On the Immortality of the Soul

[Blue_Horizon]

I’m not sure exactly what you’re saying here.

• In what sense is “material soul” a “colloquial” expression. It seems to me like the colloquial usage of the term “soul” usually evokes something like Cartesian dualism, ie. very few people would think to use the term “material soul.”
• I don’t think Aquinas would say that a “material soul” is “a subsisting spiritual entity inferred ‘behind’ non-human material substances.” A tree has a material soul. A tree is not spiritual. It is also something of an “abuse of notation” to call a form an “entity” in its own right. An entity should probably be a substance proper.

I’m not sure what the argument is here, if not the genetic fallacy. That Aquinas’s view on immortality was motivated by his Christianity does not seem to be relevant to his arguments at all, any less than my belief that my math professor will not ask me to prove something that is false motivates my proof of some theorem of real analysis.

I think there is some unclearness in what is regarded as necessary for intellection, and what intellection is. (First, it is worth clarifying that Aquinas would regard human intellection as distinct from both that of angels and that of God, which are all intelligent as well.) As far as I know, Aquinas subscribed to the peripatetic maxim nihil in intellectu nisi prius in sensu, nothing is in the intellect which is not first in the senses. Aquinas believed that one could abstract universal forms and draw inferences beyond what we know from the senses (ie. in demonstrations of God’s existence), but he believed that in order to have principles from which we can reason, we rely on phantasms. Phantasms are “material,” both Aristotle and Aquinas would agree, but the act of intellection itself is not. In practice, we rely on the senses for concept acquisition, but certain aspects are still immaterial in operation.

I would further add that even if Aquinas did argue that human intellective acts would have to be always without bodily participation, he would then have been wrong about the nature of the demonstration. The demonstration requires “there exists immaterial human intellective acts.” To have any immaterial human intellective acts would rule out the intellect as being material itself.

Thought provoking stuff PolyTropos.
Unfortunately blog philosphy is a tortured process and you have misunderstood me in a number of places where I simply agreeingly reiterate what I thought you already accepted as basic Aristotle! So if we cannot understand each other even in the basics what hope the controversial and advanced!
Nevermind, better let this go.

 

[polytropos]

Aquinas, a “Physicist” limited by his Age, did not realise that material nature (gravity) provides a more simple “soul-less” material/mechanistic account for the planets moving of themselves without assistance.

Fair enough. Aquinas was wrong that heavenly bodies had souls.

This mistaken understanding also somewhat undermines his proof of the existence of God by way of observed sensible change (at least so far as locomotive change is concerned).

This would require that gravitational attraction is causeless, which isn’t the case, although that is of course another topic entirely.

Unfortunately blog philosphy is a tortured process and you have misunderstood me in a number of places where I simply agreeingly reiterate what I thought you already accepted as basic Aristotle!

Not to beat a dead horse, but in the post where I quoted you were stating your conclusions upon looking over SCG and other treatises, and then said that “it seems to me very difficult to show purely by Reason alone that the human soul is immortal because human intellective acts are always without bodily participation.” Since that is the opposite of what my thesis in this thread has been, I articulated why I did not think Aquinas’s departures from Aristotle weakened his conclusion. I apologize if I’ve misunderstood you, but I’m not sure how else to read that post.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

I agree that “sleep” connotes perduring existence, but that does not square with Portofino’s further description: …

Thanks again for commenting here - though we have the same trouble as below so I think we better call it quits on these as well.
However one of your comments above may be worth pursuing as I believe you are mistaken wrt a matter of fact:

Originally Posted by Blue Horizon
Aquinas is saying that the soul in its earthly life operates through matter and subsists as a composite. The form is not a substance by itself, it is the whole body/soul that subsists and which defines the subsisting nature we call “human”.

Then when this human dies it suddenly all changes. With the absence of matter/bodiliness, the soul’s intellective powers suddenly spring free and pure to operate more perfectly than before, just like other subsisting intelligences (ie the angels).
That is pretty hard to sell isn’t it?

PolyTropos: That is a pretty hard sell, but I don’t think that that is what Aquinas is peddling.

Take a look at SCG 2:80-81
“Hence, so long as the soul is in the body, it cannot understand without a phantasm…and therefore this method of understanding and remembering has to be laid aside when the body is laid aside…hence … it will understand by itself after the manner of those intelligences that subsist totally apart from bodies (ie angels) from which superior beings it will be able to receive more abundant influence in order to more perfect understanding.”

Now I put it to you this is a very hard sell philosophically and it is what Aquinas is saying.
It is by no clear means any sort of philosophic proof. Especially the bit about angels helping our naked intellects to understand in this dis-embodied vacuum without phantasms .

So really, Aquinas’s only argument in all the SGC (and I presume the Summa also) that the soul can be proven immortal is:
(1) because some human acts do not require bodiliness (ie acts of an assumed power of the soul called “active intellect”)
(2) therefore this power of the soul must subsist of itself even when the body return to the elemental forms from which it arose.

Well Aristotle never came to that “logical” conclusion and he got everything else pretty right according to Aquinas.
So this is why a number of pro-Thomists in modern times seem to reasonably conclude that Thomas may have convinced himself more by Revelation than Reason on this point.

This conclusion seems to be given more weight when we see that even Aquinas acknowledges above that no rational human act (on earth) can be performed without a bodily phantasm: “so long as the soul is in the body it cannot understand without a phantasm.”

So the argument seems to boil down to what is really meant by saying that “the intellect in some of its operations does not require bodiliness?” … and whatever understanding we agree upon, why must that prove subsistence of the intellect beyond death?

 

[Catholic_775]

** A Catholic totally destroys the protestant arguments in this recent Youtube debate. Here is the link…

youtube.com/watch?v=Qn1vC1Ez-OI **

 

[Blue_Horizon]

I was not under the impression that this was in dispute, which is not to say that I think that you or Blue Horizon agree with it, but it seems that Blue Horizon, at least, has been arguing against the consistency of a Thomistic account while granting for the sake of argument that human intellective operations are immaterial.

I have not attempted to prove that the soul is essentially immaterial. I do believe that it is demonstrable, however. Both Ross and Oderberg, whom I’ve cited in this thread, offer arguments to that effect (Ross argues that formal thinking is immaterial because formal thinking is determinate, while one of the best-established naturalistic philosophical hypotheses of the 20th century was the indeterminacy of the physical, and Oderberg argues that concepts should not occupy any space). The traditional Thomist argument for the immateriality of the intellect is based on the universality of abstracted forms, in contrast with the particularity of any material thing. Each argument is, in my opinion, defensible.

We have not been debating any of that. I don’t think any of it is beyond questioning, but this is also not really the place to do so. The immortality of the soul seems to be obviously impossible if the intellect is not immaterial; this discussion seems to be focused on the implications of the immateriality of the intellect on the immortality of the soul.

I’d say I’m not at all interested in claiming that it can’t be proven that the intellect is material. An adequate materialist theory of mind would be sufficient to refute hylemorphic dualism. But none is forthcoming.

I’ll take a look at some of your other points tomorrow, hopefully.

This prob is indeed what the discussion is boiling down to - if only because "the intellect is immaterial’ is a highly ambiguous statement that looks to need teasing out.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

A couple points:

• Concerning the resurrection of the body, the role of reason is to determine which proposals are philosophically coherent and which are consonant with revealed truth.

Quite true, I think we all agree with this.

For example, given the necessary conditions of continued identity of any substance, it is not feasible to argue that both the formal and material causes of the human cease to exist.

If a subsisting human nature is defined as “unity of body and soul” then this is a logical truism. No human can be said to exist with a body alone (that does not make sense it would not be a body, it would be a complicated collocation of various biological compounds) or a soul alone.

The material cause alone will not account for continued identity. So the form would have to persist for the resurrection to be possible.

This is prob a bridge too far.
The primary quantum of certitude here (for Christians) is the Resurrection, not extrapolated hylomorphic theory .

The real problem is not the resurrection - that is an assumed given.
The problem is whether a hylomorphic structure (derived from the sensible world) can adequately deal with this non-sensible Christian reality.

I say it cannot, much as Aquinas tries to make it work all ways.
It appears to have a number of weakness wrt human-nature after death.
(1) The co-principles of matter and form to explain subsistance, enduring identity, multiplicity/individuality, causality and change … were abstracted by induction from observation of sensible creation.

• therefore these principles can with almost 100% certitude (induction is not 100% certain) be applied to all material change examples (both organic (primarily) and even inorganic).
• but when a Christian wants to use these co-principles to explain a change (death of a human) that will make sense of Christian truths (eventual Resurrection of that dead human) this is clearly an extrapolation of form/matter into a sphere of change never before observed.
• to even speak of an enduring soul after a sensible substantial change (from a human sunstance to a pile of elemental substances) in terms of a “human soul” may not even have made sense to Aristotle. This is a substantial change, there is no enduring human-being underlying this sort of change. The human being is gone.
• Yet we try to speak of a “human soul” without a body. That is what “subsisting form” means in this discussion. Yet this “form” cannot be called human. A human, by nature, exists only in a body. There is no enduring “human” between death and resurrection. The human identity has already been lost because “soul” is not “human”
• so I suggest that the principle of hylomorphism is only well applicable in the sensible world. It is really being tortured beyond its limits when we try to use it as an adequare philosophic vehicle for trying to explain human identity/continuity between death and resurrection. There is no human coninuity here.
  (2) The other problem is individuality. Even if we did assume hylomorphism can in some way explain permanence of human identity between death and resurrection…without matter how are disembodied humans (sorry, “self-subsisting forms” that once belonged to a human) multiplied yet differentiated in a state without matter? Angels also are pure forms. We are told no two forms of the same essence can be multiplied with different identities - hence angels are all slightly different forms or essences? But if disembodied humans no longer have bodies (matter can individuate), and their forms have exactly the same essence, how can they be multiple different individual?
• you mention personal disembodied forms being different (yet essentially the same?) …so why do angels have to have different essential forms?

If we speak of the “disembodied soul” as some sort of “escape pod” from a dying mothership maybe we are on a better track. (Hence Portofino’s “sleep” image)
But eactly how personal human identity can be endure across a substantial change (which human death is) is still problematic and I do not think hylomorphic theory well supports it.

I believe the best conclusion is: hylomorphism is not a very good philosophic structure for explaining Christian understanding of the interval between death and ressurection.

Thats OK, I don’t expect to see much of anything clearly this side of the grave.

Now I know Aquinas spends a lot of time trying to explain both the above difficulties with “form” (ie continuing human identity after death and no loss of individuality) yet I cannot understand it and nobody I know makes a much better job of explaining his "solutions’ either.

If you can explain Aquinas succinctly wrt a solution of those two “form” problematics above I would be grateful.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

…whether a body reduced to dust and scattered to the four corners of the wind is still a man; indeed, whether the a particle of ash (no longer with the structural of a body, as it were) could still be called a man, or part of a man.

I take it you grant that one must rely on revelation to predict that the ash or dust that was once a human body (or let’s say that human body was consumed and digested by scavengers) will one day come back together, and be made whole again.

Maybe I have missed something but this may not be relevant.
When a human dies a substantial change occurs (as opposed to a baby growing into a different looking man which is only an accidental change).

In a substantial change identity is finally lost. The same substance (Jim the human) that was at varying times a conceptus/baby/man is no more. The only thing that has endured through this substantial change is the underlying quantum of matter.

This matter is no longer unified into a single substance but is now a complex battle-ground of many other substances (both organic and inorganic) under-going further changes (both substantial and accidental) in a process called decomposition.

God doesn’t need to chase that underlying quantum of matter at the last day to reconstitute Jim. Probably many humans shared the same quantum of matter in their lifetimes anyway!

I think the point is that on the last day Jim, with God’s power, will reconstitute his own body from his own vital principle (which is what disembodied soul signifies) however that personal vital principle endures beyond death. That will happen from any old matter (or from no matter if God so ordains).

So, no, the underlying dust/matter is in no way “man.”
Yet matter (any matter) is always potentially capable of being vivified by a suitable form and so become the body of a man or a dog or whatever.
And no particular quantum of matter is reserved for Jim.

 

[polytropos]

Take a look at SCG 2:80-81
“Hence, so long as the soul is in the body, it cannot understand without a phantasm…and therefore this method of understanding and remembering has to be laid aside when the body is laid aside…hence … it will understand by itself after the manner of those intelligences that subsist totally apart from bodies (ie angels) from which superior beings it will be able to receive more abundant influence in order to more perfect understanding.”

Now I put it to you this is a very hard sell philosophically and it is what Aquinas is saying.
It is by no clear means any sort of philosophic proof. Especially the bit about angels helping our naked intellects to understand in this dis-embodied vacuum without phantasms .

I don’t see what the problem is here. He is saying that angels will help our intellects to understand. This seems to agree with what I’ve been saying: without some sort of help, the human soul will be in a reduced state. Of course that is not a “philosophic proof.” The point is theological.

So really, Aquinas’s only argument in all the SGC (and I presume the Summa also) that the soul can be proven immortal is:
(1) because some human acts do not require bodiliness (ie acts of an assumed power of the soul called “active intellect”)
(2) therefore this power of the soul must subsist of itself even when the body return to the elemental forms from which it arose.

Well, Aquinas treats the issue in the Summa here:

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

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

This is the argument I cited earlier in the thread, ie. the intellect knows universal forms. This is the argument that is defended in the rest of the Thomistic tradition. There is quite a bit more that one can say, but both the Oderberg and Ross arguments are in this vein. (Haldane, Anscombe, Feser also make similar arguments.)

Also see:

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.
…]
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.

Well Aristotle never came to that “logical” conclusion and he got everything else pretty right according to Aquinas.
So this is why a number of pro-Thomists in modern times seem to reasonably conclude that Thomas may have convinced himself more by Revelation than Reason on this point.

Again, no one should be under any illusions that Aquinas was not motivated by his Christian belief in the afterlife. But that does not itself invalidate any of his his claims.

So the argument seems to boil down to what is really meant by saying that “the intellect in some of its operations does not require bodiliness?” … and whatever understanding we agree upon, why must that prove subsistence of the intellect beyond death?

Aquinas addresses these concerns where I’ve quoted him. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll be able to elaborate on his response.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

I don’t see what the problem is here. He is saying that angels will help our intellects to understand. This seems to agree with what I’ve been saying: …

No problem in itself, I am quite willing and happy to accept that we will commune with angels in some fashion.

But the problem will be for the OP who asked:
“Can it be demonstrated that the soul does indeed survive after death… I am after a purely Philosophical argument.”

So if, with Aquinas, we need to posit the existence of angels for disembodied souls to continue personal acts of understanding (because phantasms are no longer available) then I think we are in trouble with this particular demonstration if it is meant to be a purely philosophic argument wrt the immortality of the soul .

 

[Portofino]

• I am not sure that Aquinas would argue that reason shows us that the soul will be a “conscious entity” after death. Consciousness is the Cartesian paradigm of an immaterial soul, but that has to do with the collapse of Aristotelian metaphysical categories into the narrow bifurcation of res cogitans and res extensa. Intellection is essentially immaterial. Consciousness (our sensory faculties, our memories, our emotions, our desires, etc.), though, is a material faculty in most respects. Aquinas might hold that before the resurrection of the body, we are capable of consciousness with the help of God, but here he is making use of revelation as well. (I have certainly not been arguing for the persisting consciousness of humans after death, at least not on the basis of reason alone.) This is a point discussed in the Feser article. The soul can’t naturally make use of its material faculties after it is no longer united to matter; it is in a very diminished state, at least on its own.

This is fascinating to me, this notion. I can’t make sense of a faculty of intellect without an accompanying consciousness.

To cite a very obvious and germane example – to tell a Christian that “I believe in God, but I don’t necessarily believe God is conscious” is kind of gutting the God concept of much signification beyond “a form of inanimate matter.”

Likewise, if one said, “I believe that God is an immaterial intellectual faculty, but not necessarily a conscious one” it would be a quite paradoxical statement.

God doesn’t have a heart, or a brain, or hands or feeds, or eyes, or ears; nor do we even know that God has emotions, per se. But of course we say, God must be conscious, must be aware. God not only thinks, but consciously thinks; thinking presupposes consciousness. God is aware; indeed, knowledge – which is the domain of the intellective faculty, as in knowledge of universals – necessitates conscious awareness.

Indeed, many theists would call those who posits a non-conscious Godhead as “faux theists”, really atheists or naturalists by another name.

But I think you’re right to point out that – no matter what kind of Turing test standard we adopt – to call a Golden Retriever a non-conscious entity would be a radically skeptical position (comparable to solipsism or to that logical positivism that doubts that others are conscious and only sees their behavior).

So if conscious awareness is immaterial – the “light bulb” of the mind – then the consciousness of an animal may survive death, as well…

But if conscious awareness is material and is not necessarily what survives death – only an “intellective faculty” of not necessarily conscious thinking – then it suddenly becomes a plausible proposition that the Godhead itself may not be conscious

I’m ironically of an opposite view; I would sooner believe that awareness is immaterial, than intellect. “Pure awareness” without intellect would make more sense to me than “pure intellect” without awareness.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

For what it’s worth, the day my mother died I returned to my house and discovered that the mantle clock she had given me had stopped at precisely the hour she died. I wound it, but to no effect. It had broken. I later took it to a clock man for repairs and mentioned that it had stopped at exactly the hour my mother died. He said he was not at all surprised, that others had come to him with the same story.

Now this is purely anecdotal, and not offered as a proof of life beyond death. But I believe many people have had experiences of this type to persuade them that someone was trying to reach them from beyond with a message, by whatever means possible. I’ve had two other experiences of this type (not involving a clock) that concerned dead relatives, my grandfather and my great-grandfather, but I don’t care to relate them.

 

[Portofino]

No problem in itself, I am quite willing and happy to accept that we will commune with angels in some fashion.

But the problem will be for the OP who asked:
“Can it be demonstrated that the soul does indeed survive after death… I am after a purely Philosophical argument.”

So if, with Aquinas, we need to posit the existence of angels for disembodied souls to continue personal acts of understanding (because phantasms are no longer available) then I think we are in trouble with this particular demonstration if it is meant to be a purely philosophic argument wrt the immortality of the soul .

I think even this doctrine of an immaterial intellective faculty raises questions that are not very attractive from the perspective of Christian theology, if one – in a spirit of proper neutrality – does not exclude them as possibilities.

For example, if only part of the soul is immaterial in nature – the intellective faculty – it’s not assured that it is present at the very moment of conception. It may arise later, once the fetus have developed past the vegetative and purely animal stages that it has in common with other mammals. How it arises is another question, if it is immaterial, but to posit that it appears “fully formed” at the moment of conception would seem implausible without some sort of “deus ex machine” that is at work. After all, one can privilege human genetic material but that does not mean that one can prove that a zygote or two week old fetus – for example – has an intellective faculty. This would be a forced presumption, in my opinion. It would – at the very least – have the “seed” or the potential for an intellective faculty, just as a sperm or egg carries the potential ultimately to give rise to an intellective faculty, as part of the organic development of an embryo.

Unfortunately, if that is the case, then it means that the immortality of the unborn could not be assured at all stages of development, because the intellective faculty of the soul may not yet be intact

Again, to posit that the full humanity is conferred at fertilization is a theological or ethical argument – including erring on the side of safety, as an ethical presumption – but is not necessarily the case within the perspective of a naturalistic account of organic development and a genetic kinship with other forms of life (animal and vegetative). Human intellective faculties may not be present from the very first moment of fertilization and, if not – and if it is the intellective faculties on which immortality depends – then a developing embryo may not yet possess a part of its being that will survive death, just as a the genetic material in the sperm and the egg do not possess this quality.

If one argues against this, I dare say that the argument is being forced…. The verdict would have to remain open on that question, however unsatisfying the possibility from a Christian theological perspective. You would, it seems to me, have to remain agnostic on that point, unless one assumes that the intellective properties of the soul are fully and sufficiently manifest at the very instant that fertilization occurs. It doesn’t make them less than human from an ethical standpoint, per se, it just means that no part of them will survive death (just as an animal or a plant will not survive death).

In other words, if it is the intellective faculty that assures immortality, not all humans could be said with certainty to have it from the very moment of conception (unless one takes an ethical or theological stand on the question, and just simply insists that they must).

But to say that a two-day old embryo must have sufficient intellective faculty to survive death–while a brave assumption—would be a hasty and unwarranted one.

 

[Portofino]

For what it’s worth, the day my mother died I returned to my house and discovered that the mantle clock she had given me had stopped at precisely the hour she died. I wound it, but to no effect. It had broken. I later took it to a clock man for repairs and mentioned that it had stopped at exactly the hour my mother died. He said he was not at all surprised, that others had come to him with the same story.

Now this is purely anecdotal, and not offered as a proof of life beyond death. But I believe many people have had experiences of this type to persuade them that someone was trying to reach them from beyond with a message, by whatever means possible. I’ve had two other experiences of this type (not involving a clock) that concerned dead relatives, my grandfather and my great-grandfather, but I don’t care to relate them.

Near death experiences would be another form of empirical testimony as to the survival of consciousness after death (as I prefer to call it).

Of course, many NDE accounts serve more as grist for the mill for New Age spirituality than they do for traditional Christianity (and seem to be embraced, as such, more by the alternative spirituality crowd than by the traditional Christian crowd).

 

[polytropos]

No problem in itself, I am quite willing and happy to accept that we will commune with angels in some fashion.

But the problem will be for the OP who asked:
“Can it be demonstrated that the soul does indeed survive after death… I am after a purely Philosophical argument.”

So if, with Aquinas, we need to posit the existence of angels for disembodied souls to continue personal acts of understanding (because phantasms are no longer available) then I think we are in trouble with this particular demonstration if it is meant to be a purely philosophic argument wrt the immortality of the soul .

But now you’re collapsing two issues: can the soul survive after death (what the OP asked for), and can the soul be proven to be active after death? We don’t have to posit angels for the first question, which is what the OP inquired about.

 

[Portofino]

But now you’re collapsing two issues: can the soul survive after death (what the OP asked for), and can the soul be proven to be active after death? We don’t have to posit angels for the first question, which is what the OP inquired about.

Is not survival the activity of surviving, which entails some (presumably undefined) processes? How does one survive yet possibility cease all “activity”, “functions”, and “processes”? I’m not clear, in that case, on the definition of “survive” nor the definition of “active.”

Concrete examples of what it would mean to passively survive, in the total absence of activities, processes, or functions? In that case “survives” should not even be an active verb; grammar would fail to convey the state being described.

 

[polytropos]

To cite a very obvious and germane example – to tell a Christian that “I believe in God, but I don’t necessarily believe God is conscious” is kind of gutting the God concept of much signification beyond “a form of inanimate matter.”

Likewise, if one said, “I believe that God is an immaterial intellectual faculty, but not necessarily a conscious one” it would be a quite paradoxical statement.

God doesn’t have a heart, or a brain, or hands or feeds, or eyes, or ears; nor do we even know that God has emotions, per se. But of course we say, God must be conscious, must be aware. God not only thinks, but consciously thinks; thinking presupposes consciousness. God is aware; indeed, knowledge – which is the domain of the intellective faculty, as in knowledge of universals – necessitates conscious awareness.

All right, I think one needs an accurate definition (at least a working definition) of consciousness if one is to make statements like these. Consciousness is a broad term which, in the modern period, collapses a number of classical and scholastic distinctions.

God has knowledge. God is “aware.” Is God aware like we are? Not exactly. He knows about everything a function of his self-knowledge, his causal efficacy, and his simplicity. (We, on the other hand, are aware of our surroundings in an intentional way, not as their cause, and not as a form of self-knowledge.)

When I mentioned consciousness in my post, I put in parentheses, “our sensory faculties, our memories, our emotions, our desires, etc.” I maintain that none of those can sensibly be predicated of God without doing violence to his aseity. To speak of God having memories places him in time (and memories would be superfluous given omniscience). Emotions entail change and passibility. Desires entail ends and needs (privations, potentialities). Sensory faculties, I’d argue, entail materiality.

In short, most aspects of “consciousness” are incompatible with God’s nature. One could make a case about “awareness,” but now that I think about it, “awareness” seems to be a category that collapses distinctions between the intellect and other material aspects of consciousness.

One could also make distinctions about what it means for God to think. God is a supremely intellectual being. But he also does not change, so he does not reason deductively, for example, like we do. If I know “If A, then B” and “A”, then I conclude, “B”. That would be unnecessary for God, since he would already know “B”, and furthermore it would imply that he gains knowledge.

It is also worth noting that to say that the intellect survives death is a fortiori to say that the will survives death. In hylemorphic dualism, will is consequent upon the intellect. The intellect appraises as good and the will acts to achieve what it perceives as good. A classical theist denies consciousness of God only insofar that he denies passibility in God. It is not a denial of agency (as contemporary usage of the term might suggest).

Indeed, many theists would call those who posits a non-conscious Godhead as “faux theists”, really atheists or naturalists by another name.

Some might. Many recent theists (Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne) do not accept divine simplicity. Some process theologians even allow change in God. I’d regard these as substantial departures from the Christian tradition up until 1650 (and later in Catholic, Orthodox, and various other Protestant Churches).

The issue that one faces if one adopts a more “creaturely” view of God is that one must reject the traditional conception of God as a ground of being (and so would have to reject the traditional arguments, etc.). If God is composed of parts or changes, then God’s composition and changing require explanation like the rest of the world. It demotes God to a creature.

I heard a rumor that when Swinburne published one of his major works departing from the classical theist tradition, Sir Anthony Kenny sent him a postcard saying that he was astonished that he had abandoned the faith of his forefathers. I’m not sure if it’s true.

I’m ironically of an opposite view; I would sooner believe that awareness is immaterial, than intellect. “Pure awareness” without intellect would make more sense to me than “pure intellect” without awareness.

The reason Thomists do not regard consciousness itself as immaterial is that it deals in particulars. I am intentionally (in the modern philosophical usage) aware of my surroundings when I am conscious. But in that respect I am aware of particulars. The objects of my consciousness are concrete, material beings.

The intellect is regarded as immaterial because its objects are abstract, universal forms. Its objects are not concrete and material.

I think there is a tendency to regard consciousness as immaterial because it is impressively resistant to physicalist explanation. But that I think has more to do with methodological naturalism than consciousness.

 

[polytropos]

Is not survival the activity of surviving, which entails some (presumably undefined) processes? How does one survive yet possibility cease all “activity”, “functions”, and “processes”? I’m not clear, in that case, on the definition of “survive” nor the definition of “active.”

Concrete examples of what it would mean to passively survive, in the total absence of activities, processes, or functions? In that case “survives” should not even be an active verb; grammar would fail to convey the state being described.

I don’t see an issue here. We know of tons of substances in the world that exist without doing anything at a particular moment. When I say survives I’m not suggesting that it’s doing something or exerting itself in order to hold itself in existence (like, perhaps, a marine survives). Perhaps I should have used subsist. It’s immaterial, so the dissolution of its associated matter does not entail its dissolution. Its existence does not come to an end.

 

[Portofino]

The reason Thomists do not regard consciousness itself as immaterial is that it deals in particulars. I am intentionally (in the modern philosophical usage) aware of my surroundings when I am conscious. But in that respect I am aware of particulars. The objects of my consciousness are concrete, material beings.

The intellect is regarded as immaterial because its objects are abstract, universal forms. Its objects are not concrete and material.

I think there is a tendency to regard consciousness as immaterial because it is impressively resistant to physicalist explanation. But that I think has more to do with methodological naturalism than consciousness.

That’s a clear formulation of it, which I appreciate. Although, when I read the statement, “the intellect is regarded as immaterial because its objects are abstract” I interpret that to mean, if more fully unpacked, “the intellect is regarded as immaterial because the objects it consciously contemplates are abstract in nature, universal.” I would even view the phrase “consciously contemplates” as redundant, insofar as “unconscious contemplation” – literally, at least – would be a contradiction interns. Contemplation presupposes conscious awareness, no less for men than it would for God (which, again, is why I can understand theists being shocked by those who say that God is not necessarily conscious).

And while it’s true that conscious awareness can also point towards particulars, the very fact that intellect can contemplate universals means that conscious awareness…can also point towards universals. Conscious awareness, thus, is not confined to what is particular – it is more versatile than that. Thus it has a share in the contemplation of universals.

has knowledge. God is “aware.” Is God aware like we are? Not exactly. He knows about everything a function of his self-knowledge, his causal efficacy, and his simplicity. (We, on the other hand, are aware of our surroundings in an intentional way, not as their cause, and not as a form of self-knowledge.)

I like that idea; I just can’t help but think it is well compatible with notions of God that are very impersonal or deistic in nature. Perhaps to say God demands anything of us, for example, is an anthropomorphism. Perhaps to say that God “gave us” or “intends” for us is either a projection of human personality or a shortcoming of language. Perhaps to say that God “listen to” or “answers” prayers and intercessions is a case of anthropomorphizing the state of consciousness that an eternal being represents. In this sense, you would be giving the Deist more grist for the mill, especially without the aid of revelation. Deism would be a perfectly philosophically respectable position.

“I heard a rumor that when Swinburne published one of his major works departing from the classical theist tradition, Sir Anthony Kenny sent him a postcard saying that he was astonished that he had abandoned the faith of his forefathers.”

Yes – humans care about these things, very much. It may be a limitation in language, if what you’re saying is correct, to say that God “cares”, in any sense in which we would define the term.

 

[Portofino]

I don’t see an issue here. We know of tons of substances in the world that exist without doing anything at a particular moment. When I say survives I’m not suggesting that it’s doing something or exerting itself in order to hold itself in existence (like, perhaps, a marine survives). Perhaps I should have used subsist. It’s immaterial, so the dissolution of its associated matter does not entail its dissolution. Its existence does not come to an end.

Okay – you’re positing that the intellective faculty – which, during life, points towards universals in the activity of thought – continues to exist and maintains its integrity as being a particularly individuated intellective faculty (John Doe’s particular intellective soul, no one else’s), but that it does not necessarily benefit from conscious awareness, and does not necessarily continue to engage in the activity of thinking. In fact, unlike during life, there may be no activities whatsoever – no thinking, no exercise of thought or contemplation or ratiocination; however, this does not justify our ceasing to call it by its proper name, “intellective faculty of the soul,” even if all activities cease. It maintains its integrity and does not de-compose. Whether the intellective faculty, post death – unlike during life – engages in the activity of “thinking” or “ratiocination”, or anything at all, is a separate issue. It may – if you will – lie “dormant” but intact.

If this is incorrect, please clarify.

 

[Portofino]

There is a question of place, as well. When there is a body, the intellective faculty operates within that body. If physical death occurs and that body disintegrates – but the intellective faculty is posited as remaining intact – there is then the question of “where” does it dwell, “where” does it go. Is its place undefinable? Is there an uncertainty principle to be applied as to where intellective faculty is localized?

For a Christian, it’s easy – perhaps intellective faculty inhabits an afterlife and is no longer truly “on this earth.” As a philosopher, however, this seems yet another problem, to localize – even in a diffuse sense – the intellective faculty of a particular individual, post-death when that particular individual no longer has a body that is intact (in other words, the components of that body may now be in thousands of different places, for example if an individual’s ashes were scattered at sea). The very positing of place would be a paradox.