On the Immortality of the Soul

[Portofino]

I’ve found the passage where Aquinas posits two things: 1. the intellective faculty of the soul does remain active after its separation from the body; 2. however, this is through aid of the “divine light.”

Hylemorphism, which – indeed – cannot take one as far as positing that the intellective faculty is capable of thinking, post death, or remembering or understanding or being conscious, is helped by revelation whereby God will make it possible (it bears mentioning that, logically speaking, God could be perfectly good and not make it happen; after all, one cannot question the ways of God, whose understanding surpasses that of human beings vis-a-vis what it means to be good or loving).

I’ve highlighted/underlined Aquinas’ references to the activities of the intellective soul, post death, which are said to be made possible by God.

This also solves the problem of place – the “place” is presumably heaven, hell, or purgatory, not earth, though this is something beyond the ken of hylemorphism as a philosophical theory.

Thus Blue Horizon makes a perfectly respectable point that hylemophism itself cannot get the job done, at least in terms of its being able to assert what Christian dogma would need it to assert (in other words, not getting you half way there, but getting you all the way there, where you need to be – an active intellective faculty inhabiting heaven, hell, or purgatory).

*89. Knowledge in the Separated Human Soul

1. When the soul is separated from the body by death, it does not lose its faculties of intellect and will; nor does it loseits knowledge. But the intellect cannot, as it must in this life,turn to phantasms in using its acquired knowledge. For phantasmsare sense-images, and the separated soul has no senses. Therefore,in the state of separation, there is a change of mode or manner **in the operation ******of intellect.
2. The separated soul grasps things that are in themselvesunderstandable by a direct grasp. For the soul, being separatedfrom matter, is the **more perfectly knowing **and knowable;"nonmateriality is the root of knowing and of knowledge."Thus the soul knows other souls perfectly, and knows angels lessperfectly.
3. The separated soul is suffused with light from Godwhich gives it the intelligible species of things knowable, andthus it knows natural things. Angelic knowledge is more perfectthan this knowledge of the separated soul, for angels are naturallyconstituted for knowing without using phantasms, and the separatedsoul is not naturally so constituted.
4. The separated soul knows individual things by itsretainedknowledge, habits and affections, under the divinelyimparted light which both supplies intelligible species and compensates for the lack of phantasms which the intellect naturallyrequires for its operation. A soul with no retained knowledge, suchas the soul of an infant, has all its knowledge by divine ordinanceand divine light. The separated soul does not know all individualthings; it knows to the extent established by the divine order.
5. The habit of knowledge, such as the grasp of firstprinciples, remains in the separated soul. Sentient knowing habits,of course, are not there, for the senses are not there. The soulcannot forget any longer, nor can it now be deceived by fallaciousreasoning.
6. Thus the mode of intellectual operation in a separatedsoul is one in harmony with a spiritual being; it depends upon thehelp of God through the ministration of supernal light.
7. Distance from the object known cannot hinder knowledgein the separated soul, for it knows through species imparted orpreserved by divinely bestowed light in which local distance makesno difference at all.
8. Separated souls are naturally ignorant of what takesplace on earth. But it is likely that the souls of the blessed inheaven are aware of what goes on among people on earth. Angels havethis knowledge, and the souls enjoying the beatific vision are on apar with angels.

p.s. Once you invoke the help of a supreme being, anything is possible, at least in principle. Averroes could be correct that the boundaries of the individual soul could be exploded, or extended to join in a trans-personal or universal common identity, whether for everyone or for those sufficiently “ripe” to have the boundaries of their individually thus extended. Even if God had individuated souls on earth, that would in itself say nothing of the individuation of souls after that. The boundaries of that individuation could be eroded, becoming permeable, or expanded exponentially.*

 

[polytropos]

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).

I think many of my previous statements about the nature and scope of consciousness have to be taken into account. My position is that to add consciousness in (“the intellect is regarded as immaterial because the objects it consciously contemplates are abstract in nature, universal”) introduces vagueness and indeterminacy into the proposition, for the reason previously specified: consciousness is a bit of an umbrella term of phenomena that are subjective and resistant to physicalist explanation. Again, without at least a working definition of consciousness, I don’t know what the proposition means, so I cannot regard the two propositions as synonymous.

I believe that there is some phenomenology associated with intellection. But it is not sensory phenomenology. (Think about red. Your thinking about red qua universal is not a sensory experience, or at least it does not have to be. You can think about red without picturing red.)

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.

But for the reasons I’ve given, I regard this as an equivocation on the term “conscious awareness,” a category which I regard as collapsing the crucial distinctions that have to be made in a discussion like this.

It seems like it would be possible for a hylemorphist to accomodate this terminology. As the example with red shows, intellection is a different sort of conscious awareness than that which considers particulars. But I don’t see any need for the hylemorphist to accomodate it, since as I’ve said, I regard it as collapsing important distinctions.

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 do not see any issues with prayer or the like. The classical theist still regards it as philosophically demonstrable that God wills our good and (of course, knows our prayers). God, after all, knows our prayers from eternity and wills our good from eternity.

I wouldn’t call this Deism in the Enlightenment vein. Such a God is not a clockmaker God but a God constantly willing our good and constantly acting on the world in the present. (I think this might be why those who use fine tuning and kalam arguments might have a more anthropomorphic conception of God, and why Protestants who support such arguments tend to abandon divine simplicity. Such arguments are as such also more compatible with the clockmaker of the Enlightenment thinkers.) I would say that it is “classical theism,” the theism embraced by every Christian, Jewish, and Muslim thinker until the modern period. And yes, I do find the classical theism of thinkers like Aristotle, Plato, Plotinus, etc. philosophically respectable.

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.

I don’t think so. It is still demonstrable that God eternally wills our good.

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),

Correct up to here.

but that it does not necessarily benefit from conscious awareness, and does not necessarily continue to engage in the activity of thinking.

I am with Aquinas: the intellect acts on phantasms. Humans are material creatures with an immaterial subsistent soul. Their natural state is to obtain knowledge through the senses. So there are two points to be made: (1) philosophically we only claim to demonstrate its subsistence and (2) it is on the basis of theology that we suppose that it will be active after death.

 

[polytropos]

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.

Yes, activity is not per se what defines a form. Rather dispositions to act define a form. All creatures of the human kind have an intellectual disposition since intellect is intrinsic to the nature of their kind. That is true even if they are, say, beyond the point where they will ever act in that way again. It is true if someone goes into a coma and wakes back up. He was still an intellectual creature while he was in a coma. Inactivity does not change the type of thing that one is.

To make an artificial example, a car fresh off of the assembly line is a car, even though it has never driven. If I never put any gas in it–so it can’t drive–it’s still a car. (There are limitations to the analogy, of course, since a car is not a natural substance and so does not literally have its own nature. But the same case can be made with the tree stripped of all of its leaves, as I said before.)

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?

I would lean toward saying it is undefinable. Location is a spatial quality that applies to the material world.

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.

Right, the ex-body is scattered, but that brings us back to Anscombe’s point. The scattering of the body, which is no longer alive, no longer “in-formed,” does not bear on the “location” of the soul was the formal cause of the substance of which that particular material cause was a constituent.

I’ve found the passage where Aquinas posits two things: 1. the intellective faculty of the soul does remain active after its separation from the body; 2. however, this is through aid of the “divine light.”

Yes, this is in agreement with my position throughout this thread, and with the position that Feser endorses in the blog post I linked to.

Hylemorphism, which – indeed – cannot take one as far as positing that the intellective faculty is capable of thinking, post death, or remembering or understanding or being conscious, is helped by revelation whereby God will make it possible (it bears mentioning that, logically speaking, God could be perfectly good and not make it happen; after all, one cannot question the ways of God, whose understanding surpasses that of human beings vis-a-vis what it means to be good or loving).

Absent revelation, one could know that (a) God exists, (b) God is good, and (c) the soul subsists. In such circumstances, one could know that intellection is possible after death, but you are right: one would not know that it will be the case. Given revelation though, if one takes it to be revealed that activity will be possible after death, then one would be able to conclude that it will be as such, since God does not deceive. That is, of course, more of a theological and exegetical point.

Thus Blue Horizon makes a perfectly respectable point that hylemophism itself cannot get the job done, at least in terms of its being able to assert what Christian dogma would need it to assert (in other words, not getting you half way there, but getting you all the way there, where you need to be – an active intellective faculty inhabiting heaven, hell, or purgatory).

But I’ve never disputed this (and I have rejected the claims that hylemorphic dualism posits a soul being “liberated” by death per se and of itself). (Neither has, for instance, Feser disputed that the soul after death would be in a severely reduced state, naturally. Hylemorphism has never claimed to be a substitute for faith or capable of demonstrating every truth of Catholicism.) The OP’s question was about the subsistence of the soul, not the activity.

This has been an interesting topic. But it’s also a bit too time consuming. I don’t expect to be able to post for the next week or so. (I also take the discussions of divine simplicity to be indicative of the fact that we’ve covered most of the ground and drifted a bit off topic.)

 

[Portofino]

(Think about red. Your thinking about red qua universal is not a sensory experience, or at least it does not have to be. You can think about red without picturing red.)

I can think about red – without imaging red-- as long as I have requisite self-awareness to be able to say, “I am thinking about red.”

If we don’t use the word “aware” or “conscious awareness” but simply grant that the act of thinking presupposes some modicum of the “state of being aware,” then I am fine with that.

do not see any issues with prayer or the like. The classical theist still regards it as philosophically demonstrable that God wills our good and (of course, knows our prayers). God, after all, knows our prayers from eternity and wills our good from eternity.

Even then, reason alone cannot tell us what God’s willing one’s good will entail in particular. God’s willing our good cannot tell us, in and of itself, whether this will mean A. answering specific prayer requests; B. the Incarnation; C: an active intellect after death, inhabiting heaven (or hell, or purgatory). This takes us back to the debate over the problem of evil. We don’t get to dictate what God’s willing our good is going to look like; we cannot judge God by our standards of what this must, logically, entail, in terms of its particulars. God may intervene in keeping us in existence at every moment, but may never have interned via something like the incarnation, or via something like averting a natural disaster. Even a Christian does not maintain that God intervenes in all conceivable respects. If willing our good means an even more radical safeguarding of free will than even a Christian would acknowledge – with free will being used to respond to the problem of evil – then a God who is impervious to prayer requests does not necessarily not will our good. It simply may mean that our prayer requests are the product of our limited human minds, and that God knows better.

don’t think so. It is still demonstrable that God eternally wills our good.

Yes, but I’m not sure one could say that God would be “disappointed” in Swinburne, if Swinburne went from a more accurate to a less accurate conception of the Godhead. God’s willing the best for Swinburne would be unchanging.

Conceptually, as well, one would have to assume that what is good for is to have an accurate understanding of God, but also to assume that one knows what that accurate understanding is. For all we know, God wills our good yet all of us are getting God wrong, in one respect or another (which, again, does not change God’s willing our good).

 

[polytropos]

To make some brief comments before I disappear…

I can think about red – without imaging red-- as long as I have requisite self-awareness to be able to say, “I am thinking about red.”

If we don’t use the word “aware” or “conscious awareness” but simply grant that the act of thinking presupposes some modicum of the “state of being aware,” then I am fine with that.

So you are saying that self-awareness to say, “I am thinking about red”, is a necessary condition of thinking about red without imagining red.

My main question is: why? I do not see why my ability to articulate that should be a *necessary *condition of that intellectual activity.

This reminds me of the Wittgensteinian critique of Descartes’ cogito. The grammar of “I” only applies to statements we make about ourselves to other people. Rather than denying the certitude of the external world, Descartes’ cogito presupposes it. I think a similar issue crops up here. When I stub my toe, “there is pain.” I might tell someone that “I feel pain,” but the “I” here is not ontologically relevant. I don’t think the intellectual entertainment of red qua universal presupposes self-awareness of that state at all.

(These are thorny issues, but one also must be careful in translating them to an understanding of God’s omniscience. God’s knowledge is analogical to ours. His “awareness” is of everything.)

 

[Portofino]

To make some brief comments before I disappear…

So you are saying that self-awareness to say, “I am thinking about red”, is a necessary condition of thinking about red without imagining red.

My main question is: why? I do not see why my ability to articulate that should be a *necessary *condition of that intellectual activity.

This reminds me of the Wittgensteinian critique of Descartes’ cogito. The grammar of “I” only applies to statements we make about ourselves to other people. Rather than denying the certitude of the external world, Descartes’ cogito presupposes it. I think a similar issue crops up here. When I stub my toe, “there is pain.” I might tell someone that “I feel pain,” but the “I” here is not ontologically relevant. I don’t think the intellectual entertainment of red qua universal presupposes self-awareness of that state at all.

(These are thorny issues, but one also must be careful in translating them to an understanding of God’s omniscience. God’s knowledge is analogical to ours. His “awareness” is of everything.)

I did not mean to put so fine a point on the “I” in the “I am thinking about red.” What I was trying to get at is that no thinking about red can be said to place if there is not an awareness of the concept of red, as such. Without an awareness of the idea or concept of red, no concept or idea of red is being “thought of,” let’s say (regardless of who or what is doing the thinking).

I’m a bit surprised, though, because – though I don’t object to questioning the necessity of an “I”, per se-- it does appear to lend itself to consideration that perhaps the “I” or the “ego” isn’t necessarily immortal. This would lend itself more to the conception of an Averroes or Spinoza as regards an after-death existence – or, for that matter, to the thought of a Nietzsche and a Hume, both of whom questioned whether the individual ego and “awareness of self” might ultimately be an illusion, even in the here-and-now.

It doesn’t change my contention that “awareness” of the idea of red must exist to think about red – this is how I should have put it – but I agree that bringing the “I” into it or “self-awareness” was a misleading way of wording it.

Yet you nonetheless maintain that the intellective faculty that does survive death is individuated…. For other reasons, presumably?

Nietzsche’s critique of the Cartesian cogito:

*There are still harmless self-observers who believe that there are “immediate certainties”: for example, ‘I think’…. But that “immediate certainty” … involves a contradictio in adjecto, I shall repeat a hundred times; we really ought to free ourselves from the seduction of words!… The philosopher must say to himself: When I analyze the process that is expressed in the sentence “I think,” I find a whole series of daring assertions that would be difficult, perhaps impossible to prove: for example, that it is I who think, that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an “ego,” and, finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking…. In short, the assertion ‘I think’ assumes that I compare my state at the present moment with other states of myself which I know, in order to determine what it is; [thus] … it has … no immediate certainty for me.

With regard to the superstition of the logicians, I shall never tire of emphasizing a small terse fact … namely, that a thought comes when “it” wishes, not when “I” wish, so that it is a falsification of the facts of the case to say that the subject “I” is the condition of the predicate “thinks.” It thinks; but that this “it” is precisely the famous old “ego” is … only a supposition,… and assuredly not an “immediate certainty.” After all, one has even gone too far with this “it thinks” – even the “it” contains an interpretation of the process, and does not belong to the process itself. One infers here according to the grammatical habit: “Thinking is an activity; every activity requires an agent; consequently”…. Perhaps some day we shall accustom ourselves, including the logicians, to get along without the little “it” (which is all that is left of the honest little old ego).

Formerly, one believed in the “soul” as one believed in grammar and the the grammatical subject: one said, “I” is the condition, “think” is the predicate and conditioned – and thinking is an activity to which thought must apply a subject as cause…. The possibility of a merely apparent existence of the subject, “the soul” in other words, may not always have remained strange to [Immanuel Kant] – that thought which as Vedanta philosophy existed before on this earth and exercised tremendous power.*

 

[Portofino]

To make some brief comments before I disappear…

Definitely, I understand.

I don’t think the intellectual entertainment of red qua universal presupposes **self-awareness **of that state at all.

Well, this is funny, what I’ve just read from no less than the Catholic Encyclopedia. I’ve highlighted the portion that made me smile.

newadvent.org/cathen/08066a.htm

(1) Intellect is a cognitive faculty essentially different from sense and of a supra-organic order; that is, it is not exerted by, or intrinsically dependent on, a bodily organ, as sensation is. This proposition is proved by psychological analysis and study of the chief functions of intellect. These are conception, judgment, reasoning, reflection, and self-consciousness. All these activities involve elements essentially different from sensuous consciousness. In conception the mind forms universal ideas.

and

"In reflection and self-consciousness it [thought] turns back on itself in such a manner that there is perfect identity between the knowing subject and the object known. **But all these forms of consciousness are incompatible with the notion of a sensuous faculty, or one exerted by means of a bodily organ. **

Meaning, “self-consciousness” is posed as an attribute of intellect; thus – in arguing as such – I may me more Catholic than I know And we may have been splitting hairs a bit too finely.

 

[Portofino]

And, as if this were not enough (as regards the relation of self-awareness or “self-consciousness” to intellect):

“**To the intellect is due also the conception of self and personal identity. **The fundamental difficulty with the whole Sensationist school, from Hume to Mill, in regard to the recognition of personality, is due to their ignoring the true nature of the faculty of intellect. Were there no such higher rational faculty in the mind, then the mind could never be known as anything more than a series of mental states. It is the intellect which enables the mind to apprehend itself as a unity, or unitary being.”

 

[Portofino]

On Self-Consciousness:

"A most important form of consciousness from both a philosophical and a psychological point of view is self-consciousness. By this is understood the mind’s consciousness of its operations as its own. Out of this cognition combined with memory of the past emerges the knowledge of our own abiding personality. We not only have conscious states like the lower animals, but we can reflect upon these states, recognize them as our own, and at the same time distinguish them from the permanent self of which they are the transitory modifications. Viewed as the form of consciousness by which we study our own states, this inner activity is called introspection. It is the chief instrument employed in the building up of the science of psychology, and it is one of the many differentiae which separate the human from the animal mind. It has sometimes been spoken of as an “internal sense”, the proper object of which is the phenomena of consciousness, as that of the external senses is the phenomena of physical nature. Introspection is, however, merely the function of the intellect applied to the observation of our own mental life. The peculiar reflective activity exhibited in all forms of self-consciousness has led modern psychologists who defend the spirituality of the soul, increasingly to insist on this operation of the human mind as a main argument against materialism. The cruder form of materialism advocated in the nineteenth century by Broussais, Vogt, Moleschott, and at times by Huxley, which maintained that thought is merely a “product”, “secretion”, or “function” of the brain, is shown to be untenable by a brief consideration of any form of consciousness. All “secretions” and “products” of material agents of which we have experience, are substances which occupy space, are observable by the external senses, and continue to exist when unobserved. But all states of consciousness are non-spatial; they cannot be observed by the senses, and they exist only as we are conscious of them–their esse is percipi. Similarly “functions” of material agents are, in the last resort, resolvable into movements of portions of matter. But states of consciousness are not movements any more than they are “secretions” of matter. The contention, however, that all states of consciousness, though not “secretions” or “products” of matter, are yet forms of activity which have their ultimate source in the brain and are intrinsically and absolutely dependent on the latter is not disposed of by this reasoning.

To meet this objection, attention is directed to the form of intellectual activity exhibited in reflective self-consciousness. In this process there is recognition of complete identity between the knowing agent and the object which is known…"
………
** That latent activities of the soul which are strictly unconscious, can be truly mental or intellectual operations is the point in debate.**

newadvent.org/cathen/04274a.htm

 

[polytropos]

Well, this is funny, what I’ve just read from no less than the Catholic Encyclopedia. I’ve highlighted the portion that made me smile.

newadvent.org/cathen/08066a.htm

(1) Intellect is a cognitive faculty essentially different from sense and of a supra-organic order; that is, it is not exerted by, or intrinsically dependent on, a bodily organ, as sensation is. This proposition is proved by psychological analysis and study of the chief functions of intellect. These are conception, judgment, reasoning, reflection, and self-consciousness. All these activities involve elements essentially different from sensuous consciousness. In conception the mind forms universal ideas.

and

"In reflection and self-consciousness it [thought] turns back on itself in such a manner that there is perfect identity between the knowing subject and the object known. But all these forms of consciousness are incompatible with the notion of a sensuous faculty, or one exerted by means of a bodily organ.

Meaning, “self-consciousness” is posed as an attribute of intellect; thus – in arguing as such – I may me more Catholic than I know And we may have been splitting hairs a bit too finely.

You are correct, where I spoke there I was making too strong a claim. But I stand by the several comments I made about consciousness which are in agreement with the Catholic Encyclopedia article:

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.

I think many of my previous statements about the nature and scope of consciousness have to be taken into account. My position is that to add consciousness in (“the intellect is regarded as immaterial because the objects it consciously contemplates are abstract in nature, universal”) introduces vagueness and indeterminacy into the proposition, for the reason previously specified: consciousness is a bit of an umbrella term of phenomena that are subjective and resistant to physicalist explanation. Again, without at least a working definition of consciousness, I don’t know what the proposition means, so I cannot regard the two propositions as synonymous.

I believe that there is some phenomenology associated with intellection. But it is not sensory phenomenology. (Think about red. Your thinking about red qua universal is not a sensory experience, or at least it does not have to be. You can think about red without picturing red.)
…]
But for the reasons I’ve given, I regard this as an equivocation on the term “conscious awareness,” a category which I regard as collapsing the crucial distinctions that have to be made in a discussion like this.

It seems like it would be possible for a hylemorphist to accomodate this terminology. As the example with red shows, intellection is a different sort of conscious awareness than that which considers particulars. But I don’t see any need for the hylemorphist to accomodate it, since as I’ve said, I regard it as collapsing important distinctions.

I have agreed that conceptual, universal knowledge can in a sense be described as “awareness.” I have agreed that there is a phenomenology associated with intellection in a way different from a sensuous phenomenology.

As such, the original point you were making (that conscious awareness is not confined to particulars) cashes in on an equivocation on the term “conscious awareness,” which I have claimed is vague. (I take this misunderstanding as a good example of its vagueness, and this is why I have insisted on using more precise terminology.) We see that the Catholic Encyclopedia is at pains similar to mine to distinguish the intellect from other forms of consciousness, in the very parts of its entry which you’ve bolded.

I was clearly distinguishing between post-Cartesian paradigms of consciousness and Thomist paradigms of consciousness. In the post-Cartesian conception, it is consciousness itself that is taken to be the mark of the soul. In Thomism, it is the intellect. Both intellective and non-intellective aspects of the soul may be said to be “conscious” in non-equivalent senses.

 

[polytropos]

And, as if this were not enough (as regards the relation of self-awareness or “self-consciousness” to intellect):

“**To the intellect is due also the conception of self and personal identity. **The fundamental difficulty with the whole Sensationist school, from Hume to Mill, in regard to the recognition of personality, is due to their ignoring the true nature of the faculty of intellect. Were there no such higher rational faculty in the mind, then the mind could never be known as anything more than a series of mental states. It is the intellect which enables the mind to apprehend itself as a unity, or unitary being.”

It seems to me a mistake to read this in opposition to my arguments. “To the intellect is due also the conception of self and personal identity.” This passage is emphasizing the benefits of hylemorphic analysis on uncovering the nature of the human. Its focus is on what the centrality of the intellect in the theory gets us, namely a coherent conception of self and personal identity.

Your latter bolded portion emphasizes this point well. To apprehend oneself as a unity is the nature of the intellect not because one is apprehending oneself but because to apprehend anything as a unity is the nature of the intellect in the Thomist tradition. The intellect can abstract universal forms from particulars; that is what it does according to the scholastic account. Forms are unifying principles; to recognize unity is the mark of intellection.

The mentioning of Hume and Mill supports this reading. Hume and Mill have sensory “event” ontologies. According to their theories of knowledge, we do not abstract the forms of things; rather, we have sequences of sense “images” that we generalize from based on common features. As such, Hume’s theory of personal identity is that of a string of connected experiences. Without the Thomist view of the intellect as perceptive of forms, this account flounders. That is the point that the passage you have quoted is making. The first sentence states explicitly that the account of identity is “due to” the intellect; it is a corollary of the more basic functions of the intellect. It is about the fruitfulness of placing the intellect at the center of our theory of mind.

I apologize if I am being strident. But it is rather frustrating to try to clarify these matters when at every instant there is an attempt to assimilate my views and the views of the scholastics to some Enlightenment paradigm that is frankly ahistorical.

The point I am making overall is not that consciousness is not susceptible to a hylemorphic analysis. The intellect can apprehend its nature like it does other natures; that is what the intellect does. The point is that consciousness as such is not the core of the account.

 

[Portofino]

I apologize if I am being strident. But it is rather frustrating to try to clarify these matters when at every instant there is an attempt to assimilate my views and the views of the scholastics to some Enlightenment paradigm that is frankly ahistorical.

The point I am making overall is not that consciousness is not susceptible to a hylemorphic analysis. The intellect can apprehend its nature like it does other natures; that is what the intellect does. The point is that consciousness as such is not the core of the account.

No problem. Insofar as I’m in agreement with what I have read in the Catholic Encyclopedia on these subjects, I have no quarrel with it. The way in which the CE explains the concepts was a bit different – in style, if not in content – and seemed clearer to me, so it added something to the discussion insofar as it that served as a bridge between what I was trying to express and what I interpreted you were trying to express.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

…

You’ve lost me a little.
Originally I stated: "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?

And you replied:
"That is a pretty hard sell, but I don’t think that that is what Aquinas is peddling. "

And then I demonstrated that above is indeed what Aquinas said:
“…the soul will understand by itself after the manner of those intelligences that subsist totally apart from bodies (ie angels)”

Yet now you see no problem.
I don’t understand why you changed your mind?
How can a human, designed by nature for matter, understand more perfect without matter?
Even Aquinas has to posit the help of angels for this to work - which is not exactly making the unaided disembodied soul look very intellectually robust without phantasms.

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?

The two are related as Aquinas sees the two things as one and the same.
His argument seems in SCG seems to go thus:
(1) man has rational acts that cannot originate in the body but only in the soul
(2) the soul is the form of the body
(3) man therefore has a rational form
(4) all rational forms self-subsist (and actively understand)
(5) therefore the soul will survive death

Therefore it is intrinsic to Aquinas’s complete argument that the soul be actively understanding after death just like subsistent pure forms (angels). That is what he says.

If a disembodied soul does not actively understand then his argument collapses at (4) and the soul cannot be shown to survive death. At leasst not this way.

Also, (1) is no more proven by mod realists than the reverse by materialists.
I believe nowadays, with the insights of artificial intelligence and neurobiology that the materialist case is stronger than in Scholastic times.

It also seems mere assertion these days to state that knowledge of universals (whatever exactly that might mean) cannot be filtered from many particular experiences byneural processes. I believe it next to impossible to arrive at a knowledge of what it means to be a dog just by seeing one dog (which is what some seem to be saying in their immaterial theories wrt the knowledge of universals).

 

[Portofino]

You’ve lost me a little.
Originally I stated: "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?

And you replied:
"That is a pretty hard sell, but I don’t think that that is what Aquinas is peddling. "

And then I demonstrated that above is indeed what Aquinas said:
“…the soul will understand by itself after the manner of those intelligences that subsist totally apart from bodies (ie angels)”

Yet now you see no problem.
I don’t understand why you changed your mind?
How can a human, designed by nature for matter, understand more perfect without matter?
Even Aquinas has to posit the help of angels for this to work - which is not exactly making the unaided disembodied soul look very intellectually robust without phantasms.

I have enjoyed your contribution to the discussion If I may – even though you did not pose the question to me, directly – I think there is agreement between you and polytrop that Aquinas is not peddling more perfect knowledge after death as something that can be demonstrated rationally, through the hylemorphic theory alone. Revelation is called upon to complete the picture, in this case. Polytrop seemed to be saying that it’s not a problem to rely on revelation for some things – that to do so is perfectly congruent with Catholicism – so long as you don’t conceal the fact, in a philosophical context, that you are relying, partially, on revelation and are not claiming otherwise.

For a non-Christian philosopher, of course, one can respect this argument – within the context of Christian belief – and yet, indeed, say that the hylemorphic theory, in and of itself, is inadequate to yield the positing of an after-death existence that squares more precisely with the particulars of Christian dogma. Nor, obviously, can a hylemorphic theory predict resurrection of the body (all it can posit is that, indeed, resurrection of the body would be useful ). It cannot even, obviously, tell you where the soul will survive death; nothing in the hylemorphic theory, in and of itself, can predict that the “where” will be heaven, hell, or purgatory.

The two are related as Aquinas sees the two things as one and the same.
His argument seems in SCG seems to go thus:
(1) man has rational acts that cannot originate in the body but only in the soul
(2) the soul is the form of the body
(3) man therefore has a rational form
(4) all rational forms self-subsist (and actively understand)
(5) therefore the soul will survive death

Therefore it is intrinsic to Aquinas’s complete argument that the soul be actively understanding after death just like subsistent pure forms (angels). That is what he says.

If a disembodied soul does not actively understand then his argument collapses at (4) and the soul cannot be shown to survive death. At leasst not this way.).

That’s my understanding as well. Having re-read the relevant passages – which I don’t have in front of me at the moment – it seems that Aquinas is positing that a disembodied intellect will at least retain a contemplation of purely abstract intellectual concepts. Revelation is then needed to affirm that there will be a memory of senuous (i.e., non-intellectual) experience on earth and that the intellect will have not only knowledge of purely abstract ideas, but also a more perfect knowledge of God and of heaven.

I daresay, though, that I agree with you entirely that Aquinas never suspends judgment as to whether a dembodied intellect will be capable of any thinking whatsoever, even without divine help. Even if divine help were not posited, my understanding is that Aquinas still posits that some operations of the intellect would still take place.

I’ve since found a relevant treatment of this and will append it via a separate post, directly below.

 

[Portofino]

From a blog analysis titled “Reading the Summa” (readingthesumma.blogspot.com/2014/01/question-89-separated-souls-cognition.html). I’ve not found the relevant passage in the Summa itself, but this squares with my memory of what Aquinas wrote about it.

"Once the soul is separated from the body, the soul no longer has available to it any of the bodily organs associated with cognition; all that is left is the immaterial intellect. Can such a separated soul continue to have intellectual cognition? Certainly nothing new is coming in via sense organs, as they are bodily and no longer available to the separated soul. Even worse, there is no longer the power of the imagination available to the intellect, so the agent intellect can no longer shine a light on any phantasms in order to abstract quiddity. There may, of course, be the possibility of a supernatural form of cognition granted by a gift of grace; but if we are simply thinking in terms of the possible natural cognition available to the separated soul, then it is hard to see how this can function after death. The sed contra presents a perplexing counter-argument: one of the distinguishing aspects of the human soul is that it can exist separated from the body; it is a subsistent form. As a subsistent form it must have its own proper operations that do not depend on the separated body; surely therefore, the intellect must be able to operate once the body is gone because intellectual cognition is proper to the soul.

Aquinas agrees that this is perplexing but goes on to argue that the soul has two modes of understanding. The first mode of understanding occurs when the soul is united with the body and consists in the abstraction of form from material objects via the illumination of phantasms by the agent intellect. This first mode of understanding should be considered as the natural mode of understanding for a soul because it is natural for a soul to be united with a body. But still, a soul can subsist independent of a body; corresponding to this second state of being, there is a second operation of the intellect, a different mode of understanding. The first mode of understanding corresponds to the cognition of intelligible species after they are abstracted from their material being; the second mode of understanding is ordered to the cognition of those things that are intelligible absolutely speaking. That is, of those forms that do not have to be abstracted from a material mode of being."

This doesn’t get you “more perfect knowledge,” nor does it get you to memories of your particular experiences on earth (your second birthday party; Aunt Polly’s lemonade; the dog you had in the 5th grade). Aquinas would acknowledge that it takes divine grace to get you those things, sans body.

Nonetheless, I agree with you wholeheartedly that to say that Aquinas suspends judgment as to whether there could be any activity of the intellect, whatsoever, without the body and without special divine aid, is not quite correct. He posits a continued operation of the intellect, even without the role of special divine aid, as pertains to this “second mode of the operation of the intellect”, which – he posits – is purely abstract in nature.

 

[polytropos]

You’ve lost me a little.
Originally I stated: "**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? **

And you replied:
"That is a pretty hard sell, but I don’t think that that is what Aquinas is peddling. "

And then I demonstrated that above is indeed what Aquinas said:
“…the soul will understand by itself after the manner of those intelligences that subsist totally apart from bodies (ie angels)”

Yet now you see no problem.
I don’t understand why you changed your mind?
How can a human, designed by nature for matter, understand more perfect without matter?
Even Aquinas has to posit the help of angels for this to work - which is not exactly making the unaided disembodied soul look very intellectually robust without phantasms.

Without getting into a lengthy response, I’ll say Portofino is correct about my position on this point.

Take your first statement (bolded). Neither Aquinas nor I have argued that the intellect springs free upon death. It does achieve greater heights after death. But he does not argue for that on a philosophical ground. Before you quoted Aquinas in full, but here you have cut off the quote: “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” The soul’s activity after death is dependent on angels. That is a theological point. We don’t claim to demonstrate that philosophically. When I said this before, you replied:

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 .

You quote the OP asking for a demonstration of the soul’s subsistence after death, but then in the next paragraph you say that “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 the angels are posited (as you note) for the continuance of personal acts of understanding, not for the subsistence of the soul. Only the latter of which is relevant to the what the OP was asking.

My objection to your characterization of Aquinas’s argument (again, the bolded part) was that I thought it implied that the intellect was springing free unaided. But of course the point of the demonstration never was to show that the intellect springs free unaided after death, just to show that it exists. The reason I can’t prove what you’re charging me to prove (that acts of understanding continue after death) is because I never claimed that it was provable, and the OP did not ask to see it proved. You are hopping back and forth from the subsistence of the soul and the activity of the soul, which are two separate issues.

 

[polytropos]

The two are related as Aquinas sees the two things as one and the same.
His argument seems in SCG seems to go thus:
(1) man has rational acts that cannot originate in the body but only in the soul
(2) the soul is the form of the body
(3) man therefore has a rational form
(4) all rational forms self-subsist (and actively understand)
(5) therefore the soul will survive death

I’m not sure where exactly you are referring to. But it seems like you are interpreting (4) more strongly than is necessary. Rational forms self-subsist and actively understand. OK. What does actively understand mean here? Does it mean that at all times they must be in a process of understanding? This seems not to be the case, since Aquinas would agree that if we were to stop thinking (say when we go to sleep) then we retain our forms. (And this is independent of any post-mortem considerations.) It seems like Aquinas might mean that a form must have the power of rational understanding, which does not mean that at any given moment it must be capable of understanding. (This is, at least, one way to charitably interpret his argument, if the way you have recounted it is accurate. Perhaps it would not work if you pointed out to me where you are drawing from.)

Also, (1) is no more proven by mod realists than the reverse by materialists.
I believe nowadays, with the insights of artificial intelligence and neurobiology that the materialist case is stronger than in Scholastic times.

Well, whether the mind can be shown to be immaterial has always been the biggest debate in philosophy of mind.

I would say that artificial intelligence does not vindicate the materialist position much at all. Strong AI is IMO fully refuted by the Chinese room argument. Weak AI faces a number of problems. (Humans can solve some uncomputable problems, for instance, so a Turing machine cannot implement all human thought processes. There is also the problem of induction; all failures to uncover the logic of induction have failed, but to simulate a human, we would have to be able to produce an analysis of induction.) It should be noted that weak AI wouldn’t even have any direct relevance to philosophy of mind because it is defined as simulation. In other words, if materialism were true, then AI doesn’t tell us a lot about it.

There is much to be said about AI, but it’s probably sufficient to note that it hasn’t made much headway toward resolving traditional mind-body problems, and there are good (in my opinion) arguments to the effect that it would have trouble doing so in principle. In any case, gesturing toward the field does not of itself vindicate materialism.

I believe it next to impossible to arrive at a knowledge of what it means to be a dog just by seeing one dog (which is what some seem to be saying in their immaterial theories wrt the knowledge of universals).

But that is not what the theories are claiming. To say that we intellect forms does not mean that I instantly obtain a complete understanding of every natural substance I see. In Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, for instance, he refers to the procedure of science by the way that we first confusedly grasp causes, and then arrange to understand them more fully.

I feel like there is an underlying expectation here that hylemorphic theory of knowledge is supposed to work like magic, as though forms are these ephemeral aethers that float into our consciousness when we look at an object. But that is not a serious treatment of it at all.

It’s also worth noting that hylemorphism does not posit complete immateriality of our mental faculties. Hylemorphists don’t, for instance, spurn all neurobiology. They rather make specific arguments why specific phenomena are necessarily immaterial.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Don’t know if anybody has brought this up yet. A revelant reading from Aquinas is the Summa contra Gentiles, chapters 80-81, titled “Arguments of those who wish to prove that the Human Soul perishes with the Body, with Replies to the same.”

Aquinas seems to argue that only the intellect and will of the soul survive death, because they are independent of the vegetative and animal parts of the soul. Therefore, because they are pure spirit and not dependent on the body for their being, they will continue to operate but will not be conscious of sensible things. Yet they will retain the memories they experienced when united with the body. After the Last Judgment the souls will be re-united with their bodies.

These points are discussed after an earlier chapter, #65, “That the Soul is not a Body.”

 

[Portofino]

I have found the passage where Aquinas clarifies his thoughts on what the operations of the intellect would be, after death, even with no additional divine assistance and simply in conformance with its given nature.

Question 89

"Whether the separated soul can understand anything?

Objection 1: It would seem that the soul separated from the body can understand nothing at all. For the Philosopher says (De Anima i, 4) that “the understanding is corrupted together with its interior principle.” But by death all human interior principles are corrupted. Therefore also the intellect itself is corrupted.
…

I answer that, The difficulty in solving this question arises from the fact that the soul united to the body can understand only by turning to the phantasms, as experience shows. Did this not proceed from the soul’s very nature, but accidentally through its being bound up with the body, as the Platonists said, the difficulty would vanish; for in that case when the body was once removed, the soul would at once return to its own nature, and would understand intelligible things simply, without turning to the phantasms, as is exemplified in the case of other separate substances. In that case, however, the union of soul and body would not be for the soul’s good, for evidently it would understand worse in the body than out of it; but for the good of the body, which would be unreasonable, since matter exists on account of the form, and not the form for the sake of matter. But if we admit that the nature of the soul requires it to understand by turning to the phantasms, it will seem, since death does not change its nature, that it can then naturally understand nothing; as the phantasms are wanting to which it may turn.

To solve this difficulty we must consider that as nothing acts except so far as it is actual, the mode of action in every agent follows from its mode of existence. Now the soul has one mode of being when in the body, and another when apart from it, its nature remaining always the same; but this does not mean that its union with the body is an accidental thing, for, on the contrary, such union belongs to its very nature, just as the nature of a light object is not changed, when it is in its proper place, which is natural to it, and outside its proper place, which is beside its nature. The soul, therefore, when united to the body, consistently with that mode of existence, has a mode of understanding, by turning to corporeal phantasms, which are in corporeal organs; but when it is separated from the body, it has a mode of understanding, by turning to simply intelligible objects, as is proper to other separate substances.

…

It is clear then that it was for the soul’s good that it was united to a body, and that it understands by turning to the phantasms. Nevertheless it is possible for it to exist apart from the body, and also to understand in another way.

Whether the separated soul understands separate substances?

Objection 1: It would seem that the separated soul does not understand separate substances…

** I answer that, Augustine says (De Trin. ix, 3), “our mind acquires the knowledge of incorporeal things by itself”—i.e. by knowing itself (Question [88], Article [1], ad 1). Therefore from the knowledge which the separated soul has of itself, we can judge how it knows other separate things.** Now it was said above (Article [1]), that as long as it is united to the body the soul understands by turning to phantasms, and therefore it does not understand itself save through becoming actually intelligent by means of ideas abstracted from phantasms; for thus it understands itself through its own act, as shown above (Question [87], Article [1]). **When, however, it is separated from the body, it understands no longer by turning to phantasms, but by turning to simply intelligible objects; hence in that state it understands itself through itself. **Now, every separate substance “understands what is above itself and what is below itself, according to the mode of its substance” (De Causis viii): for a thing is understood according as it is in the one who understands; while one thing is in another according to the nature of that in which it is. And the mode of existence of a separated soul is inferior to that of an angel, but is the same as that of other separated souls. Therefore the soul apart from the body has perfect knowledge of other separated souls, but it has an imperfect and defective knowledge of the angels so far as its natural knowledge is concerned. But the knowledge of glory is otherwise.

Reply to Objection 1: The separated soul is, indeed, less perfect considering its nature in which it communicates with the nature of the body: but it has a greater freedom of intelligence, since the weight and care of the body is a clog upon the clearness of its intelligence in the present life.

Reply to Objection 2: The separated soul understands the angels by means of divinely impressed ideas; which, however, fail to give perfect knowledge of them, forasmuch as the nature of the soul is inferior to that of an angel.

Reply to Objection 3: Man’s ultimate happiness consists not in the knowledge of any separate substances; but in the knowledge of God, Who is seen only by grace. The knowledge of other separate substances if perfectly understood gives great happiness—not final and ultimate happiness. But the separated soul does not understand them perfectly, as was shown above in this article.

---

 

[Portofino]

These points are discussed after an earlier chapter, #65, “That the Soul is not a Body.”

Ah, great find. Here is the passage to which you refer. The one thing I see no evidence of (at least in the passage below) is that a disembodied intellective soul will retain any of those memories it acquired on earth, since these are still built upon sense experience like the crown of a pyramid is built upon its base. Only divine aid could replace that base, as it were, so that the intellective soul still has access to that “wing of the mansion”

"The proposition advanced in the fifth argument, namely, that no operation can remain in the soul when separated from the body, we declare to be false, in view of the fact that those operations do remain which are not exercised through organs. Such are the operations of understanding and willing. Those operations, however, do not endure which are carried out by means of bodily~ organs, and of such a kind are the operations of the nutritive and sensitive powers.

[12]** Nevertheless it must be borne in mind that the soul understands in a different manner when separated from the body and when united to it**, even as it exists diversely in those cases; for a thing acts according as it is. Indeed, although the soul, while united to the body, enjoys an absolute being not depending on the body, nevertheless the body is the soul’s housing, so to speak, and the subject that receives it. This explains why the soul’s proper operation, understanding, has its object, namely, the phantasm, in the body, despite the fact that this operation does not depend on the body as though it were effected through the instrumentality of a bodily organ. It follows that, so long as the soul is in the body, it cannot perform that act without a phantasm; neither can it remember except through the powers of cogitation and memory, by which the phantasms are prepared, as stated above. Accordingly, understanding, so far as this mode of it is concerned, as well as remembering, perishes with the death of the body. The separated soul, however, exists by itself, apart from the body. Consequently, its operation, which is understanding, will not be fulfilled in relation to those objects existing in bodily organs which the phantasms are; on the contrary, **it will understand through itself, in the manner of substances which in their being are totally separate from bodies, and of which we shall treat subsequently. And from those substances, as from things above it, the separated soul will be able to receive a more abundant influx, productive of a more perfect understanding on its own part. There is an indication of this event in the young. For the more the soul is freed from preoccupation with its body, the more fit does it become for understanding higher things. Hence, the virtue of temperance, which withdraws the soul from bodily pleasures, is especially fruitful in making men apt in understanding. Then, too, sleeping persons, their bodily senses being dormant, with no disturbance of the humours or vapors to impede their mental processes, are, under the influence of higher beings, enabled to perceive some things pertaining to the future which transcend the scope of human reason. And this is all the more true of those in a fainting condition or in ecstasy, since such states involve an even greater withdrawal from the bodily senses. Nor does this come to pass undeservedly. For, since the human soul, as we have shown already, is situated on the boundary line between corporeal and incorporeal substances, as though it existed on the horizon of eternity and time, it approaches to the highest by withdrawing from the lowest. Consequently, when the soul shall be completely separated from the body, it will be perfectly likened to separate substances in its mode of understanding, and will receive their influx abundantly. **
[13] Therefore, although the mode of understanding vouchsafed to us in the present life ceases upon the death of the body, nevertheless another and higher mode of understanding will take its place.