Regarding the highlighted above: It seems to me that common everyday experience demonstrates that this is not true. Human and dogs interact. Are they of the same nature?
I am not saying that things must be of the same nature to interact. I am accusing all the philosophical material I’ve read of saying that. Also, humans and dogs both have a physical nature.
Do you have a specific reference that makes this claim? I am not aware any of the philosophical explanations of Catholic doctrine that do so?
What claim? Do you mean dualism? I am an idealist, not a dualist. I was just saying that the interaction problem is invalid, not advocating dualism (although I certainly do believe dualism is far better than materialism or hylomorphism).
The claim that things must be of like nature to interact. I had never seen this before. And it seems to be demonstrably false. It is strange that an obvious falsehood would be used as an argument against anything.
While I can not answer your questions, for those of us with no studies in philosophy, can you explain dualism?
I agree, it is ridiculous. But somehow, it’s the foremost objection to dualism.
Dualism = the belief that there are two essential kinds of substances (which, in philosophy, just means something self-existent): physical stuff and spiritual stuff. To answer your question about gnosticism: no, dualism does not necessarily assert that all physical things are evil and all spiritual things good.
Are you saying in dualism - there is physical world and a spiritual world.
That is or is not part of dualism? If it “is” part of dualism, can you explain it a bit more?
Yes, although it arguably is not very accurate to call the spiritual one a “world”.
It is not.
I have the following argument to refute hylomorphism (which, BTW, is not a form of dualism):
Thank you.
(I think that above quote was from someone else. Sometimes, I do forget that I made a post, but I don’t even know the meaning of a lot of those words.
Hopefully, the person who wrote it found your reply.)The reason the interaction problem is held to be a problem for dualism is that, so the argument goes, dualism (Cartesian dualism, at least) holds that the mind is unlike the rest of the the world. The non-mind parts of reality are taken to behave naturalistically, while generally the immaterial components of reality (numbers, propositions) are taken to be causally inert (I am painting with a broad brush here).
RoseMary131 said:
I’m 100% positive this is not what hylomorphism teaches. Hylomorphism, in philosophy of mind, refers to the view that the soul is the substantial form of the body. A clear error.
My soul encompasses my moral alignment. Thus, a change in my moral alignment is a change in my soul, which therefore cannot be a form.
There are no other examples because there are no immaterial substances other than souls (including God).
I think you are proceeding from a misunderstanding of hylemorphism (not just as a philosophy of mind, but as a metaphysics). David Oderberg writes on hylemorphic dualism:
A change in moral alignment is a change in your soul, like a change to your body is a change to how well your substance is conformed. But a change in moral alignment does not change human nature or rationality; it changes the immaterial aspect of the human substance, which retains its rational, human form.
I suggest you read the wikipedia article on hylomorphism, at least the part that concerns the soul.
My soul =/= human nature. Human nature = the nature that the composite of body + soul as a soul has. By itself, a body has only physical nature, and by itself, a soul has only a spiritual nature. My soul, as distinct from human nature, is according to hylomorphism, my substantial form. Unfortunately for hylomorphists, my soul does posses a property common to all forms: staticness.
I’m not saying that your soul is human nature. Man’s essence (real definition, nature) is rational animal. Rationality is essentially immaterial, so the soul is the part of man’s hylemorphic whole which is immaterial, ie. the rational part. Man’s soul is still the rational aspect of man, not rationality in the abstract. Forms are static because they are abstracted universals. But they are abstracted. Forms do not change, but substantial forms, which are instances of forms, can change qua substances, though their forms do not change. As Oderberg says, “the substantial form of the person is the rational nature of that person” (emphasis mine). Substances (including human substance) have forms; it does not follow that substances can’t change. A soul’s changing does not change man’s rationality, but it does change his substance.
The problem here is the ambiguity to the phrase “change in form”. What I meant was that the form itself doesn’t change, what you are saying is that a substance can change it’s form, by which (I think) you mean that a substance can lose it’s current form and acquire another one. This logic, however, is not applicable to the argument I raised, because when I become a better or worse person, my current soul is not being discarded and “my substance” acquiring a completely new soul, rather, there is a change in my soul itself. I’m still the same person, so I’m still the same soul. My soul has simply undergone a change.