On the Immortality of the Soul

[polytropos]

I have been reviewing my Aristotle and Aquinas on these points. But I think I need a clarification or two wrt your comments.

It is my understanding that Aristotle held all organic organisms, like dogs and humans to be “material substances”. Yet above you make a distinction, saying humans are not “fully material.” Angels are obviously “immaterial substances.” I am not aware of any substances that can be called “partially material” - let alone humans .

I know what you mean - the problem is you don’t seem to be using Aristoelian terms consistently - or am I missing something?

I was looking over that post and didn’t like that I had used the term “not fully material.” Here is what I think is a more accurate statement:

A soul is said to be immaterial just in case its highest essential function is immaterial. Most animals do not have -]any highest essential function/-], so their souls are material. (This includes vegetation and animals with only “appetitive” souls.) The Aristotelian claims further that humans have rational souls and that the rational power is “higher” that the other functions (since, in the order of nature, rational powers entail vegetative and appetitive powers, but the opposite is not true). If the Aristotelian/Thomist can establish that “the intellect has no bodily organ” (as the Ross article, for instance, attempts to do), then he claims that the soul is “immaterial” since its highest function is immaterial in operation. (This does not preclude that the soul is naturally associated with matter and depends on matter for its normal functioning.)

In the above, “soul” just means the form of a living thing. I’ll correct the struck-through text to say that most animals do not perform immaterial operations, while humans do. (The struck-through text is false. I don’t mean to say that animals do not have a highest essential function - they do - but that their highest essential functions are not immaterial.) (This argument for the essential immateriality of human souls is made more technically here.)

 

[polytropos]

Ironically, I think, the conception could remain more wholly Aristotelian if the doctrine of soul sleep were posited to be correct, according to which body and soul will die together and will be raised, together, on the last day (with no interval of being a disembodied soul). This would be “tidier”, in any case, though the church obviously rejects this doctrine.

I take that to mean that the soul goes out of existence and comes back to existence when the body is resurrected. The Church rejects that doctrine, but I’d say that I find it philosophically repulsive as well. Forms are principles of individuation in hylemorphic theory. That a form persists is what it means for a thing to exist as what it is. If it goes out of existence, then its coming back into existence becomes philosophically problematic.

Philosophers come up with bizarre though experiments in these realms. What if, for example, you eat Socrates, and as you eat him, the matter that makes his body up gradually comes to replace the matter that makes your body up? (One could say that this is what happens over time to human beings anyway, although that’s not completely accurate.) Clearly you haven’t ceased to exist, even though now all of your matter is different from what it was previously. It is the persistence of your form that constitutes your existence. A less strange example is a wave; a wave’s existence is not dependent on the matter that it instantiates, since that matter is constantly changing.

But if the wave goes out of existence for some time, and then there reappears a wave of the same shape - why should we say that we have the same wave on our hands?

In Aristotelianism, it is difficult to make sense of a substance going out of existence and coming back into existence. If there is no principle of conservation, then that which comes back into existence is not the same as that which went out. I find that it much more coherent to say that the soul remains in existence, though an imperfect bodiless existence.

 

[Portofino]

I take that to mean that the soul goes out of existence and comes back to existence when the body is resurrected. The Church rejects that doctrine, but I’d say that I find it philosophically repulsive as well. Forms are principles of individuation in hylemorphic theory. That a form persists is what it means for a thing to exist as what it is. If it goes out of existence, then its coming back into existence becomes philosophically problematic.

Philosophers come up with bizarre though experiments in these realms. What if, for example, you eat Socrates, and as you eat him, the matter that makes his body up gradually comes to replace the matter that makes your body up? (One could say that this is what happens over time to human beings anyway, although that’s not completely accurate.) Clearly you haven’t ceased to exist, even though now all of your matter is different from what it was previously. It is the persistence of your form that constitutes your existence. A less strange example is a wave; a wave’s existence is not dependent on the matter that it instantiates, since that matter is constantly changing.

But if the wave goes out of existence for some time, and then there reappears a wave of the same shape - why should we say that we have the same wave on our hands?

In Aristotelianism, it is difficult to make sense of a substance going out of existence and coming back into existence. If there is no principle of conservation, then that which comes back into existence is not the same as that which went out. I find that it much more coherent to say that the soul remains in existence, though an imperfect bodiless existence.

I find the above an appealing formulation, though it seems you are willing to grant that the body is – in a sense – able to go “out of existence” (matter is conserved, but the integrity of that form “body” is not) and then, at the resurrection, can presumably be brought back into existence as a body. For example, a body, alas, can be reduced to dust. The matter that composed it continues to exist in some form, but it does not continue to exist as “body” in a functional and formal sense (it would be the equivalent of letters no longer organized into words, sentences, and paragraphs, but rather into an alphabet soup of even into a scribble of lines and curves with no signification as letters, per se).

It could be the same with what we call the soul, or – which is what you seem to be proposing – the soul could be different in that it is not subject to the same kind of “formal decomposition.” The soul would be atomic in the sense of indivisible, unable to be broken down into component parts. Indeed, if the soul is not material, there is no “raw material” of which the soul composed and it is not even clear whether the soul could be said to be composed of parts.

I don’t have a definite conviction on the matter, except to say that – common sensically, at least – I can’t exclude the possibility that the soul or personality is “de-composable” in the same way that the material that composes a body is de-composable (something like Alzheimer’s would be a seemingly empirical example of this, unless one posits that the operations of the soul are still intact, somewhere, simply no longer fully observable). But if the soul is immaterial, perhaps it is a different “kind” of thing, indeed a different substance of sorts.

Also, I think you imply a valid point, which is that – if the soul or mind cannot exist in a disembodied state, and both body and soul would be in need of regeneration, it is not so much that body and soul “stay together” as that both of them break apart, as it were, and become something else that is neither body nor soul (body and soul become some other form(s) of raw material that lacks the form of either body or soul). They certainly cannot become “nothing”, however, except in a metaphorical sense (as in the melancholy line by poet Theodore Roethke: “When I am undone, When I am no one”).

 

[Blue_Horizon]

I was looking over that post and didn’t like that I had used the term “not fully material.” Here is what I think is a more accurate statement:

In the above, “soul” just means the form of a living thing. I’ll correct the struck-through text to say that most animals do not perform immaterial operations, while humans do. (The struck-through text is false. I don’t mean to say that animals do not have a highest essential function - they do - but that their highest essential functions are not immaterial.) (This argument for the essential immateriality of human souls is made more technically here.)

Yes that is clear.
Though I think the colloquial expression “material soul” that is used to refer to the form (a causal principle or, in Aquinas, a subsisting *spiritual *entity inferred “behind” non-human material substances) is strictly speaking insupportable .
I would be surprised if Aristotle or Aquinas used a Greek/Latin equivalent, but maybe I can be corrected on that .

Having re-read my SCGentiles and various treatises on Aristotle in this area I have arrived at the following conclusions.

(1) Though Aristotle recognised that the human soul had an intellective power, some of whose operations do not all require a bodily organ, he never logically concluded that this argued for a self-subsistent immortal soul as Aquinas does. This to me suggests Aquinas is really arguing more from Christian inuition (based on revelation) than, supposedly, from the force of Reason alone. Obviously Aquinas prob is not inconsistant with Aristotle’s logic.

(2) However I think the main problem with the above is that many intelligent philosophers both at the time of Aquinas and since, esp in the light of physiological advances, would argue against Aquinas and even Aristotle on their own terms.
That is, some (if not all human intellection) cannot be easily proven to be possible without participation of a bodily organ. In Aristotle’s time the brain was considered little more than a “cooling” organ.
But more importantly it seems that many Aristotelians argue that their master did teach that some human intellection required participation of bodiliness (even if they didn’t know about the brain) because of the need for the “phantasm.”

Now Aquinas’s argument apparantly rests on the premise that NO bodily participation whatsoever is required in human intellection. And he assumes Aristotle agreed with him. Yet this is a point of contention amongst Aristotelians it seems.
Aquinas has some very elaborate arguments to deny the Phantasm is required in any human intellection and he believes this is the correct interpretation of Aristotle to boot.

So…it seems to me very difficult to show purely by Reason alone that the human soul is immortal because human intellective acts are always without bodily participation.

BTW I see that both Aristotle and Aquinas admit that much of memory does rely on a bodily organ or at least an unlocated bodily operation - which is prob why it prob never figures at all in this debate.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

.

I take that to mean that the soul goes out of existence and comes back to existence when the body is resurrected.

I don’t believe that is what I understand by Portofino’s expression. “Sleep” connotates perduring existence of an underlying subject (form if you must) but somehow a change in essence or at least substance.

Now if we think that is a self-contradictory statement it really is no more self contradictory than what Aquinas seems to assert (of course it may well be a limitation of my understanding).

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

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

(1) He seems to be saying the human intellect operates better when it is…no longer human .

(2) That sounds like a change in subsistence principles to me. First it was the body/soul composite that is the subject of subsistence, now it is suddenly the soul alone. And it is agreed that the soul cannot be called human because an essential part of its nature is missing to it (the body/matter).
Is this not the very definition of “substantial change” (even though “form” is allegedly the same)? If we can somehow explain how the essence/nature (human) can change while the form does not then all is well I suppose. But for the life of me I cannot understand the logic of Aquinas on this point (he says that a hand can validly be said to subsist independently of the body it is attached to ).

So Portofino’s “sleep” example at least acknowledges the essence/nature of the soul has changed because it is no longer composited with the body and can no longer carry out any operations that could be rightly called human (including intellective ones).

Forms are principles of individuation in hylemorphic theory. That a form persists is what it means for a thing to exist as what it is. If it goes out of existence, then its coming back into existence becomes philosophically problematic.

I think you may really mean that forms are principles of enduring identity beneath outward changes?
Isn’t it matter that enables distinction between different individuals of the same species (having the same form).
Aristotle did not speak of immaterial subsisting forms (angels) so lets leave them out of the picture.

A less strange example is a wave; a wave’s existence is not dependent on the matter that it instantiates, since that matter is constantly changing.

OK, I understand what you are saying (a wave does not need any particular bit of water to exist…however it really does need some water. Hard to imagine wave (form) with no water (matter) or underlying matter at all).

So yes, the hylomorphic explanation for continuity of identity despite “material change” is what form is all about.
We also need to remember that hylomorphism also explains how many individuals of the same form can exist as independent identities - that is what matter is all about.

But who said hylomorphic principles (induced from material observation) can be validly extrapolated into the realm of disembodied souls where there is no materiality?
But lets ignore that assumption…
If the soul is the same form as on earth then yes identity is preserved.
But how is individuality preserved amongst countless millions of subsisting forms (disembodied souls) in the heavens if there is no matter?

Take the wave example, if there is no water (matter) how can different waves be distinguished even if we pretend a wave (form) can subsist without water?
This I believe is exactly the point Avicenna (or was it Averroes) made when he argued we all go back to a single human “Intellect” after death.

 

[polytropos]

I find the above an appealing formulation, though it seems you are willing to grant that the body is – in a sense – able to go “out of existence” (matter is conserved, but the integrity of that form “body” is not) and then, at the resurrection, can presumably be brought back into existence as a body. For example, a body, alas, can be reduced to dust. The matter that composed it continues to exist in some form, but it does not continue to exist as “body” in a functional and formal sense (it would be the equivalent of letters no longer organized into words, sentences, and paragraphs, but rather into an alphabet soup of even into a scribble of lines and curves with no signification as letters, per se).

Well, I think that to speak of my body (as in, the body as a living person) as a “body” separated from a soul can be a bit misleading. My soul is essentially immaterial, which means that it accounts for my rational operations, but it also accounts for my physical vegetative and appetitive operations. So my body is a living thing informed by my soul, and even to say body=matter would be a bit too simplistic. (Elizabeth Anscombe wrote a very brief essay “Twenty Opinions Common among Modern Anglo-American Philosophers”, and the first on her list was that “A dead man - a human corpse - is a man, not an ex-man.”)

Whatever matter my soul is attached to is my body. When I die, my soul is not attached to matter. When my body is resurrected, my soul will once again be in its natural state, associated with matter.

The soul would be atomic in the sense of indivisible, unable to be broken down into component parts. Indeed, if the soul is not material, there is no “raw material” of which the soul composed and it is not even clear whether the soul could be said to be composed of parts.

Souls are “simple,” but simplicity is an analogical notion. Material substances are “simple” in a sense in that they are unified by a form, but ultimately contain various compositions (chiefly matter-form), and there is the fact that matter itself is divisible. An angel is simpler, in that it is not composed of form and matter but just of subsistent form. But it is still composed of existence and essence. God, on the other hand, is simpler to a greater and more perfect degree, in that in him, not even essence and existence are composed.

The human soul is a subsistent form, and is in that sense simple in a sense similar to angels. (But a disembodied soul qua substance is just an imperfect human.)

I don’t have a definite conviction on the matter, except to say that – common sensically, at least – I can’t exclude the possibility that the soul or personality is “de-composable” in the same way that the material that composes a body is de-composable (something like Alzheimer’s would be a seemingly empirical example of this, unless one posits that the operations of the soul are still intact, somewhere, simply no longer fully observable). But if the soul is immaterial, perhaps it is a different “kind” of thing, indeed a different substance of sorts.

I think if one wanted to argue about the soul in a discussion removed from Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy, one could drift in this direction. But it was never the active operations that defined the souls, but rather its characteristic (or, we should say, essential potencies). As we know from experience, it is not the exercising of rational capacities that makes one human. We are not less human when we are in a coma, asleep, very young, or very old. We may not be exercising our rational faculties at that time, but we still have a human form, ie. we are of a natural kind which has rationality of the essence.

Also, I think you imply a valid point, which is that – if the soul or mind cannot exist in a disembodied state, and both body and soul would be in need of regeneration, it is not so much that body and soul “stay together” as that both of them break apart, as it were, and become something else that is neither body nor soul (body and soul become some other form(s) of raw material that lacks the form of either body or soul).

I do not believe this was implied by what I said. There is the human substance. The point in immortality of the soul is that the human form is such that, if it is to become detached from matter, it continues to exist. The human substance still exists, and substances are ontologically primary. When detached from matter, the soul is all that is left of the human substance, now a subsistent form.

I think there is substance dualism latent in many of your descriptions. You are speaking of the body and soul becoming something that is neither body nor soul. But what is fundamental is to keep one’s eye on the human substance, the important point being that a subsistent human soul can exist without matter.

In the second bolded part, I can’t tell if you mean “form” in the technical sense. In that case, the description is certainly not something a Thomist would agree to. The soul is the form of the living body. The body is not a separate thing from the human, and the soul (of course) does not have its own form because it is a form.

 

[polytropos]

Though I think the colloquial expression “material soul” that is used to refer to the form (a causal principle or, in Aquinas, a subsisting *spiritual *entity inferred “behind” non-human material substances) is strictly speaking insupportable .
I would be surprised if Aristotle or Aquinas used a Greek/Latin equivalent, but maybe I can be corrected on that .

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

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

(1) Though Aristotle recognised that the human soul had an intellective power, some of whose operations do not all require a bodily organ, he never logically concluded that this argued for a self-subsistent immortal soul as Aquinas does. This to me suggests Aquinas is really arguing more from Christian inuition (based on revelation) than, supposedly, from the force of Reason alone. Obviously Aquinas prob is not inconsistant with Aristotle’s logic.

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

That is, some (if not all human intellection) cannot be easily proven to be possible without participation of a bodily organ. In Aristotle’s time the brain was considered little more than a “cooling” organ.
But more importantly it seems that many Aristotelians argue that their master did teach that some human intellection required participation of bodiliness (even if they didn’t know about the brain) because of the need for the “phantasm.”

Now Aquinas’s argument apparantly rests on the premise that NO bodily participation whatsoever is required in human intellection. And he assumes Aristotle agreed with him.

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

So…it seems to me very difficult to show purely by Reason alone that the human soul is immortal because human intellective acts are always without bodily participation.

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

 

[polytropos]

I don’t believe that is what I understand by Portofino’s expression. “Sleep” connotates perduring existence of an underlying subject (form if you must) but somehow a change in essence or at least substance.

I agree that “sleep” connotes perduring existence, but that does not square with Portofino’s further description: “according to which body and soul will die together and will be raised, together, on the last day (with no interval of being a disembodied soul).”

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

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

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

The soul does operate through matter and the human substance is a composite of matter and form. But let’s think about what that means. That the soul operates through matter does not imply that all of the souls operations are material. Further, the reliance of any immaterial operations (intellection) on material operations (the acquisition of phantasms by means of the senses) does not make it essentially reliant on matter, just accidentally.

Further, to nitpick: it is not the body/soul composite that defines the subsisting “human” nature. By nature, one (I assume) means essence or real definition or quiddity, and that is certainly, on Aquinas’s view, determined by the form, not the matter.

Lastly, I don’t think it’s quite accurate to say that everything changes after death and that the intellect “springs free.” Humans rely on their bodies in practice. A disembodied soul is in a severely diminished state (without divine help). (Maybe you have particular passages in mind. But I think what I am saying is along the lines of how Aquinas has been interpreted, at least in the analytic school of Thomists.)

I think you may really mean that forms are principles of enduring identity beneath outward changes?
Isn’t it matter that enables distinction between different individuals of the same species (having the same form).

The issues of identity and individuation are closely related. If I am not identical to you, then I am individuated from you.

Aristotle did not speak of immaterial subsisting forms (angels) so lets leave them out of the picture.

But our concern is with Aquinas’s theory of mind, which develops and in some senses departs from Aristotle’s. The essence-existence distinction makes it possible for Aquinas to conceive of angels existing; they at least seem to be good representative examples of what should be regarded as possible in Aquinas’s metaphysical system but which Aristotle did not conceive of, having only a form-matter distinction.

OK, I understand what you are saying (a wave does not need any particular bit of water to exist…however it really does need some water. Hard to imagine wave (form) with no water (matter) or underlying matter at all).

Yes, it does. Aquinas’s argument for the immortality of human souls essentially requires the argument that there is a relevant difference between human forms and all other essentially material forms (like waves, or bears, or bushes) in that human forms have an immaterial intellectual operation.

The point of the wave example was not to say that a wave can exist without a matter, but that there is no sense of speaking of a substance going into and out of existence, since without an perduring form, it would not be the same substance.

But who said hylomorphic principles (induced from material observation) can be validly extrapolated into the realm of disembodied souls where there is no materiality?
But lets ignore that assumption…
If the soul is the same form as on earth then yes identity is preserved.
But how is individuality preserved amongst countless millions of subsisting forms (disembodied souls) in the heavens if there is no matter?

The Averroist error lies a bit earlier. Averroes believed not that humans have individual souls which return to a single human intelligence upon death, but that all humans had the same intellect of a single angel dispersed throughout mankind. For that reason, one would conclude that after death souls are no longer individuated.

I do not see the issue arising on the Thomist view. In Thomism, forms as encountered in substances are concrete rather than abstract. You and I both have human forms, but your form is your humanity, and my form is my humanity. They are not the same form dispersed among two (or, at least, if someone were to make such a claim, they would need to be more precise). The view that upon death already individuated forms should fall into a singular intelligence seems to rely itself on a “material” picture of lumping up together. But since human forms are themselves particulars since they were previously individuated, there seems to be no reason to believe that they would do that.

That said, as I mentioned before, I am skeptical anyway of the need for angels to be of separate species in order for them to be individuated.

 

[Portofino]

Well, I think that to speak of my body (as in, the body as a living person) as a “body” separated from a soul can be a bit misleading. My soul is essentially immaterial, which means that it accounts for my rational operations, but it also accounts for my physical vegetative and appetitive operations.

This is a re-statement of the premise; I think what I (and Blue Horizon) are having problems with is that I don’t see compelling evidence that the premise is necessarily true.

Premise: “the soul is essentially immaterial.”

I’m willing to accept that one cannot prove that it isn’t, if one believes it transcends the senses (e.g., if someone is brain dead, an intellective faculty and a consciousness may still exist – somewhere). What I’m not seeing, however, is that one can prove that is is. This statement can neither be proven nor disproven; it’s a conceptual possibility, but – because it can be neither proven nor disproven – I cannot accept it as an axiom on which you can then build.

So my body is a living thing informed by my soul, and even to say body=matter would be a bit too simplistic. (Elizabeth Anscombe wrote a very brief essay “Twenty Opinions Common among Modern Anglo-American Philosophers”, and the first on her list was that “A dead man - a human corpse - is a man, not an ex-man.”)

The question – and this may be neither here nor there, as regards the soul – is whether a body reduced to dust and scattered to the four corners of the wind is still a man; indeed, whether the a particle of ash (no longer with the structural of a body, as it were) could still be called a man, or part of a man.

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

But this mixing of reason and revelation doesn’t help the conversation, in “mixed company.” It reason alone can’t get us there, then some of us won’t “get” there.

we know from experience, it is not the exercising of rational capacities that makes one human. We are not less human when we are in a coma, asleep, very young, or very old. We may not be exercising our rational faculties at that time, but we still have a human form, ie. we are of a natural kind which has rationality of the essence.

You doubtless do not view it this way, but this has a very Platonic/Cartesian flavor to me. There is the sense of an invisible essence, a certain “je ne sais quoi” of the human organism that is posited. Let’s say there’s an explosion, or a predator or scavenger in nature consumes and digests a human person. In what sense, even beyond what has occurred, are the material remains still a “human person.” That’s one point; another is that I still cannot get past the Alzeheimer’s example, or example of someone who has suffered a stroke. The “intellective” faculties of mind are compromised. Why should I be compelled to believe that they exist independently of physicality? They may in the sense that the proposition is unfalsifiable – that is, for all I know, their continued existence eludes the senses. This is a proposition, however, that I consider cannot be proven either way (assuming one doesn’t place the burden of proof on those who would say, “soul is dependent on body for its continued existence” but not on those who say, “soul is independent on body for its continued existence”). The only proof I’m seeing for the proposition “soul is not dependent on body for its continued existence” is that one has defined soul as such. How does one establish, however, that one’s definition or conception of soul is correct.

I think we agree that some of Thomas’ assertions are based on reason, but some (like the predicted event of the resurrection of the body) are based on revelation. For the ones purported to be based on reason, though – such as the immateriality of the soul and its continued existence after death – I’m just not seeing why I should attach more weight to it than that it is a “conceptual possibility”, no more provable or disprovable than the proposition “conscious existence ceases with the death of the body.” I get it that, “it’s not because Thomas conceives of the existence as separate from essence, etc.” To follow through on this argument, what one is saying is that, “therefore, Thomas is predicting that, after death, soul will continue to be conscious.” All I’m taking from this is that A. Thomas views the soul this way, and this is indeed logically necessarily based on his definitions and B. he therefore predicts that, upon death, the soul will maintain its integrity as a conscious entity (a prediction that’s not yet testable, except in the first person – i.e., at the moment of death).

 

[Portofino]

I agree that “sleep” connotes perduring existence, but that does not square with Portofino’s further description: “according to which body and soul will die together and will be raised, together, on the last day (with no interval of being a disembodied soul).”

Correct. I do not think we have enough information to say whether conscious awareness does or does not perdure beyond death – and frankly, if the body were destroyed in something like an explosion, or if its bones were were reduced to dust, or it was consumed by fish of the sea, I would not call it a body any longer, dead or otherwise. The body as an organism would no longer exist, in that case, even though matter itself can neither be created nor destroyed (in the vein of “There may have been a carbon atom in last night’s cupcake that was once integral to the structure of Julius Caesar’s left toenail” marquette.edu/magazine/recent.php?subaction=showfull&id=1273588200). Whether conscious awareness continues to exist after death, untethered from the body, is – as I’ve tried to show – an empirical prediction that would therefore require empirical verification. Defining what aspects of the human personality would then be able to remain intact (memories, imagination, emotion, intellect, desires), and what aspects of the human personality would not is another intriguing speculative question – in my mind – but one that does not admit of a definitive, testable answer.

 

[polytropos]

This is a re-statement of the premise; I think what I (and Blue Horizon) are having problems with is that I don’t see compelling evidence that the premise is necessarily true.

Premise: “the soul is essentially immaterial.”

I’m willing to accept that one cannot prove that it isn’t, if one believes it transcends the senses (e.g., if someone is brain dead, an intellective faculty and a consciousness may still exist – somewhere). What I’m not seeing, however, is that one can prove that is is. This statement can neither be proven nor disproven; it’s a conceptual possibility, but – because it can be neither proven nor disproven – I cannot accept it as an axiom on which you can then build.

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

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

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

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

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

 

[Portofino]

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

That is fair enough. And certainly, it works in both directions. One who is not convinced by the hylomorphic theory – or any other competing theory – would flip this statement and say, “an adequate alternate theory of mind – such as hylomorphic dualism – would be sufficient to refute materialism, but none is forthcoming.”

I suspect that supporters of materialism would make the argument that a materialist explanation is adequate while supporters of hylomorphic dualism would make the argument that it is actually the hylomorphic dualist explanation that is adequate (while not only materialism, but Cartesian dualism or any other theory of mind is inadequate).

I also acknowledge that it’s a separate issue – albeit a necessary one, as a precondition to agreeing with the specific argument being made for a immaterial existence post physical death – as to whether intellective faculties are immaterial in nature (i.e, not constituted of matter, mass-energy; not taking up space). The question then becomes to what extent hylomorphic dualism either necessarily entails an immaterial existence after physical death (that it must be the case, a priori), or at least does not definitively exclude the possibility (it could be the case). Whether one can then define the qualities of that immaterial existence – is it conscious, does it remember, does it desire, does it think – is a related question. Interestingly, one could posit that an immaterial existence subsequent to physical death is not necessarily a conscious immaterial existence or one with access to memories. This wouldn’t be a terribly useful form of immaterial existence, from a Christian perspective, but the question may be un-resolvable on a priori basis; the best form of test of the prediction, “not all of this structure rests on these particular load-bearing columns; all or part of this structure will still stand without them” is to remove those load-bearing columns and see what happens without them (for some, a physical death is the experiment and the result is that there is no evidence of continued consciousness; but if one posits that it simply isn’t detectable to the senses or to some other instrument, then one is simply positing that it is possible that it continues to exist but escapes detection (an unfalsifiable assertion).

Baruch Spinoza is another hylomorphic dualist and it is interesting in that he did not believe in a personal immortality, but hold to some conception of immortality, to something that is not destroyed by death (see next post).

 

[Portofino]

(continued)

**EV29- The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but there remains of it something which is eternal.

(Proof) There is necessarily in God a concept or idea which expresses the essence of the human body, which, therefore is necessarily something appertaining to the essence of the human mind. But we have not assigned to the human mind any duration, definable by time, except insofar as it expresses the actual existence of the body, which is explained through duration, and may be defined by time – that is we do not assign to it duration, except while the body endures. Yet there is something, notwithstanding, which is conceived by a certain eternal necessity through the very essence of God; this something, which appertains to the essence of the mind, will necessarily be eternal.

EIV39note – …But here it should be noted that I understand the Body to die when its parts are so disposed that they acquire a different ratio of motion and rest to one another. For I dare not deny that – even though the circulation of the blood is maintained, as well as the other [signs] on account of which the Body is thought to be alive – the human Body can nevertheless be changed into another nature completely different from its own. For no reason forces me to think that the Body does not die unless it is changed into a corpse. And, indeed, experience seems to urge the opposite conclusion. Sometimes a man undergoes such changes that I should hardly believe that he was the same man. For example, I have heard tell of a Spanish poet who was struck by an illness; though he recovered, he remained so oblivious to his past life that he did not believe the tales and tragedies he had written were his own. He might have been taken for a grown-up infant had he also forgotten his native tongue.

EIp8 – By eternity, I mean existence itself, insofar as it is conceived necessarily to follow solely from the definition of that which is eternal. (Explanation) – Existence of this kind is conceived as an eternal truth, like the essence of a thing, and, therefore, cannot be explained by means of continuance or time, though continuance may be conceived without a beginning or end.

EIp24- The essence of things produced by God does not involve existence. (Corollary)… God must be the sole cause, inasmuch as to him alone existence appertain.

EIp25 – God is the efficient cause not only of the existence of things, but also of their essence.

EIIp8 – The ideas of particular things, or of modes, that do not exist, must be comprehended in the infinite idea of God, in the same way as the formal essences of particular things or modes are contained in the attributes of God. Note – If anyone desires an example to throw more light on this question, I shall, I fear, not be able to give him any, which adequately explains the thing of which I here speak, inasmuch as it is unique; however, I will endeavour to illustrate it as far as possible. The nature of a circle is such that if any number of straight lines intersect within it, the rectangles formed by their segments will be equal to one another; thus, infinite equal rectangles are contained in a circle. Yet none of these rectangles can be said to exist, except in so far as the circle exists; nor can the idea of any of these rectangles be said to exist, except in so far as they are comprehended in the idea of the circle. Let us grant that, from this infinite number of rectangles, two only exist. The ideas of these two not only exist, in so far as they are contained in the idea of the circle, but also as they involve the existence of those rectangles; wherefore they are distinguished from the remaining ideas of the remaining rectangles.

**

One blogger’s interpretation of this passage (kvond.wordpress.com/2008/07/03/spinoza-on-the-immortality-of-the-soul/):

So the essence of a mind is said to exist within the mind of God, eternally, despite its own limited duration. What this does is give the human mind a kind of eternity, an existence outside of the brief flicker of expression, but what this also does is place that eternal existence in relation to all other essences, of all other things, animate and inanimate, which are also produced by God/Nature. The human mind is eternal in essence as all other things are eternal in essence. But further, (as is shown in the note to EIV39 below), identity itself, our preservation of ourselves as ourselves in duration, is also not guaranteed, and is in fact likely an illusion of perspective. Just as his Spanish poet has died to himself, despite the continuity of his body, unable to recognize even his own writings, we too would only be an infinite series of eternal essences – slight modifications of a rectangle within its circle – defined only by our momentary consonance of parts – both ideational and extended. It is not so much that Spinoza has awarded undue eternity to the human mind, but rather has radically (categorically) undermined the basis upon which the human mind privileges itself to be unique among things in this world, given eternal life, but a life fused with all other things, capable as alien to its own “past” as akin to another thing.

 

[Portofino]

p.s. Has there been speculation as to whether sleep states – states of unconsciousness – point to possibilities of what continued form an immaterial existence would take after death? Insofar as sleep states exist, consciousness and the existence of an immaterial mind would not be inseparable. If the mind is immaterial in nature, that does not preclude it from unconsciousness (thus, “immaterial in nature” is not, by definition, conscious).

Likewise, insofar as dream states exist, having an altered state of consciousness – something between consciousness and unconsciousness, by our standards – and the existence of an immaterial mind could not excluded.

It would seem that soul sleep is indeed still on the table, even if one accepts hylomorphic dualism and an immaterial mind’s survival, post physical death

 

[polytropos]

The question – and this may be neither here nor there, as regards the soul – is whether a body reduced to dust and scattered to the four corners of the wind is still a man; indeed, whether the a particle of ash (no longer with the structural of a body, as it were) could still be called a man, or part of a man.

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

Well, if a human corpse is not a man but an ex-man, then the body reduced to dust after death is likewise an “ex-man.” (What Anscombe is getting at with her aphorism is that to call a corpse a man is a bit of an equivocation on the term “man.” It no longer has the form of “man.” It is dead organic matter.)

Aquinas believed that the human soul was immortal, but in his commentary on Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he actually denies that you and I qua humans are immortal. There is an important distinction to grasp there.

I do not suggest that the scattered dust that once constituted a human body must come back together for the resurrection of the body. As I articulated before, I take “the body” to be the material cause of a human substance (which means that it must presently be part of said human substance). If a disembodied human soul is rejoined to matter, then it is resurrected and has regained its body. The matter need not be the same matter. (Thomists, after all, have their doctrine of protomatter. There is ultimately not distinction between this matter and that matter, as both are just an underlying principle of potency, a mass-energy substrata.)

You doubtless do not view it this way, but this has a very Platonic/Cartesian flavor to me. There is the sense of an invisible essence, a certain “je ne sais quoi” of the human organism that is posited.

Well, I think that it is obviously the case that hylemorphic dualism rises or falls with general hylemorphic metaphysics (a bit of exposition on the term essence here). Hylemorphism is a global metaphysical theory, and hylemorphic dualism is just one corollary of it. I don’t posit an invisible essence just for the human; I posit one for every natural substance.

Humans are natural substances, ergo humans have forms. (Essence just means real definition, and is perhaps best thought of as what a substance’s form is. For example, gold is a natural substance, the essence of which is to have atomic number 79, to be malleable and yellow, etc.) By examining the human organism, we can try to draw some conclusions about the human form.

Any human has rationality of the essence just like an acorn laying on the pavement has vegetative growth of the essence (ie. if one were to provide the “real definition” of an oak, it would contain the oak’s capacity to grow). It’s not growing now, but it is a disposition intrinsic to the kind of the oak, of which the acorn is a part.

Let’s say there’s an explosion, or a predator or scavenger in nature consumes and digests a human person. In what sense, even beyond what has occurred, are the material remains still a “human person.” That’s one point; another is that I still cannot get past the Alzeheimer’s example, or example of someone who has suffered a stroke. The “intellective” faculties of mind are compromised. Why should I be compelled to believe that they exist independently of physicality?

In the former cases, you are right (if this is what you are suggesting) that there is not a sense in which the exploded body or decomposed remains are a human person. That is precisely what the hylemorphist is not claiming. (I think the points I made above with regard to corpses and men address this point directly enough.)

But the Alzeheimer’s case is relevantly different. The form is a unifying principle of a natural substance. An Alzeheimer’s patient has not lost his form. (Contrast with the exploded or consumed body, which has lost its form.) It is more like a tree from which we’ve stripped every leaf. It no longer can collect sunlight and photosynthesize; perhaps it will even die before leaves can grow back. As long as it is alive, though, it nevertheless has the form of a living tree. (After it dies, it is only a “tree” in an equivocal sense. It is really dead organic matter.) The exercise of essential capacities is not necessary to have a certain form or to be of a certain kind. That point is not limited to the hylemorphic analysis of humans; it is a global point made for all substances. (And, I think, one runs into difficulties if it is denied. Those who would like to deny the relevance of potential rationality as the defining characteristic of humanity run into issues in their analysis of people who wake up from comas and even people who go to sleep. People do not cease to be human when they stop exercising their rational capacities. This seems to be a basic point, a theory which does not account for which would seem to be missing something substantial.)

 

[polytropos]

They may in the sense that the proposition is unfalsifiable – that is, for all I know, their continued existence eludes the senses. This is a proposition, however, that I consider cannot be proven either way (assuming one doesn’t place the burden of proof on those who would say, “soul is dependent on body for its continued existence” but not on those who say, “soul is independent on body for its continued existence”). The only proof I’m seeing for the proposition “soul is not dependent on body for its continued existence” is that one has defined soul as such. How does one establish, however, that one’s definition or conception of soul is correct.

Again, I am not at all interested in evading by saying that my claims are unfalsifiable and therefore immune.

Note also that soul has not been defined as immortal in this conversation. Soul has been defined as the form of a living body; since trees have non-immortal souls, I am not including immortality in my “definition or conception of soul.”

I would defer to the Ross and Oderberg articles I have cited to make the case that the intellect is immaterial. The Oderberg article also provides a basis for the arguments that the soul is essentially immaterial (even though some of its operations are material). We can perhaps discuss those elsewhere, but again, they seem to be out of the scope of this topic.

I think we agree that some of Thomas’ assertions are based on reason, but some (like the predicted event of the resurrection of the body) are based on revelation. For the ones purported to be based on reason, though – such as the immateriality of the soul and its continued existence after death – I’m just not seeing why I should attach more weight to it than that it is a “conceptual possibility”, no more provable or disprovable than the proposition “conscious existence ceases with the death of the body.” I get it that, “it’s not because Thomas conceives of the existence as separate from essence, etc.” To follow through on this argument, what one is saying is that, “therefore, Thomas is predicting that, after death, soul will continue to be conscious.” All I’m taking from this is that A. Thomas views the soul this way, and this is indeed logically necessarily based on his definitions and B. he therefore predicts that, upon death, the soul will maintain its integrity as a conscious entity (a prediction that’s not yet testable, except in the first person – i.e., at the moment of death).

A couple points:

• Concerning the resurrection of the body, the role of reason is to determine which proposals are philosophically coherent and which are consonant with revealed truth. For example, given the necessary conditions of continued identity of any substance, it is not feasible to argue that both the formal and material causes of the human cease to exist. The material cause alone will not account for continued identity. So the form would have to persist for the resurrection to be possible. But that squares well with the fact that that is what reason tells us persists after death anyway.
• Aquinas is not arguing that it is just possible for the soul to exist after death. His argument is that the soul (the form) of a human is essentially immaterial. Its highest operation does not depend on matter, so it does not depend for its existence on matter. Therefore, the dissociation of matter should not bear directly on the existence of the soul.
• I am not sure that Aquinas would argue that reason shows us that the soul will be a “conscious entity” after death. Consciousness is the Cartesian paradigm of an immaterial soul, but that has to do with the collapse of Aristotelian metaphysical categories into the narrow bifurcation of res cogitans and res extensa. Intellection is essentially immaterial. Consciousness (our sensory faculties, our memories, our emotions, our desires, etc.), though, is a material faculty in most respects. Aquinas might hold that before the resurrection of the body, we are capable of consciousness with the help of God, but here he is making use of revelation as well. (I have certainly not been arguing for the persisting consciousness of humans after death, at least not on the basis of reason alone.) This is a point discussed in the Feser article. The soul can’t naturally make use of its material faculties after it is no longer united to matter; it is in a very diminished state, at least on its own.

 

[polytropos]

That is fair enough. And certainly, it works in both directions. One who is not convinced by the hylomorphic theory – or any other competing theory – would flip this statement and say, “an adequate alternate theory of mind – such as hylomorphic dualism – would be sufficient to refute materialism, but none is forthcoming.”

I suspect that supporters of materialism would make the argument that a materialist explanation is adequate while supporters of hylomorphic dualism would make the argument that it is actually the hylomorphic dualist explanation that is adequate (while not only materialism, but Cartesian dualism or any other theory of mind is inadequate).

Yes, I think this is the way philosophical debate generally proceeds. One believes that his own explanation is the best and that others are less adequate.

I’d note, though, again, that hylemorphism itself is a global metaphysical theory adopted for reasons distinct from, though related to, philosophy of mind. Materialism faces problems in both areas.

Lots of naturalists–John Searle, Hilary Putnam, Thomas Nagel–recognize problems with materialism, and many recognize that the issues materialism faces with respect to mind suggest a problem with materialism globally, since one’s view of mind inevitably impacts one’s views of epistemology and metaphysics.

I think we have some valuable data, however. For example: Science works. We can obtain real knowledge of the natures of things. We are capable of abstracting universal forms from the world.

Karl Popper famously attempted back in the '50s to provide a logical analysis of induction given a relatively Humean view of causation. He is regarded as having failed, and since then, no one has really tried. But the problem is that we clearly do obtain usable and true universal generalizations about the world. A more robust theory of knowledge - such as that delivered by a hylemorphic worldview - seems to be appropriate, in my opinion.

(These are just broad arguments in favor of hylemorphism, what I regard as good motivations for the theory. Most philosophers are not swayed by singular arguments for and against theories - that is just not how humans make decisions.)

 

[polytropos]

p.s. Has there been speculation as to whether sleep states – states of unconsciousness – point to possibilities of what continued form an immaterial existence would take after death? Insofar as sleep states exist, consciousness and the existence of an immaterial mind would not be inseparable. If the mind is immaterial in nature, that does not preclude it from unconsciousness (thus, “immaterial in nature” is not, by definition, conscious).

I think you’re right. But Aristotelians and Thomists do not tend to regard “immaterial in nature” and consciousness as equivalent anyway. (That is, again, a post-Cartesian paradigm.) My dog seems to be conscious. But I don’t think my dog has an immaterial soul, because its soul is not intellectual.

(This is, in my opinion, one of the many places where hylemorphism has a huge advantage over substance dualism. Most research of the smartest species - chimps, great apes, dolphins - has revealed a huge gap between human intellect and the activities that might analogously, if not equivocally, be called “intellectual” in such species. But if consciousness is the mark of an immaterial soul, then it really does seem like many other species would have immortal souls. Descartes thought that animals were not conscious, and certain substance dualists still argue that. But I find that rather implausible. That said, I find consciousness to be a problem for materialism in that it requires things, like intentionality, that standard materialism is conceptually unable to accommodate, but that is not to say that consciousness is immaterial. In such discussions, it is necessary to understand that material in materialism and material in hylemorphism signify slightly different things.)

It would seem that soul sleep is indeed still on the table, even if one accepts hylomorphic dualism and an immaterial mind’s survival, post physical death

It depends what you mean by soul sleep. If you mean what you previously said - that the soul goes out of existence - then that would not follow from what you’ve said here.

As a Catholic, I’m content to say that the soul exists after death. In its natural state, it would not have to be conscious. I believe on the basis of revelation that it will be conscious with the aid of God. This is discussed in the Feser blog post:

A human being is a single substance, and after death but prior to bodily resurrection most of its activities (walking, seeing, hearing, digesting, etc.) are no longer naturally possible for it. Hence it is in that sense – and obviously – radically diminished. However, the capacities that naturally survive are the highest ones – intellect and will – and divine assistance also raises the otherwise diminished soul to something it never had even when the body was present, viz. the beatific vision.

 

[polytropos]

The question – and this may be neither here nor there, as regards the soul – is whether a body reduced to dust and scattered to the four corners of the wind is still a man; indeed, whether the a particle of ash (no longer with the structural of a body, as it were) could still be called a man, or part of a man.

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

Looking back at your response here, I am wondering if my quotation from Elizabeth Anscombe’s essay was unclear. The essay was titled “Twenty Opinions Common among Modern Anglo-American Philosophers” and the quote was “A dead man - a human corpse - is a man, not an ex-man.” Anscombe is citing what she regarded as common prejudices among analytical philosophers, not making statements of her own positions. She disagreed that a human corpse is a man. I think my citing may have given the impression that she agreed with the statements she was making. She was rather stating that she found them philosophically problematic and inconsistent with Christianity.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

• I don’t think super lunar bodies were taken to be alive, so their forms would not have been called souls. (Though I may be wrong on this.)

Have a look at SCG 1:97 “That God is Living”
" Life is attributed to beings inasmuch as they appear to move of themselves, and not
to be moved by another… Those things alone move of themselves which do so by virtue of their compos-ition of a moving force and matter moved - as things with souls; hence these alone are properly said to live."

And Rickaby SJ comments “The motion of the heavenly bodies he attributed, not without hesitation, to their being animated by a soul.”

Also see SCG 2:22-23 which is not always translated.
Rickaby’s comments wrt SCG 2:24 “All Things Seek Good”
“I may refer to the original Latin of the Contra Gentiles, B. III, Chapp. XXII, XXIII, LXXXII-LXXXVIII, CIV, CV. St Thomas speaks of the ‘heavenly bodies’. … The corpus coeleste, ‘the heavenly body’ par excellence with him, is the tenth and outermost crystalline sphere, which by its diurnal motion from east to west controls the motion of all inferior material things, and is called the primum mobile. St Thomas argues that this outermost sphere itself is moved by some intelligence, either by a soul animating it, or by an angel, or immediately by God.”

Rickaby provides a quote translation of these often missing chapters from Aquinas:
"“It makes no difference to our present purpose, whether the heavenly sphere is moved by a subsistent intelligence united with it as a soul, or by an intelligence subsisting apart; and whether each of the heavenly spheres is moved by God, or whether none of them is moved by Him immediately, but they are moved mediately through created spirits; or whether the first alone is moved immediately by God, and the others through the medium of created spirits; provided it be held that the movement of the heavens is the work of spirit.”

Aquinas, a “Physicist” limited by his Age, did not realise that material nature (gravity) provides a more simple “soul-less” material/mechanistic account for the planets moving of themselves without assistance. His physics/philosophy was sure that all local motion will cease if a thing is left to itself. And as he held as an inviolable principle that all things in locomotion are moved by another or are alive (have a soul) he concluded on balance of empirical evidence (and ancient astrology) that the heavenly bodies were in fact alive in some fashion and therefore had souls. He was of course troubled by this conclusion - and he was right to be so troubled. This mistaken understanding also somewhat undermines his proof of the existence of God by way of observed sensible change (at least so far as locomotive change is concerned).