Reconciling Humani Generis with the human genetic data showing that there never were just two first parents

[Neithan]

If there is a soul, what does it do?

It knows, and it wills. Without it, we could not apprehend universals or exercise free will. Since it’s united to the body its acts are in the body, not on the body. There is a subtlety there that is easily misconstrued with popular spiritualism or Cartesian dualism.

 

[niceatheist]

niceatheist:

If there is a soul, what does it do?

It knows, and it wills. Without it, we could not apprehend universals or exercise free will. Since it’s united to the body its acts are in the body, not on the body. There is a subtlety there that is easily misconstrued with popular spiritualism or Cartesian dualism.

Do chimpanzees not demonstrate free will? They are hardly automata, and demonstrate many of the same behaviors we do; emotions, a sense of right and wrong, cultural transmission. Yes, they are not going to write sonnets, but perhaps the fact that their brains one third the size of our brains. What about elephants. African elephants demonstrate mourning over their dead (though I hesitate to use the word “ritual”, which may be anthropomorphizing them a bit much), not to mention the very peculiar behavior of taking a great interest in the bones of their dead.

It’s always been my largest problem with concepts of a soul as an active agent in behavior. If we’ve got one, but elephants don’t, then why the heck do elephants seem to have an almost ritualistic (ugh) view of their dead. At the very least, it demonstrates that at least some animals have a sense of kinship for members of their group that extends beyond death, and that’s getting awfully close to the symbolic behavior so long ascribed only to humans.

Again, I dislike terms like “ritual” when applied to other animals who exhibit these behaviors, and it is entirely possible that there are other explanations.

One area where we know some animals have behaviors like ours is codes of behavior. Chimpanzee tribes are not realms of mayhem. Chimps have codes of behavior (morals) if you will, and when a chimp violates one of those codes, there are social consequences; sometimes ostracism, sometimes a good pounding, sometimes being exiled or even killed. Of course, chimps also remain the only other animal other than humans that demonstrate one of the darker behaviors; warfare. Chimpanzee tribes have been recorded waging what can only be described as battles for resources, and it is a strategic, calculated affair that demonstrates planning and coordination.

 

[Neithan]

I appreciate what you’re saying, and it’s a fascinating discussion. Maybe everything has free will. Maybe rocks do. Maybe that rock just wants to sit there and roll down when it wills to move when that truck drives by. I don’t know. I don’t have enough information, because it doesn’t communicate moral choices, but I don’t know (Cf. animism, panpsychism). How do we know if something is a moral code rather than social conditioning from natural instincts? I believe I have free will, however; do you?

Free will implies that there is something immaterial about us, not beholden to the chain of physical cause and effect. Intellect implies that there is something incorruptible, capable of abstract knowledge. So if we put those two together, we get an immaterial, incorruptible form.

 

[niceatheist]

I appreciate what you’re saying, and it’s a fascinating discussion. Maybe everything has free will. Maybe rocks do. Maybe that rock just wants to sit there and roll down when it wills to move when that truck drives by. I don’t know. I don’t have enough information, because it doesn’t communicate moral choices, but I don’t know (Cf. animism, panpsychism). How do we know if something is a moral code rather than social conditioning from natural instincts? I believe I have free will, however; do you?

Free will implies that there is something immaterial about us, not beholden to the chain of physical cause and effect. Intellect implies that there is something incorruptible, capable of abstract knowledge. So if we put those two together, we get an immaterial, incorruptible form.

I have no idea whether anyone or anything has free will. I think I do. I can decide whether I want to pick up the pen beside me, or leave it where it is. At the same time, some people have a compulsion to order the pens on their desk (much to my associates’ frequent distress, I do not). Does a compulsion suggest a lack of free will? Maybe the entire future history of the universe was determined at the moment it came into being (a rather strong deterministic argument, to be sure, that quantum mechanics, at least on the face of it, suggests is false).

I view humans, like other social animals, of having a very strong predisposition to adhere to the rules of the group that they belong to. Social conditioning gives us the moral and ethical rules we are to abide by, our instincts act to integrate them. At the same time, there are individuals out there that either seem to act compulsively to ignore social norms. Sociopaths don’t seem to possess any kind of moral compass, and more critically, they seem to lack empathy. Unconstrained from any overarching social codes, they don’t respond like normal people to social pressures, not even harsh ones. They can, perhaps, through cognitive therapy, learn to mimic empathy, and some of the smarter ones figure out how to do that very well, but they don’t actually feel any. In some ways, I’d argue they have more free will than “empaths” like ourselves. Unconstrained for morality and ethics, they have a freedom of behavior that is astonishing, and quite often horrifically destructive.

 

[Freddy]

The process I outlined is common in evolution. The eye is an example. Early species react to light, like sunflowers following the sun across the sky. Once the eye becomes a feature, vision takes on a new meaning. Animals diversify so some see wider distances, others see better at night, etc. We do not say sunflowers see, even though their behavior is on a continuum with sight in animals. We distinguish creatures with sight from creatures without sight.

How would you distinguish true men from animals? Do you simply reject HG’s understanding of evolution? Can you show that our “rationality” evolved?

Ants communicate and have a complex society, they even practice a kind of agriculture, but they don’t compose ballads extolling the virtues of queens of old. Too much focus in this discussion being put on strictly material operations that humans happen to excel at (operations that are certainly augmented by an immaterial mind) rather than on operations that actually suggest immaterial rational thought.

I’m finding this very frustrating, I must say.

Is it not the case that every single aspect of any given creature has evolved slowly over a considerable amount of time. Sight is a great example. There never was a time when something couldn’t see and then could. The development of sight has evolved from simple light detecting cells to fully formed eyes. The creationist nonsense that a partially developed eye is useless is just that. Nonsensical.

Likewise flight. Likewise swimming. Likewise intelligence. And likewise an aspect of intelligence - rationality. Which is, according to the dictionary definition: the quality of being based on or in accordance with reason.

To deny that animals do not posess rationalty to to declare that there isn’t an animal in existence that doesn’t do something for a reason. And I’m not talking about instinct. I mean an internalised decision to take one particular action as opposed to another. As I’ve indicated, you only need a dog in the home to realise that.

 

[Ghosty1981]

To deny that animals do not posess rationalty to to declare that there isn’t an animal in existence that doesn’t do something for a reason. And I’m not talking about instinct.

You aren’t using the term rationality in the manner that it is used in Catholic philosophy to define what humans uniquely do with their minds.

All animals choose to some degree, and even bacteria might be said to make choices in some manner, but using the word choice in this manner simply indicates the pursuit of a preferred object over another. Rational choice, on the other hand, refers to the consideration of abstracted ideas and then the setting of the will towards one end or another. It is this abstraction that makes the human mind unique, not the pursuit of one thing over another.

The use of this rational faculty certainly requires a refinement of senses and processing organs, but the abstraction of universal ideas is not found in any of these. A child is less capable of rational choice the less physically developed it is, owing to the weakness of its senses and brain, but not because its spirit is any less capable of holding abstract ideas per se. Irrational animals, on the other hand, lack the spiritual element that enables holding abstract universal ideas for consideration at all, so no matter their degree of physical refinement they will never be capable of rational choice.

Again, it is in the area of abstracted universals that we must look to find human uniqueness, and the outward hallmarks of this are better seen in constructed metaphors than in selection of a preferred object.

Peace and God bless!

 

[Ghosty1981]

I think even here you can run into problems. There’s fairly significant evidence that at least some other mammals are capable of some degree of abstract thinking. Some species are even known for cultural transmission, though because they do not possess complex language, it’s very inefficient.

Cultural transmission isn’t necessarily an indication of abstract thought. Cultural transmission can simply be the sharing and imprinting of advantageous behaviors. Unless this cultural transmission is of ideas and not behaviors it is not evidence of abstract thought in the sense we are using.

We have seen behaviors pass on in animals, but we haven’t seen ideal values and concepts passed on in this manner.

Peace and God bless

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

To deny that animals do not posess rationalty to to declare that there isn’t an animal in existence that doesn’t do something for a reason. And I’m not talking about instinct.

You aren’t using the term rationality in the manner that it is used in Catholic philosophy to define what humans uniquely do with their minds.

All animals choose to some degree, and even bacteria might be said to make choices in some manner, but using the word choice in this manner simply indicates the pursuit of a preferred object over another. Rational choice, on the other hand, refers to the consideration of abstracted ideas and then the setting of the will towards one end or another. It is this abstraction that makes the human mind unique, not the pursuit of one thing over another.

No and no again. Rational decisions in man is how you have described it. And we have reached a point where you are able to describe it thus. But there are degrees or rationality. You can’t simply pick what an adult human does, call it rational behaviour and then deny that it exists in any form to any extent at any time.

Is an embryo rational? Obviously not. Is an infant rational? No. Is a child rational? Quite possibly it might exhibit some rational behaviour. Is an adolescent rational? Well, a lot of parents might say definitely not, but there are obviously rational decisions being made at this age. And so on to adulthood where we can safely say that rationality is most definitley exhibited.

So does it suddenly turn on at any given stage of development? Obviously not. Can we see its progress. Obviously we can.

And going back to the point where we weren’t human, was there a point at which rationality simply switched on? Discarding black monoliths and sudden changes in a generation as has been proposed, then…no. So going back through the evolution of the animal mind to the present Homo sapien we must accept that abilities we have now and didn’t have then evolved over a period of time. Ipso facto, animals (our ancestors) developed intelligence and rationality gradually.

So if one particular animal did that then it seems trite to claim that our line of descent was somehow special and that it hasn’t occured elsewhere. Especially when we see so many examples of it around us in the animal kingdom. To say that they dont posess rationality because they are not human is simply to redefine the term so that is is exclusive to man. Is there a definition anywhere that does that? ’ the quality of being based on or in accordance with reason only exhibited by adult humans’.

Let’s face it, nothing on the planet exhibits intelligence like man but we don’t restrict that characteristic soley to man. Why are you doing it with rational behaviour?

 

[Ghosty1981]

But there are degrees or rationality.

An abstracted idea either exists or it doesn’t. There is no “half measure” between concrete material form and abstract universal idea, and therefore there is no degree of rationality. The various physical components that enable a spiritual soul to perceive forms, such as eyes that can discern shapes, may indeed develop over time, but the abstract ideas are immaterial and therefore properties of an immaterial mind that either exists or doesn’t.

Is an embryo rational? Obviously not. Is an infant rational? No. Is a child rational? Quite possibly it might exhibit some rational behaviour. Is an adolescent rational? Well, a lot of parents might say definitely not, but there are obviously rational decisions being made at this age. And so on to adulthood where we can safely say that rationality is most definitley exhibited.

If all we could observe was an embryo or even an infant we could not conclude that it is rational (and there is historical debate within the Church over when rational ensoulment occurs) . Likewise, if all we could observe of an adult human is the behavior of sleep we could not conclude that they are rational. Outward behavior is a marker of a rational soul, but absence of such markers is not absence of the rational soul.

So does it suddenly turn on at any given stage of development? Obviously not. Can we see its progress. Obviously we can.

On the contrary, we can see the development of the physical “tools” the rational mind uses, but rationality itself either is or isn’t and doesn’t develop in stages.

And going back to the point where we weren’t human, was there a point at which rationality simply switched on? Discarding black monoliths and sudden changes in a generation as has been proposed, then…no.

Sure, if you simply arbitrarily discard all contrary evidence and arguments then yours must be correct, but that isn’t intellectually honest.

Especially when we see so many examples of it around us in the animal kingdom.

Provide one example of abstraction of universal ideas in a non-human animal, please. Then we can consider your proposal seriously.

Peace and God bless!

 

[Allyson]

I have been enjoying following the thread today, but it will probably be easier to just make a general post rather than try to respond to individuals at this point.

First off. I most definitely do not have free will. I have cats who demand treats and toys. I may think that I want to make dinner, but I am wrong. Even now, I was not permitted to respond without fix providing hunt the mouse time first.

More seriously though, I come at free will more pragmatically and less ideally the older I get both because of education and life experience. Most people are capable of making real choices, but we are all also subject to our biology in different ways like with addiction, PTSD, or brain tumors, for example. We do not have a will that is free of the physical forces that compose our bodies.

Next, I love my Platonic ideals and thinking about what it means “to be/dasein” as much as the next philosopher, but I do not think of the ideals as literally existing in a separate realm. Some ideals (like mathematical priciples) are real and we come to understand them though our experience. That is to say, that we can ground their truth in the reality we experience. Other ideals, like the idea of a unicorn, exist only as a construct in our mind, which can be expressed in art or discussion.

Which bring me to the evolution of the concept of the soul. Earlier in the thread I made a big deal about the testability of the effects of the soul on the real world because, if the spiritual soul, as it was originally conceived, was supposed to do just that. What has changed is that we have a modern scientific method that can reliably test reality, and so the soul has been relegated to a status of being a redundancy that does not explain anything about how we work, and except maybe we might be immortal. I think it was @Freddy who suggested that Thomas might have put things differently if he has known about evolution. (Correct me if I attributed that incorrectly). I agree. What Thomas did integrating greek science to Western Christian thought was radical for the time. It is the modern Thomists, encouraged in part by HG, that seek to conserve that way of thinking. Which brings me full circle to what I am sure were some of Pius XII’s concerns. He saw that the reason for being of the faith was being undermined, so he created a situation in which the faithful can be of two minds on the subject.

Finally, defining rationality: Are we really fully rational when we as a species still do not understand quantum mechanics? (I was bingeing on Sean Carrolls most recent lectures today.)

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

So does it suddenly turn on at any given stage of development? Obviously not. Can we see its progress. Obviously we can.

On the contrary, we can see the development of the physical “tools” the rational mind uses, but rationality itself either is or isn’t and doesn’t develop in stages.

So if it doesn’t develop in stages, at what specific point does a human exhibit rational behaviour?

 

[Gorgias]

Do chimpanzees not demonstrate free will?

We have to distinguish between “free will”, which implies rationality, and “choice”, which all animals demonstrate. Let’s take it to the logical extreme: when a sunflower turns toward the sun, would you assert that it has made a “free will” decision to do so? Then, what about a lion who chooses this gazelle over that one? Free will? Hardly. Merely ‘choice’.

y are hardly automata, and demonstrate many of the same behaviors we do; emotions, a sense of right and wrong, cultural transmission. Yes, they are not going to write sonnets, but perhaps the fact that their brains one third the size of our brains.

I think that, in the two threads currently active which are discussing these notions, we’re getting closer to asserting that it’s not the presence of one or two actions, but rather, the whole ball of wax that exemplifies ‘rationality’.

Does a compulsion suggest a lack of free will?

Why can’t it be a demonstration of a ‘will’ to a particular order?

Likewise flight. Likewise swimming. Likewise intelligence.

“Flight” is a behavior. “Swimming” is a behavior. “Intelligence” is not – it’s a set of behaviors. Apples and oranges, my friend. And so, if you want to call “rationality” a subset of intelligence (which I would not agree with, out of hand), you’re still dealing with a set of behaviors, considered collectively. There’s no direct comparison here, but rather, merely invalid extrapolation.

I mean an internalised decision to take one particular action as opposed to another.

That still doesn’t rise to the level of “rationality”. An animal can decide, but if that decision isn’t based on introspection – ratiocination – then you can’t call it “rational.”

 

[Freddy]

Provide one example of abstraction of universal ideas in a non-human animal, please. Then we can consider your proposal seriously.

That is NOT the definition of rationality. It is: ‘the quality of being based on or in accordance with reason’. So if my dog decides he’d rather lie on the couch instead of going for a run he has compared the two options and made a decision. If you were Dr. Dolittle and could ask him why he made that decision then he’d be able to tell you. It wasn’t an arbitrary decision and it wasn’t instinctive. He made an actual decision based on reasons that he determined were applicable. There can be nonother conclusion.

 

[Freddy]

That still doesn’t rise to the level of “rationality”. An animal can decide, but if that decision isn’t based on introspection – ratiocination – then you can’t call it “rational.”

Here’s the definition of rationalty: the quality of being based on or in accordance with reason.

And here’s the definition for reason: a cause, explanation, or justification for an action or event.

So combining: ‘rationality is the quality of being based on or in accordance with a cause, explanation, or justification for an action or event’.

So if my dog has exhibited a preference for chilling on the couch as opposed to going for a run (and has actually exhibited this) then if you could ask him then he would obviously give you an explanation for his decision. That he hasn’t developed speech or couldn’t phrase it in a coherent manner is irrelevant. Being able to explain a reason is not the same thing as having a reason.

 

[Neithan]

What has changed is that we have a modern scientific method that can reliably test reality, and so the soul has been relegated to a status of being a redundancy that does not explain anything about how we work, and except maybe we might be immortal.

We have improved our epistemology for natural science considerably and developed an empirical, inductive method for exploring how matter works. It has expanded our ability to perceive and manipulate matter exponentially by enabling modern technology. Our knowledge of the material universe continues to grow.

But does the material scientific method explain everything? Forms were never considered matter, or explained how it worked. Of the classic Four Causes, we now have a method for exploring efficient and material causes of things, but the explanation of forms and final causes is beyond the grasp of a material epistemology. Do we just eliminate them? Replace the gaps with “brute facts”? Why?

Learning about how things work, what they are made of and where they are, tells us only part of what they are and none of why they are. We can collect vast amounts of data about things, but until we organize that data and recognize forms for us to understand what we’re perceiving, it is unintelligible to us. And unless we think that the reason for why things are the way they are is a “brute fact” there is plenty of explanation left unaccounted for.

Materialism is a philosophy that fails to take account of the philosopher.

He saw that the reason for being of the faith was being undermined, so he created a situation in which the faithful can be of two minds on the subject.

What do you mean by that last clause? Some cognitive dissonance? We are not expected to maintain some contradictory limbo between our beliefs from our reasoning and beliefs from our faith. That’s more like Kant, not Pius XII.

 

[Neithan]

Semantic breakdown. What we are looking for is sapience — some ability to reason from the concrete and particular to the abstract and universal. Is this possible without recursive language, and the neurocognitive capacity for this? Does any other animal demonstrate this?

I think you are still committing this “evolution of the gaps” fallacy: human beings evolved gradually, therefore every characteristic of human beings evolved gradually. It does not follow.

 

[Gorgias]

Here’s the definition of rationalty: the quality of being based on or in accordance with reason.

And here’s the definition for reason: a cause, explanation, or justification for an action or event.

So combining: ‘rationality is the quality of being based on or in accordance with a cause, explanation, or justification for an action or event’.

Always suspect when we use a general-purpose, dictionary definition in a specialized field. Like biology or philosophy. One tends to make critical errors when doing so.

That he hasn’t developed speech or couldn’t phrase it in a coherent manner is irrelevant.

I disagree on two counts, which have been asserted in this thread over and again:

• it’s the sum total of biological qualities which support rationality that give rise to rationality (that is, if you’re missing the biological supports, you don’t have rationality)
• making a choice isn’t the same thing as rationally contemplating and deciding on a course of action

All you’ve shown is that your dog sits on the couch, not that he’s weighed the various options and contemplated which of these he, as a moral actor, wishes to pursue. But hey… we’ve already beaten this one to death. All I see in your argument is the choice to express a course of action, not a rational argument.

 

[thelibrarian]

The Bible supports that there were different groups of people. There were descendents of Cain and descendents of Seth. There were the Nephilim, etc.

I actually think the idea of two original people is supported. For example, when relatives have done genealogy, one side of the family can be traced back to a European country, and somewhere in the 1600s, it gets muddy, the trail goes cold. We know obviously there were ancestors before then but based on lack of records, conflicting info, migration and illiteracy, there is no way to go back farther.

The other grandparent’s lineage goes cold earlier due to a fire in a place where records were kept, and in the other side of the family, the ancestors being illiterate generations later than the other side.

I want to speculate based on this, that they can trace human genetics back to the flood, but not prior, or sometime generations after flood and not to Adam and Eve. Genes mutate and I also think that because if that, two people who have a common ancestor 4,000 years ago would not have enough similarity to prove relation.

 

[Ghosty1981]

That is NOT the definition of rationality. It is: ‘the quality of being based on or in accordance with reason’.

And reason is not merely settling on a preference, it is a considered evaluation of ideas. A dog choosing where to lie down isn’t evidence of reason, it’s settling on comfortable end. This is an operation of purely sensitive appetites.

My choice of dinner entree isn’t necessarily rational, either. The difference between me and a dog is that I demonstrate the ability to consider abstract ideas apart from the selection of preferable sensible experiences. My choices may be rational or they may be irrational, but I can demonstrate my capacity for abstraction. My choices may not always be rational, but I have demonstrated the capacity for reason where the dog hasn’t. The dog may indeed be a rational being (as I believe the human embryo to be), but there is no proximate demonstration of rationality to warrant this conclusion (unlike the embryo, which is undeniably human and humans have undeniably demonstrated reason).

Peace and God bless!

 

[thelibrarian]

I did not read every single post, but the Christan apologist explanation for Neanderthals was this:

1. the Bible posits that in the beginning, people lived a lot longer and ages were not always symbolic numbers. If you study changes in the skull of people who reach 70-110 years old and then compare them to the young, you notice that the nose and ears continue to grow, there is a change of a thickening of the forehead area of you measure the bone and losses in other places, like height, etc, If you take these changes and continue them at the same pace and project the age to 120, 150, 200 years old or more, you start to see different features that appear neanderthal-ish. Were neanderthals homo sapiens that were just very very old (in ancient says a 150 person was still considered having vitality vs someone who was a modern 100 year old and being extremely frail.)

Also,maybe Adam and Eve were homo.erectus and through adaptive evolution we adapted the our environment

bother school of thought:
If you are an archeologist in the 1800s or older and find a skeleton of someone that has dwarfism, a deformity, has Marfan’s Syndrome, has Down’s Syndrome or otherwise has a skull or body that is non-conforming, and you find them clustered, you could mistake them for a different species, or even an “alien.” In fact you could have found a family with genetic issues, the burial ground of a treatment center or somewhere where people with such condition were segregated to either take them out of society or compassionately be given treatment by experts of the day. Could it be just three people with some condition were found, in the conclusion is that it was a different species. This has happened with animals or with animal bones found together and just matched up the wrong way.