On the Immortality of the Soul

[polytropos]

Cheers, that is exactly what I suspected…“immaterial soul” was coined by their interpreters . And the reason I suspected this is because I believe I understand their system’s well enough to know they would never have intentionally coined such a phrase. Apologies if I had to drag this one out - it was my original question afterall.

I think you and I both know that was not what I meant where you quoted me. I do not know if Aquinas used the phrase immaterial soul. But someone like Oderberg has carefully defined the term in a way that meshes with Aquinas’s arguments here.

Terms in philosophy mean what they are defined to mean. If you have a gut feeling that Aquinas wouldn’t use the term “immaterial soul,” that’s fine with me. I’ve defined the term in a way consistent with the Thomist tradition and Aquinas’s own arguments.

Hmmnn. Not sure I agree. That we cannot deal in these forms without a phantasm suggests the phantasm is somehow a reference/pointer type stand-in for the missing “instance”? Hence they still need to be “instantiated” to exist - though obviously they exist instantiated a way different from what the senses perceive.

Well, our imaginations can construct a “fake” form (like that of a unicorn). Unicorns don’t have instances (as far as we are aware).

To visualize the unicorn, we are using a visual sense. But I’m not claiming that we could perform all of the same mental visualization/imagination acts that we could do while alive after our deaths.

As noted above I find the above to be a mere assertion with no intrinsic logic.

I was disambiguating here, not arguing. But we’ve gone over the arguments for the intellect. They are not intrinsically illogical and assertive. You don’t agree with argument from universality, but your objection just gestured toward biology. And you didn’t respond to the argument from indeterminacy of the physical. So the quoted assertion has been adequately supported for the purposes of our discussion.

I appreciate your putting it into your own words but I find "*physical *essence…is immaterial " to be a somewhat contradictory and confusing.

It seems like the most charitable way to read “physical” here is “concrete” as opposed to “abstract.” From context, that clearly seems to be Oderberg’s intent.

But further, isn’t there a third meaning of immaterial here?
The soul of a dog is just as immaterial as that of a human (though you would say the human soul is “properly” immaterial). Now the dog’s soul is immaterial in a different way than immaterial1 (abstracted universals). It is the unseen teleological principle that unifies all the biological processes of the matter that is the dog. Yet it is real, and it isn’t immaterial2 from what I can see.

That is a material2 form. The teleological, unifying principle of a substance just is form. For dogs as for trees as for basic elements etc., that form is material2. (Likewise, your digestion is a material2 process. It is a teleological process, but material2 nonetheless.)

You’ve lost me. Where did material2 come from and what does it mean?

Material2 means not immaterial2, going off of how I defined the latter term.

OK. I just don’t understand why you mentioned dualism/materialism when directly commenting on me when I said “I believe the logic…[is weak] which forces us to accept that human intellection must require an immaterial soul…”

You said that you thought the Thomistic account of the soul was weaker than arguments of natural theology. I responded by saying that it was my impression, based on contemporary literature in philosophy of religion and philosophy of mind, that hylemorphism has a pretty solid foundation. I don’t regard it as a weak point of the Thomist synthesis at all.

 

[polytropos]

Why would you think the above objectively based observation is uncharitable? The whole point of talking about form/nature/essence etc is to explain reality/change/causality etc without recourse to the all-purpose glue of the “God of the gaps” which make any old superstition “work.”

I am saying that Aquinas could have simply believed that though the soul was subsistent, it would not do much after death without help from God or angels. He isn’t invoking them to strengthen the account. Without recourse to revelation, I think he would be fine to say that the soul is limited after death–given how frequently he mentions their necessity.

 

[polytropos]

Why would you think the above objectively based observation is uncharitable? The whole point of talking about form/nature/essence etc is to explain reality/change/causality etc without recourse to the all-purpose glue of the “God of the gaps” which make any old superstition “work.”

And when someone keeps changing their solutions for the difficult points that there system doesn’t quite explain…yes experience tells me they too are at a bit of a loss in those areas. All the more so when those messy “fix” explanations are extrinsic to the very principles they use to tidily explain/encapsulate a messy reality to start with.

I have an analogy. It is not perfect, but I think it gets the point across. The owner of a car passes away. I say, “The car still remains, but no one can drive it.” That much seems evident. But then someone says, “Actually, I know on the basis of what was written in the owner’s will that someone will inherit the car, and will be able to drive it again.” It would be a bit pointless for me to reply that they are just patching up the story. We both agree that without a driver (a phantasm by analogy, let’s say), the car will be limited in what it can do. But we also both agree that it continues to exist. Based on other domains of knowledge, my conversant also knows that the car will be driven again; they aren’t “fixing” anything. They are just adding to the story from their other areas of knowledge.

It isn’t my argument it is Aquinas’s as I understand it. Aquinas asserts that immaterial forms can only be individuated by difference in essential form. Separated souls, in Aquinas’s view, are in this regard in the same boat as angels (no matter is present). Yet they are different from angels so far as the essence of the form is concerned. The essence is the same. I do not understand how these separated souls can therefore be understood as immateriallty multiple which Revelation obviously requires?
It is not enough to say that each soul/form, though essentially the same, is oriented to matter. Matter has to be actually present for individuation to occur. Neither can we appear to say that separated souls have different forms - then they would not be of the same human species. Perhaps we can say the forms are accidentally different, not substantially different. But I am not sure I even know what that might mean!

I think we are in agreement over the bolded portion. But what is at issue is what individuation is. Humans are individuated by matter. What I am saying is that once they are individuated, they are individuated. You, for instance, are not being individuated right now. You have been and now are individuated.

 

[polytropos]

Sorry for all of the disjointed posts. But Aquinas examines the Averroist position at considerable length here.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

I think you and I both know that was not what I meant where you quoted me. I do not know if Aquinas used the phrase immaterial soul. But someone like Oderberg has carefully defined the term in a way that meshes with Aquinas’s arguments here.

It may not make any difference for you but there was a typo above. I really meant “material soul” (I have less problems with “immaterial soul” but it is also strange because it appears a redundant adjective to me).
I don’t really understand what you mean by “I think you and I both know that was not what I meant where you quoted me” nor was I trying to be cute if that was your concern?

Terms in philosophy mean what they are defined to mean.

Hmmn - maybe not when one is attempting to represent another’s concepts/system. I find nothing (yet) in Aristotle’s system that could be helpfully translated “material soul” without doing some injustice to his system as a whole.

Well, our imaginations can construct a “fake” form (like that of a unicorn). Unicorns don’t have instances (as far as we are aware).To visualize the unicorn, we are using a visual sense. But I’m not claiming that we could perform all of the same mental visualization/imagination acts that we could do while alive after our deaths.

This one got lost in translation so we better to let it go .

But we’ve gone over the arguments for the intellect. They are not intrinsically illogical and assertive. You don’t agree with argument from universality, but your objection just gestured toward biology. And you didn’t respond to the argument from indeterminacy of the physical. So the quoted assertion has been adequately supported for the purposes of our discussion.

I don’t think arguments for acts of the intellect not needing materiality are intrinsically illogical. I am saying the opposite I think. That is, I do not think that arguments that believe the body is always required in some fashion for intellection are intrinsically illogical. From what I can understand this is your position?

If I didn’t respond wrt indeterminancy of the physical its because I do not know exactly what that means or how it is relvant to the recognition/use of,say, universals.

It seems like the most charitable way to read “physical” here is “concrete” as opposed to “abstract.” From context, that clearly seems to be Oderberg’s intent.

That is a material2 form. The teleological, unifying principle of a substance just is form. For dogs as for trees as for basic elements etc., that form is material2. (Likewise, your digestion is a material2 process. It is a teleological process, but material2 nonetheless.)

If this is Oderberg then this may be where we part company. He’s quite welcome to define his own terms in “translating” Aristotle and say black is white and white black…but I don’t find it a convincing translation. I regard the soul/form of a dog (its first actuation) as immaterial. Universals are also immaterial (in a different way) and so too the human soul (perhaps in yet another way).

You said that you thought the Thomistic account of the soul was weaker than arguments of natural theology. I responded by saying that it was my impression, based on contemporary literature in philosophy of religion and philosophy of mind, that hylemorphism has a pretty solid foundation. I don’t regard it as a weak point of the Thomist synthesis at all.

I agree the hylomorphism of Aristotle is solid enough. But Thomas’s attempted application
into spheres where there is no materiality at all has well known difficulties as Rickaby also concludes. As we have yet to discuss those areas are individuality and independent existance. His arguments/certainty here rest more on truths of revelation than arguments from philosophy pure it seems to me.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

I am saying that Aquinas could have simply believed that though the soul was subsistent, it would not do much after death without help from God or angels. He isn’t invoking them to strengthen the account. Without recourse to revelation, I think he would be fine to say that the soul is limited after death–given how frequently he mentions their necessity.

I think we are coming at this from completely different angles.
When I say that Aquinas is weak in his use of hylomorphic concepts when it comes to separated souls I simply mean hylomorphism doesn’t help at all in explicating truths that Christians must hold. And by the sound of it you agree.

Aquinas has to further invoke a “God of the gaps” (help from angels, infused forms etc) to allow the recalcitrant separated form to do what revelation tells us it should do.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Matter has to be actually present for individuation to occur.

OK, a clear point of difference at last.
When I say “matter has to be actually present for individuation to occur” I really mean present continuous tense, not past perfect! The moment matter disappears, poof individuality is lost. I am talking about separated souls. Can you explain how multiple individuals can exist when there is no designate matter to separate their identical human form?

 

[Aloysium]

OK, a clear point of difference at last.
When I say “matter has to be actually present for individuation to occur” I really mean present continuous tense, not past perfect! The moment matter disappears, poof individuality is lost. I am talking about separated souls. Can you explain how multiple individuals can exist when there is no designate matter to separate their identical human form?

:twocents:

We must mean something different regarding “matter”.To me it is something studied by physics.
This screen, as an example, is material. It is part of a whole that includes the retinas of my eyes and my brain.
It is because it is all continuous and one, that I am able to perceive it as you would. I do not understand what would separate matter from other matter.

However, the reality of my experience and your experience is that they are separate. This is because we have a soul.
So even though we also exist within a psycho-social reality of shared information, understandings, emotions and such, we remain separate because our existence is separate - you exist as you, me as me.

When my body dies, my spirit, being eternal in nature, remains in relation to God and other spirits. I am not sure where you get the idea that once the body is dust the soul will not remain separate.
The only lack of separation occurs when in loving, self-giving union. That’s why there is a hell.

 

[polytropos]

It may not make any difference for you but there was a typo above. I really meant “material soul” (I have less problems with “immaterial soul” but it is also strange because it appears a redundant adjective to me).

What is wrong with the term “material soul”? We all agree that forms qua universals are all immaterial, so clearly in the expression “material soul” the differentia “material” is not referring to forms qua universals. If some souls are incorporeal (that some principle of their operation is not material), as Aquinas would argue, in a way that others are not, then it makes sense to say that souls that are not incorporeal are “material souls.” I can find nothing confusing in this account.

Hmmn - maybe not when one is attempting to represent another’s concepts/system. I find nothing (yet) in Aristotle’s system that could be helpfully translated “material soul” without doing some injustice to his system as a whole.

Aristotle said that the intellect had no bodily organ. He did not make such a claim about any other powers of souls. It is furthermore what differentiates intellective souls from vegetative and appetitive souls. When I say “material soul,” all I mean is a vegetative or appetitive soul.

I don’t think arguments for acts of the intellect not needing materiality are intrinsically illogical. I am saying the opposite I think. That is, I do not think that arguments that believe the body is always required in some fashion for intellection are intrinsically illogical. From what I can understand this is your position?

This is the passage that you said was “a mere assertion with no intrinsic logic”:

Some forms are immaterial2 if “because there is something about the instances of the relevant universal such that they themselves are properly to be regarded as immaterial. In the human case, this is the idea that the human intellect is immaterial in its essential operations, hence that the physical essence of the human being is immaterial.”

I am not really sure what you are saying here.

If I didn’t respond wrt indeterminancy of the physical its because I do not know exactly what that means or how it is relvant to the recognition/use of,say, universals.

I know, I am not saying you should accept the argument or concede the point because you have not responded to the argument, but I don’t think you can say that it is “mere assertion” to say that “the human intellect is immaterial in its essential operations” if you are not going to respond.

If this is Oderberg then this may be where we part company. He’s quite welcome to define his own terms in “translating” Aristotle and say black is white and white black…but I don’t find it a convincing translation. I regard the soul/form of a dog (its first actuation) as immaterial. Universals are also immaterial (in a different way) and so too the human soul (perhaps in yet another way).

It is pretty clear that Aristotle found the operations of the human soul immaterial in a different sense than other souls (ie. sight has a bodily organ, intellection does not). That is the only point Oderberg is making, that it is the latter sense of immaterial that is relevant to these discussions. He is not at all obfuscating by saying “black is white and white black.”

 

[polytropos]

OK, a clear point of difference at last.
When I say “matter has to be actually present for individuation to occur” I really mean present continuous tense, not past perfect! The moment matter disappears, poof individuality is lost. I am talking about separated souls. Can you explain how multiple individuals can exist when there is no designate matter to separate their identical human form?

Let us suppose that this man, for example, Socrates or Plato, understands. Our adversary could not deny that the man understands, unless he knew that it ought to be denied. By denying he affirms, for affirmation and denial are intelligent actions. If, then, the man in question understands, that whereby he formally understands must be his form, since nothing acts unless it is in act. Hence that whereby an agent acts, is his act; just as the heat by which a heated body causes warmth, is its act. Therefore the intellect whereby a man understands is the form of this man, and the same is true of another man. But the same numerical form cannot belong to numerically different individuals, for numerically different individuals do not possess the same existence; and yet everything has existence by reason of its form. Accordingly the intellect whereby a man understands cannot be but one in all men. (CT 85)

So Aquinas argues that the individuals have separate acts of existence. This is the case because the forms of particular men are particular.

Matter is not needed to separate their forms, because no sense can be made of particular forms “merging” together (if that is what you have in mind–I cannot tell) into a single intellect after being disembodied. This is because they are particular forms, not intellect in the abstract. To conflate the two is a category mistake.

 

[mattdantuono]

Hello, friend.

I apologize if I am repeating arguments already made within the thread. I am just responding to the original question. Also, my arguments are not original. If there is any clear vision in them, it is only because I stand on the shoulders of giants.

Purely material things cannot know anything abstract or perform any abstract, non-physical operations. Human beings are able to know abstract things that are not physical (e.g. the number two, beauty, perfect circles, moral codes, God, justice, love, the law of non-contradiction, etc) and perform non-physical operations (e.g. deductive logic, mathematics, speculative philosophy, theoretical physics, etc). Therefore, there is a part of us that is not physical. We can call this the soul. Since this soul is not itself physical, it does not disintegrate along with the physical body, just as the abstract objects of the soul’s intellect do not disintegrate along with the physical objects from which we abstracted those ideas.

Another intriguing argument is as follows: Every natural desire corresponds to some reality (e.g. hunger corresponds to food, sexual desire corresponds to sex, thirst corresponds to water, fatigue corresponds to sleep, etc). The desire does not imply that it will be satisfied (people die of hunger), but it does imply the existence of that thing. The overwhelming testimony of individual and collective human experience testifies to a natural desire for something which cannot be satisfied in this physical world. Therefore, there exists something outside of this physical world that corresponds to that desire, a desire we have the capacity to fulfill. If the soul did not live on after death, the capacity to fulfill the desire would not exist, and neither would the desire itself.

As for what individuates the soul after death since it is no longer united to matter, souls are individuated by the fact that they are still the forms OF some particular matter, even if they are not united to that matter. The soul is not a complete human person. The “missing piece” is different for each soul, making each soul different.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

So Aquinas argues that the individuals have separate acts of existence. This is the case because the forms of particular men are particular.

Matter is not needed to separate their forms, because no sense can be made of particular forms “merging” together (if that is what you have in mind–I cannot tell) into a single intellect after being disembodied. This is because they are particular forms, not intellect in the abstract. To conflate the two is a category mistake.

I don’t know where you sourced the above from (what is CT 85?). Did you mean ST76?
In any case this seems to be about whether the Intellect is the same in coporeal humans.
I do not see how this can then be used to explain individuality in separated souls.

Anways, “Matter is not needed to separate their forms, because no sense can be made of particular forms “merging” together” is not an argument, it seems just a rational tautology.
Not much different from saying “A and B must be different because it doesn’t make sense to say they are the same!” Obviously, we know that from Revelation. But the question is, how can Aquinas philosophicly maintain separated souls are in fact numerically different when his other philosophic principles appear to leave no room for an explanation?

Obviously Aquinas must end up showing that separated souls have numerically separate acts of existence. The problem is how can this be demonstarted when human form is the same in each (and hence not a basis for numerical difference, unlike angels) and designate matter is unavailable and also not a basis for numerical difference?

Aquinas elsewhere states “what is separate from the body is not multiplied according to the number of bodies”. How then are separated souls to be multiplied?

 

[Blue_Horizon]

souls are individuated by the fact that they are still the forms OF some particular matter, even if they are not united to that matter.

Yes this is about as close as Aquinas ever gets to an explanation but it doesn’t seem to gel well with his principle that matter (pure potentiality) is the principle of individuation.

Now when he enunciates that principle it seems clear he means designate matter not some vague incorporeal “tendency” (is this an “accident”?) in an already incorporeal soul.

If it is an “accident” of the soul that makes each soul different from other souls how does that work?

When you say a soul is a form of “some particular matter” what does that really mean?
It cannot mean that some lump of matter in the universe (now owned by some other form or maybe scattered amongst a whole bunch of different forms) belongs just to Plato’s soul. For there is in fact no distinction between different “lumps” of matter as matter because all “matter” is pure potentiality and therefore any “lump” will do to resurrect Plato. In fact matter itself cannot even be designated or particularised without participating in some form (even if it isn’t Plato at the moment).

So unless you can explain what “they are still the forms of some particular matter” actually means I don’t think this is particularly helpful.

Maybe “sub spec-ial” accidents of the soul is the better way to go. Which means separated souls are individuated on the basis of form just like angels. But that is a head-cracker as humans are meant to have the same essence while angels do not (at least according to Aquinas). Perhaps Bonaventure is more consistant in his philosophy of separated souls where he seems to hold that a component of potentiality (spiritual matter?) is still present. But its been a while, maybe I need to revise his teaching.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

What is wrong with the term “material soul”? We all agree that forms qua universals are all immaterial, so clearly in the expression “material soul” the differentia “material” is not referring to forms qua universals. If some souls are incorporeal (that some principle of their operation is not material), as Aquinas would argue, in a way that others are not, then it makes sense to say that souls that are not incorporeal are “material souls.” I can find nothing confusing in this account.

What is wrong is that I never recall hearing that phrase from my Aquinas/Aristotelian lecturers, commentators or even Aristotle.
Also, it blurrs distinctions between human form and human substance which is exactly the problem in our discussion. It also blurrs very real differences between Plato and Aristotle when we discuss how predicates that apply to Man cannot automatically be applied to Separated Soul. They are in fact two different substances.

Aquinas talks of “corporeal substances” (man, animals) which may acceptably be called “material substances” I suppose. If one wanted to speak a little more loosely one could perhaps say “material forms”. And if we took this a little further we could perhaps even say “material souls”. Yet if we did… this would prob be very different from the “material soul” you speak of above. For Aquinas would mean the souls of both men and animals. And I would further suggest he would not distinguish the souls of man and beast on the basis of “materiality” but on the basis of “immortality”. In fact I would go so far as to even suggest he would regard the souls of both man and beast as immaterial - which I attempted to explain to you below but you could not understand. Not all immaterial souls are immortal - but that doesn’t make mortal souls “material” or “not immaterial.”

Aristotle said that the intellect had no bodily organ. He did not make such a claim about any other powers of souls. It is furthermore what differentiates intellective souls from vegetative and appetitive souls. When I say “material soul,” all I mean is a vegetative or appetitive soul.

I understand, but as above it is, to my mind, profoundly misleading. The significant difference between the souls of man and beast is mortality versus immortality NOT that one soul is material and the other immaterial. The “animal soul” in both Aristotle and Aquinas, I believe, is validly said to be “immaterial” in a similar manner to the human soul being called “immaterial.” And both are immaterial very differently from the way universals are described as “immaterial.” Obviously the human soul has a higher form of “immateriality” than an animal soul if it “survives” loss of the body.

This is the passage that you said was “a mere assertion with no intrinsic logic”:

Yes, I cannot see any tight syllogistic logic that forces the conclusion from the stated premises. Saying that your argument does not, to my mind, have coersive logic does not mean it is illogical does it?

It is pretty clear that Aristotle found the operations of the human soul immaterial in a different sense than other souls (ie. sight has a bodily organ, intellection does not). That is the only point Oderberg is making, that it is the latter sense of immaterial that is relevant to these discussions. He is not at all obfuscating by saying “black is white and white black.”

The problem is I do not fully trust his understanding of “material” (and therefore his notion of “immaterial.”) in Aristotle/Aquinas as explained above. I believe they end up saying materially opposite things from Oderberg wrt the same reality (the souls of animals) which is unncessarily confusing. It may also indicate subtle conceptual differences also as I suggested above.
Perhaps I am wrong but it will take more than lone Oderberg to change me from my hopefully vincable ignorance if I am mistaken on this point.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

:twocents:

We must mean something different regarding “matter”.To me it is something studied by physics.

I will have to stop you there if you are saying what I think you are saying .
If you really mean this then we are in fact defining matter differently - you are on the side of Descartes/Hume/Netwon, I am on the side (I hope) of Aristotle/Aquinas and the understanding still used by the Magisterium.

That is, for me matter does not exist in itself.
For you it clearly does (even if you might say it is interconvertible with energy which Newton did not know).

On a different tack…the issue we are talking about is how immaterial forms can be distinguished (“separated”) from one another - we are not really talking about “separation of soul/form from body/matter” directly).

 

[polytropos]

I don’t know where you sourced the above from (what is CT 85?). Did you mean ST76?

It is from CT 85. Earlier in this thread I linked to a page with the translation I used.

In any case this seems to be about whether the Intellect is the same in coporeal humans.
I do not see how this can then be used to explain individuality in separated souls.

Anways, “Matter is not needed to separate their forms, because no sense can be made of particular forms “merging” together” is not an argument, it seems just a rational tautology.
Not much different from saying “A and B must be different because it doesn’t make sense to say they are the same!” Obviously, we know that from Revelation. But the question is, how can Aquinas philosophicly maintain separated souls are in fact numerically different when his other philosophic principles appear to leave no room for an explanation?

Aquinas is arguing that intellects remain individuated after death. (By this point he takes himself to have shown that the human soul is essentially immaterial.)

So take the disjunction: Human souls go out of existence after death OR human souls collapse into a single intellect after death OR human souls remain distinct after death. The first two disjuncts are false. (I’ve given arguments about the immateriality and subsistence of the intellect after death, and CT 85 is an argument against the second disjunct.) Therefore, the third disjunct is true, assuming that the disjunction is complete.

Human souls exist and are individuated when they are attached to matter. When the human substance loses its material cause, the question is: what happens? Does the form go out of existence? If you deny that, then we are not debating about individuation of intellect but about the immateriality and subsistence of souls, so you’ve changed the subject. Do the forms, having lost their principle of matter, collapse together? This is what Aquinas responds to in CT 85, and what I respond to by saying that it cannot be made coherent.* Do they continue to exist, individuated? That is what I submit is the only possibility, given the falsity of the other two disjuncts.

*You are saying that my claim that “no sense can be made of particular forms ‘merging’ together” is not an argument. It is consistent with revelation, but I’m not asserting it as an article of faith. What I am saying is that in Thomistic hylemorphism, there are simply no such thing as mind-independent universal forms. It is a category error to suppose that mind-independent subsistent forms, having become detached from matter, should merge into a universal intellect simply because there are no mind-independent universals. (There might be universals in God, but that is a distinct question, since those still inhere in an intellect.) So what I’m saying is that as it stands, the objection simply can’t be formulated. The first disjunct is false (or else we should be debating some other, more basic topic). The second disjunct is incoherent. So the third disjunct is true.

This is all assuming that my disjunction is complete. If you suggest a fourth possibility, then that would have to be argued against as well.

Obviously Aquinas must end up showing that separated souls have numerically separate acts of existence. The problem is how can this be demonstarted when human form is the same in each (and hence not a basis for numerical difference, unlike angels) and designate matter is unavailable and also not a basis for numerical difference?

To quote Aquinas again,

Therefore the intellect whereby a man understands is the form of this man, and the same is true of another man. But the same numerical form cannot belong to numerically different individuals, for numerically different individuals do not possess the same existence; and yet everything has existence by reason of its form.

He does seem to think that a forms can be numerically separated by virtue of separate acts of existence. And while most natural substances lose their acts of existence if they lose their material cause (ie. their formal cause depends on material instantiation), this is not the case with humans.

Perhaps it could be said that having a material cause is a necessary condition for the generation of a human substance. But the act of existence is had by virtue of its form, and the act of existence, like forms, is particular for any particular substance. So if the form persists, so does its separate act of existence.

(As I expressed earlier in this thread, I am not so sure about the necessity of positing a separate species for each angel, although I have not read up on it sufficiently.)

I am reading some work by Eleonore Stump, and it seems that Aquinas’s view of the principle that “matter individuates” is pretty nuanced. Perhaps in the future I will find the time to relate some of what she has to say.

Aquinas elsewhere states “what is separate from the body is not multiplied according to the number of bodies”. How then are separated souls to be multiplied?

Hmm, could you be a bit clearer on context?

 

[polytropos]

What is wrong is that I never recall hearing that phrase from my Aquinas/Aristotelian lecturers, commentators or even Aristotle.
Also, it blurrs distinctions between human form and human substance which is exactly the problem in our discussion. It also blurrs very real differences between Plato and Aristotle when we discuss how predicates that apply to Man cannot automatically be applied to Separated Soul. They are in fact two different substances.

Aquinas talks of “corporeal substances” (man, animals) which may acceptably be called “material substances” I suppose. If one wanted to speak a little more loosely one could perhaps say “material forms”. And if we took this a little further we could perhaps even say “material souls”. Yet if we did… this would prob be very different from the “material soul” you speak of above. For Aquinas would mean the souls of both men and animals. And I would further suggest he would not distinguish the souls of man and beast on the basis of “materiality” but on the basis of “immortality”. In fact I would go so far as to even suggest he would regard the souls of both man and beast as immaterial - which I attempted to explain to you below but you could not understand. Not all immaterial souls are immortal - but that doesn’t make mortal souls “material” or “not immaterial.”

I understand, but as above it is, to my mind, profoundly misleading. The significant difference between the souls of man and beast is mortality versus immortality NOT that one soul is material and the other immaterial. The “animal soul” in both Aristotle and Aquinas, I believe, is validly said to be “immaterial” in a similar manner to the human soul being called “immaterial.” And both are immaterial very differently from the way universals are described as “immaterial.” Obviously the human soul has a higher form of “immateriality” than an animal soul if it “survives” loss of the body.

I don’t think it blurs distinctions at all. I don’t think these are contestable points for most interpretations of Aristotle and Aquinas:

• Forms are not material causes and so all forms could be said to be “immaterial” in some sense.
• Aristotle and Aquinas believed that “the intellect has no bodily organ.”
• There is a sense in which the human soul is “immaterial” in a way that other souls are not, namely that intellective operations have no bodily organ, while the vegetative and appetitive powers do.
  Clearly in “material soul,” “material” is a differentia of the species “soul.” So clearly we are not using “material” in the first sense. Therefore we are to take the term in the second sense, simply referring to non-rational souls. I don’t see this as “profoundly misleading.” For your sake I will try to say “non-rational” or “vegetative or appetitive” instead; if I commit an error and say “material” by accident, then we know what I mean.

re the bolded portion: Can you clarify where Aristotle and Aquinas predicate immateriality of animal souls in a way that they would not predicate immateriality of all forms?

Yes, I cannot see any tight syllogistic logic that forces the conclusion from the stated premises. Saying that your argument does not, to my mind, have coersive logic does not mean it is illogical does it?

One way to form it as a valid syllogism is:
(1) No physical process is determinate.
(2) All formal thinking is determinate.
(C) No formal thinking is a physical process.
The upshot is that the intellect has no bodily organ. Determinacy and formal thinking were, of course, defined precisely in the post in which I defended the argument.

The problem is I do not fully trust his understanding of “material” (and therefore his notion of “immaterial.”) in Aristotle/Aquinas as explained above. I believe they end up saying materially opposite things from Oderberg wrt the same reality (the souls of animals) which is unncessarily confusing. It may also indicate subtle conceptual differences also as I suggested above.
Perhaps I am wrong but it will take more than lone Oderberg to change me from my hopefully vincable ignorance if I am mistaken on this point.

I think we’ll need to see to what extent you think Aristotle and Aquinas regard the souls of animals as immaterial before continuing this line of thought.

 

[mattdantuono]

When you say a soul is a form of “some particular matter” what does that really mean?
It cannot mean that some lump of matter in the universe (now owned by some other form or maybe scattered amongst a whole bunch of different forms) belongs just to Plato’s soul. For there is in fact no distinction between different “lumps” of matter as matter because all “matter” is pure potentiality and therefore any “lump” will do to resurrect Plato. In fact matter itself cannot even be designated or particularised without participating in some form (even if it isn’t Plato at the moment).

So unless you can explain what “they are still the forms of some particular matter” actually means I don’t think this is particularly helpful.

Good point. Thank you for this comment. You are exactly right that any particular “lump of matter” would do in resurrecting Plato, but that is just the point. It is the soul that makes that particular matter Plato and not Aristotle. That soul is still the thing that would differentiate matter and make it what it is.

Also, the soul still contains all the individual memories, experiences, vices and virtues of the particular individual. Since it is still the soul OF a particular person, it is different from all other souls.

 

[mattdantuono]

Another argument for the immortality of the soul comes from near-death experiences. I have not read about this, but I have heard Fr. Robert Spitzer comment on it. He claims that scientific studies have been done on this phenomenon, and the results are compelling.

 

[Portofino]

There is a sense in which the human soul is “immaterial” in a way that other souls are not, namely that intellective operations have no bodily organ, while the vegetative and appetitive powers do…

Would it then, be accurate to say that the human being has different kinds of “souls”? Or different kinds of “forms”? It sounds as if Aquinas is saying, "one aspect of the form of the body survives death – namely, the intellect – while other aspects of the form of the body do not (for example, the vegetative and appetitive aspects of the form of the body).

This is a confusing concept because it complicates the distinction between form (singular) and matter (singular). It makes form into a plurality and even, arguably, makes “soul” into something of a plurality – a human person has souls, including an intellective human soul-- or a human person has forms, including an intellective form that is separable from matter.

I would intuitively think of “soul” as something that is more of a unity and does not admit of such splitting or division. Yet it would seem that some aspects of the “form” of the body – those aspects that humans have in common with animals or plants – are inseparable from material instantiation, while one other (the intellect) is not inseparable – and that both soul and form are, indeed, when posited of the human being, posited in the plural.