I agree with you that souls may be quite different from angels.
But I do not agree that the soul is imperfect being waiting for the body: God is not an imperfect being waiting for Jesus Christ.

 

[fakename]

Yes I agree with you that souls may be quite different from angels.
But I do not agree that the soul is imperfect being waiting for the body: God is not an imperfect being waiting for Jesus Christ.

God isn’t a soul.

 

[andremiguel]

God isn’t a soul.

Obviously.
It was a comparison.

 

[fakename]

Obviously.
It was a comparison.

What’s so similar about a soul and God that God needs to, have a body to be complete? To affirm any such similarity would ordinarily be a contradiction since we are to predicate things about God only in a manner that does not apply imperfection to God. But since the soul-body connection is an imperfection of metaphysics, then we cannot make a true comparison between such a connection and anything that God has.

 

[andremiguel]

What’s so similar about a soul and God that God needs to, have a body to be complete? To affirm any such similarity would ordinarily be a contradiction since we are to predicate things about God only in a manner that does not apply imperfection to God. But since the soul-body connection is an imperfection of metaphysics, then we cannot make a true comparison between such a connection and anything that God has.

Let’s forget God.
Let’s go into the Human Soul. Sincerely, I do not see in itself any imperfection that would make it need a body.
I simply say that God wanted that way.
If God wanted and angel to have a body (it would be possible), it would be a human person or whatever name we would want to give, if the Angel Soul was different from the Human Soul.
There would be no imperfection in the Angel. God just wanted Him to incarnate and He incarnated.

 

[Gaber]

Let’s forget God.
Let’s go into the Human Soul. Sincerely, I do not see in itself any imperfection that would make it need a body.
I simply say that God wanted that way.
If God wanted and angel to have a body (it would be possible), it would be a human person or whatever name we would want to give, if the Angel Soul was different from the Human Soul.
There would be no imperfection in the Angel. God just wanted Him to incarnate and He incarnated.

OK then, but you still have a “body” as distinguishable by identity as an angel or spirit or whatever. In those terms the soul, astral body, jiva(sp?) or dopelganger is still a body in an environment, though less dense. You are only talking octaves and harmonics here.

 

[fakename]

Let’s forget God.
Let’s go into the Human Soul. Sincerely, I do not see in itself any imperfection that would make it need a body.
I simply say that God wanted that way.
If God wanted and angel to have a body (it would be possible), it would be a human person or whatever name we would want to give, if the Angel Soul was different from the Human Soul.
There would be no imperfection in the Angel. God just wanted Him to incarnate and He incarnated.

In that case God would apparently create humans to no end for the soul would not need the body. In that case in what sense do people live and die? For clearly if the soul does not need the body then neither does it need to not be separate from the body and death from the human POV would be quite illusory which is false. And also, it would follow that the soul is the living person and yet the Summa Theologica teaches against that and angels have taken bodies and yet remained angels so the argument RE: angels is wrong.

 

[fakename]

OK then, but you still have a “body” as distinguishable by identity as an angel or spirit or whatever. In those terms the soul, astral body, jiva(sp?) or dopelganger is still a body in an environment, though less dense. You are only talking octaves and harmonics here.

The soul cannot be a body since then the final cause of the soul would be referred just and only to some material thing (for all bodies are material) but then, we see that the soul is not referred to just material things but also to matters of universals (like beauty or truth, and also universal affirmation and negation) and universals are not material.

 

[andremiguel]

In that case God would apparently create humans to no end for the soul would not need the body. In that case in what sense do people live and die? For clearly if the soul does not need the body then neither does it need to not be separate from the body and death from the human POV would be quite illusory which is false. And also, it would follow that the soul is the living person and yet the Summa Theologica teaches against that and angels have taken bodies and yet remained angels so the argument RE: angels is wrong.

“Need”…What is need? If you define need by what God wants, I agree. If not, I do not agree.
We need legs but we can live without them. Or an eye, or an arm …

 

[fakename]

“Need”…What is need? If you define need by what God wants, I agree. If not, I do not agree.
We need legs but we can live without them. Or an eye, or an arm …

Exactly what I was saying: the human does not = the soul. The human is the soul + the body. When a person dies he is no longer a human. So if a human exists, by necessity he must be a soul and a body.

If what you say is correct I was just saying that the body would then not need the soul (there is some imaginable universe where the soul did not have to be in the body for a human to exist) except accidentally in that God wants the soul to be with a body.

To show why this conclusion is unreasonable it is enough to say that some part of nature would then exist without a purpose (for we believe that the soul-body unity is natural and yet you say that this natural unity is per se not necessary, and up to God’s will alone, so how could it be natural for the natural is non-arbitrary?) but nature does not create superfluous things so therefore the soul and body must be united.

Unless of course you think that the soul-body connection is not natural which is problematic for its own reasons. In essence, I think that you would be at least implicitly in some pretty anti-Catholic territory in all the ways you’ve analyzed this problem.