Substance dualism

[Linusthe2nd]

Linus,
Whoa there cowboy! Back up a bit! Am I to understand that you are accusing me of heretical thoughts? Are you issuing a monitum? Or is this merely a puritanical rant of a mind that hasn’t advanced beyond the 13th century?

Why don’t you tell me which of my ideas are “dangerous”? A clearly articulated example should do. If you can do that, I promise to withdraw from this forum, because it has been a waste of my time for the following reason:
In spite of your observation that “I’m surprised how many gullible Catholics are giving it serious consideration”, I have found only a scant few that briefly skimmed the surface of my thesis and they soon lose interest. So, you see, Linus my dear, you don’t have to worry your sweet little mind about all the respondents that you condescendingly consider to be gullible, the church is safe from this amateur theologian.

However on second thought, you may be right about the danger of my influence. Although I have yet to find many who seem to understand my ideas, I do generate an inordinate amount of interest with my posts. Interest can be surmised by dividing the number of visits to one’s page by the number of that person’s posts. My interest quotient presently is: 3216 / 532 = 6.04 visits per post. Yours is: 4533/4907 = .92. visits per post.

Yppop

A couple of things.

1. I’m not in a race. I’m not running for office, I didn’t think that was the point of posting.
2. I think you should read my post again. I didn’t accuse anyone of anything, I meerly stated that this is not the proper forum for engaging in experimental theology.
3. This forum is improper for that purpose because gullible personalities might be lead astray. That is why you should present your thesis to the proper venues, ones that can offer peer reviues. Just sitting around the kitchen table and tossing ideas around is one thing. But here we have many rather innocent souls who will be very confused about your approach.
4. No I don’t care to point out your errors.

Linus2nd

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Linus,
Whoa there cowboy! Back up a bit! Am I to understand that you are accusing me of heretical thoughts? Are you issuing a monitum? Or is this merely a puritanical rant of a mind that hasn’t advanced beyond the 13th century?

Why don’t you tell me which of my ideas are “dangerous”? A clearly articulated example should do. If you can do that, I promise to withdraw from this forum, because it has been a waste of my time for the following reason:
In spite of your observation that “I’m surprised how many gullible Catholics are giving it serious consideration”, I have found only a scant few that briefly skimmed the surface of my thesis and they soon lose interest. So, you see, Linus my dear, you don’t have to worry your sweet little mind about all the respondents that you condescendingly consider to be gullible, the church is safe from this amateur theologian.

However on second thought, you may be right about the danger of my influence. Although I have yet to find many who seem to understand my ideas, I do generate an inordinate amount of interest with my posts. Interest can be surmised by dividing the number of visits to one’s page by the number of that person’s posts. My interest quotient presently is: 3216 / 532 = 6.04 visits per post. Yours is: 4533/4907 = .92. visits per post.

Yppop

Sorry I offended you, I only intended to disuade you. To be fair I will list a few serious errors I noticed in post # 1 on " God Exists…"

1. Creation consists of corporeal and incorporeal substances, but God is not part of created reality. He existed prior to created reality. This is Catholic Doctrine and the teaching of Thomas Aquinas and all reliable Catholic Philosophers and Theologians. So Angels and the human soul are part of created reality, God is not.
2. The " nothingness " from which God created the corporeal and the incorporeal was identified by Thomas Aquinas and defined by the Church as a state of " no being,." It means no positive being, it is the absence of existence. So matter cannot exist in it because it has no existnece. So when you say that " matter is not universal in infinite nothingness, " you commit two errors. First nothing can exist in a state of nothingness, not matter, not Angels, not the human soul. Secondly, " nothingness " is neither infinite nor finite, it is nothing, it has no existence, so it can contain no being, no thought, no energy, no other type of existence. Nothing means nothing.
3. Reality cannot be described as a unified whole because that would mean that God would have to be a part of this unified whole. But this cannot be, neither philosophically or theologically. Creation is a limited being or a set of limited beings, both the created corporeal and the created incorporeal. By definition and by Catholic Dogma, God cannot be a part of any " unified " or single reality. God must be regarded as a real Being, but His Being is eternal and infinite. Thus He cannot be a part of unified reality. His Reality is absolutely unlimited and perfect and independent. Ours is absolutely, finite, time bound, imperfect, and dependent and contingent.

4 So " nothingness " cannot exist between elements of reality, discrete or otherwise.

5.The impetus that causes motion may be given by God or by a material agent. If by God, it is through an exercise of his will, not by " information. " If the impetus is from a material agent, it comes from the application of energy, it is not by " information."

Well, you see why I objected to this line of discussion and I have only just started. But that will be enough by way of explanation.

You started off on this with good enough intentions. Like many, you hoped to reconcile Faith with science or, more properly, some of the interpretations based on certain scientific theories, hoping to persuade skeptics of the reasonableness of Faith. You cannot do that by advancing a false philosophy or theology. And the ground of your argument is wrong. That is why it is dangerous.

It is a mistake to sacrefice sound philosophy to satisfy atheists and skeptics.

Linus2nd

 

[Linusthe2nd]

I’ve been thinking over my comments above and find that post # 18, while stating nothing untrue, was extremely lacking in charity, it was too cold, too matter of fact, and not a little arrogant. Further it unnecessarily angered a good man and one who is very intelligent, and one who has always demonstrated good will all around. I sincerely hope he will come back here somewhere, at some point.

I should not have commented without considering all these factors, and until I had considered how to respond without causing offense. My follow up post # 22 was correct enough, yet still too stark - given the nature of my first post.

The bottom line of my last post is a fact we all need to consider. No matter how good our intentions, we cannot sacrifice the high ground in hopes of winning over the skeptic.

Linus2nd.

 

[Fr_of_Jazz]

I’ve been thinking over my comments above and find that post # 18, while stating nothing untrue, was extremely lacking in charity, it was too cold, too matter of fact, and not a little arrogant. Further it unnecessarily angered a good man and one who is very intelligent, and one who has always demonstrated good will all around. I sincerely hope he will come back here somewhere, at some point.

I should not have commented without considering all these factors, and until I had considered how to respond without causing offense. My follow up post # 22 was correct enough, yet still too stark - given the nature of my first post.

The bottom line of my last post is a fact we all need to consider. No matter how good our intentions, we cannot sacrifice the high ground in hopes of winning over the skeptic.

Linus2nd.

There’s no question where your heart is.

Possibly you could shoot him a message.

 

[KyrieEleison17]

If you’ve seen some of my other threads, you know that I’ve been looking into idealism, the view that mind is fundamental and that matter ultimately reduces to it. Along the way, I’ve discovered some serious problems with dualism, the view that both matter and mind are fundamental and don’t reduce to one another, not the least of which is the problem of interaction. Basically, if matter and mind can interact in any meaningful way, they must do so via s hared property. So, either matter shares a mental property with mind or mind shares a physical property with matter. But this would mean that both matter and mind aren’t fundamental after all, and one ultimately reduces to the other. You also have some apologetics problems with materialists, because there is no example we have of any mind existing without a material brain, which is a real problem if we assume that there is such a thing as a material brain that isn’t itself reducible to mind. Now, I’ve heard from many here that Catholics can’t be idealists, and although a lot of the reasons given seem to be attacking something that I am not actually considering, and I haven’t actually been told everything Catholics have to believe on these matters and/or any dogmatic statements on idealism in particular, I am still very careful about just accepting it outright. But if I do discover that Catholics have to be dualists, I’m going to need an answer for these problems with it.

If you agree that man is in part both mind and matter, yet a unity, then you agree that when this composite being does something, his action is ultimately one and singular. Mind and matter do not “interact” as if bouncing off of one another through or in some strange third ethereal medium. They truly form a unity such that we can say ‘the man walks’. The immaterial in man is what animates him and his body. Hence we can and normally and naturally do express ourselves physically as in gestures. This is just what it is to be human: to be a unity of mind and matter, as it were.

Now form and matter truly unite. The form is in the material thing and the material thing instantiates its form. If this were not the case, then we would have no shortage of problems. If forms can’t be in matter, then we could have no knowledge, as all material things would be unintelligible. Similarly, if there is no matter, then change is not real and cannot happen.

You are considering idealism; but let’s remember that Aristotle was himself an idealist for a while, but eventually the problems of it became too absurd for him. Idealism for him resulted in human knowledge and understanding becoming an impossibility; but it was evident that we do have knowledge. Moreover, things changed and there had to be some substratum that could be the subject of the change in every change.

Modern science is very enigmatic especially because it is itself in a state of flux - it is in growing pains and so it can be difficult to take it as a basic premise. But against the materialists we can say this much: if you are so stridently certain that things are reducible entirely to the atomic and sub-atomic level, then why is it ‘right’, ‘good’ or ‘better’ for a man and society to believe and accept this? Because it is “true”? But truth is a transcendental. How do you explain its existence and reality? How is it that something is true? What’s the relationship between water = H2O and “truth”? If it is a mere subjective notion, then insisting water = H2O is silly beyond belief for you cannot ground its truth in anything objective; but if it is true, then somehow water = H2O must somehow exhibit truth and itself be truth. Therefore truth is real and, indeed, all reality just is truth. But then how does literally everything share this same common property? …

At least around that point you are starting to develop ground where classic substance theory can start to make sense, that the empirical world itself must be a composition of things roughly mental and material forming a unity. Now this is by no means perfect but hopefully it can help you get thinking and also your materialistic dialogue partner.