The Soul

[sw85]

I suppose for a few reasons:

First, it strikes me as absurd to call the Enterprise immaterial. If someone understood the Enterprise to be immaterial, they’d have to clarify that in conversation because we’d naturally assume they meant something material.

As I said, it’s only a metaphor. The Enterprise does not, as clmowry pointed out, have the kind of substantive unity that a human person has; that has a “soul” only in a much looser sense than a person has.

Maybe a better way to put it would be to say that the soul is the principle which allows my arm to be “part of me” instead of “me.” It is likewise the principle that allows the Enterprise to exhibit causal powers not attributable to any of its individual parts.

Second, as Van Cleve states, “[t]he Aristotelian position [hylemorphism] leads to a problem that Ernest Sosa has dubbed “the explosion of reality”. To be drawn into the problem, ask yourself the following question: which aggregates of matter and which forms are such that when those aggregates come to exemplify those forms, a new entity is thereby created? It seems to me that an impartial Aristotelian ought to answer as follows: wherever any matter instantiates any form, a new entity is thereby exists. Consider, for example, the entity Sosa calls a snowdiscall, which has as its matter a chunk of snow and as its form any shape between being round and being disc-shaped. If you take a snowball and flatten it, you destroy the snowball (having deprived it of its essential form), but you leave a snowdiscall in its place. Moreover, the the snowdiscall you leave was there all along, sharing matter with the original snowball…From here it is but a short step to the recognition that an impartial Aristotelian (or “absolutist” as Sosa calls him) should admit that there are millions of of entities inhering in any parcel of matter. Consider the following series of shapes: being round, being round or flattened up to degree 1, being round or flattened up to degree 2, and so on, until we reach the property of being round or flattened up to some degree including being squashed into a disc. We may distinguish infinitely many such shapes. From an impartial or absolutist point of view, each of these shapes has as much claim as roundness to be regarded as the essential form of an entity of some type. An ordinary snowball, it would therefore seem, coincides with infinitely many other entities - snowdiscalls of all possible degrees.” Sider, Theodore, John Hawthorne, and Dean W. Zimmerman. Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2008. p. - p. 324

Seems like many would reject such a position because of its bloated ontology (the reason most reject Lewisian Realism), but as Van Cleve later notes, this position seems to violate the impenetrability of matter principle, which I take to be more plausible than hylemorphism: Two or more things cannot be in the same place at the same time.

Instead of snowballs and snowdiscalls we could use the Enterprise and get the same result.

Edit

I’ve seen this argument before, Zimmerman advanced it as a modified version of Chisolm’s Entia Successiva argument in Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion.

But, really, this species of argument is just a rehash of the ol’ Theseus’ Ship Paradox.

I don’t find this terribly interesting. For one thing, it’s not unreasonable that something should instantiate more than one form simultaneously (I am, for instance, both a human and a male), or that it should be impossible to instantiate a form better or worse than another instantiation.

 

[Perplexity]

As I said, it’s only a metaphor. The Enterprise does not, as clmowry pointed out, have the kind of substantive unity that a human person has; that has a “soul” only in a much looser sense than a person has.

Well, my problem with it is its alleged immateriality, not its metaphorical description as a soul or form. Unless you meant it’s metaphorical to call it immaterial? If so, I guess I’m not sure what that means.

I don’t find this terribly interesting. For one thing, it’s not unreasonable that something should instantiate more than one form simultaneously (I am, for instance, both a human and a male), or that it should be impossible to instantiate a form better or worse than another instantiation.

You don’t have a problem with saying two or more things can be in the same place at the same time? That doesn’t even seem possible to me, far from whether it’s unlikely.

That’s why Van Cleve said: “An ordinary snowball, it would therefore seem, coincides with infinitely many other entities - snowdiscalls of all possible degrees.”

 

[sw85]

Well, my problem with it is its alleged immateriality, not its metaphorical description as a soul or form. Unless you meant it’s metaphorical to call it immaterial? If so, I guess I’m not sure what that means.

Right, and I’m saying that, since the Enterprise lacks that principle of substantive unity as we understand it in people, it also lacks the immateriality of that principle. Hence why I said the Enterprise example is an apt metaphor.

Again, there is a distinction between what we mean when we talk about the soul in the hylemorphic/Aristotelico-Thomist sense and the soul when we talk about in common parlance and as its described in the Bible (essentially a Cartesian “ghost in the machine”). The best and fullest understanding of the soul is the latter, because it combines material faculties with immaterial ones. The latter one still captures that essence, just in a different way. Instead of the intellect and will being preserved in death, it’s a kind of shimmery, slightly blue, electric-y haze of light vaguely arranged in the shape of the dead person’s living body.

You don’t have a problem with saying two or more things can be in the same place at the same time? That doesn’t even seem possible to me, far from whether it’s unlikely.

The form isn’t a thing. It’s simply the pattern in which matter is arranged. So it’s perfectly reasonable for something to instantiate two or more forms at the same time. As I said, I’m both a human and a male – in my “humanness” I share something with human women; in my “maleness” I share something with male canids. The two don’t necessarily conflict.

That’s why Van Cleve said: “An ordinary snowball, it would therefore seem, coincides with infinitely many other entities - snowdiscalls of all possible degrees.”

Sure, but what’s the practical implication of this? It winds up being a more complicated form of nominalism, with all its problems.

Take two cats, one a clone of the other, which, due to some strange error in the cloning process, has a slightly longer tail. We can suppose this difference is sufficient to qualify CloneKitty as instantiating a different form. But even if they can be thought of as having different forms, it doesn’t mean anything: they both still instantiate the (super)form of the cat. This is why we’re able to call them both “cats.”

 

[Perplexity]

Right, and I’m saying that, since the Enterprise lacks that principle of substantive unity as we understand it in people, it also lacks the immateriality of that principle. Hence why I said the Enterprise example is an apt metaphor.

Ah, okay. Like I said, in this case I’m not sure what it means then. I take Enterprise literally, not as a metaphor. If hylemorphism implies that any given aggregate is just a façon de parler, I’d take this to be a reductio ad absurdum of it. (Interestingly, this exact argument is used against mereological nihilism)

The form isn’t a thing. It’s simply the pattern in which matter is arranged. So it’s perfectly reasonable for something to instantiate two or more forms at the same time. As I said, I’m both a human and a male – in my “humanness” I share something with human women; in my “maleness” I share something with male canids. The two don’t necessarily conflict.

I think thing is broad enough to incorporate a ‘pattern in which matter is arranged.’ But, you’re committed to saying that nearly an infinite amount of snowballs and snowdiscalls are in the same place at the same time. You might say ‘but these are just forms’, I don’t see how that changes things though. Might just be a difference of intuition.

Sure, but what’s the practical implication of this? It winds up being a more complicated form of nominalism, with all its problems.

Take two cats, one a clone of the other, which, due to some strange error in the cloning process, has a slightly longer tail. We can suppose this difference is sufficient to qualify CloneKitty as instantiating a different form. But even if they can be thought of as having different forms, it doesn’t mean anything: they both still instantiate the (super)form of the cat. This is why we’re able to call them both “cats.”

I don’t think nominalism is all that complicated. But, even if it were, it’s not obvious that it’s complexity is more of a cost than the bloated ontology of hylemorphism.

(I’m pretty skeptical of metaphysics in general, so I’m inclined to think this will just come down to speculation and intuition)

 

[thewanderer]

I suppose for a few reasons:

First, it strikes me as absurd to call the Enterprise immaterial. If someone understood the Enterprise to be immaterial, they’d have to clarify that in conversation because we’d naturally assume they meant something material.

Second, as Van Cleve states, “[t]he Aristotelian position [hylemorphism] leads to a problem that Ernest Sosa has dubbed “the explosion of reality”. To be drawn into the problem, ask yourself the following question: which aggregates of matter and which forms are such that when those aggregates come to exemplify those forms, a new entity is thereby created? It seems to me that an impartial Aristotelian ought to answer as follows: wherever any matter instantiates any form, a new entity is thereby exists. Consider, for example, the entity Sosa calls a snowdiscall, which has as its matter a chunk of snow and as its form any shape between being round and being disc-shaped. If you take a snowball and flatten it, you destroy the snowball (having deprived it of its essential form), but you leave a snowdiscall in its place. Moreover, the the snowdiscall you leave was there all along,
sharing matter with the original snowball…From here it is but a short step to the recognition that an impartial Aristotelian (or “absolutist” as Sosa calls him) should admit
that there are millions of of entities inhering in any parcel of matter. Consider the following series of shapes: being round, being round or flattened up to degree 1, being round or flattened up to degree 2, and so on, until we reach the property of being round or flattened up to some degree including being squashed into a disc. We may distinguish infinitely
many such shapes. From an impartial or absolutist point of view, each of these shapes has as much claim as roundness to be regarded as the essential form of an entity of some
type. An ordinary snowball, it would therefore seem, coincides with infinitely many other entities - snowdiscalls of all possible degrees.” Sider, Theodore, John Hawthorne, and
Dean W. Zimmerman. Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2008. p. - p. 324

Seems like many would reject such a position because of its bloated ontology (the reason
most reject Lewisian Realism), but as Van Cleve later notes, this position seems to violate the impenetrability of matter principle, which I take to be more plausible than
hylemorphism: Two or more things cannot be in the same place at the same time.

Instead of snowballs and snowdiscalls we could use the Enterprise and get the same result.

Edit

I’ve seen this argument before, Zimmerman advanced it as a modified version of Entia Successiva argument in Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion.

But, really, this species of argument is just a rehash of the ol’ Theseus’ Ship Paradox.

I’m just curious, why do you think this idea necessitates two things existing actually as opposed to one existing in a potential way while the other actually exists? I admit that of course there is a problem with the first, but I in no way see a problem with the second, in fact the Aristotle’s understanding just about demands that the second occur.

SW85:

I think you need to be careful here. Taking the idea of aristotle’s forms as given, one has to allow for different kinds of forms, those which dictate what a being is, and those which dictate how that kind of being exists in an individual, in otherwords, there is not the same contradiction between saying that a person is a man, however, there is a contradiction in saying either that a person is a cat, or that a man is a woman.

 

[Credo_in_Deum]

Can someone offer me evidence for the soul based on reason and logic, it would be appreciative.

Let’s say you have the original Mona Lisa and your neighbor has an exact replica made by a state of the art machine which even to the very last atom, made his painting to the exact speck as the original; same canvas, paint, etc. Now would your neighbor be correct in telling you that his replica is still worth the same and is just as good as your original? The answer would be no, because there are things which are immaterial that add to the value of your original; things like your painting was actually touched by the artist himself and that a part of Leonardo’s personality and passion have been put into yours. Immaterial things which cannot be replicated or created by anyone else but Leonardo are ultimately what make your painting 100% unique and priceless.

In this same way every person is an original master piece made by God and in His image, and given an immaterial quality (the soul) which identifies us with our Creator because no one except the Creator could give it. The soul is the source of your uniqueness and individuality.

 

[Perplexity]

I’m just curious, why do you think this idea necessitates two things existing actually as opposed to one existing in a potential way while the other actually exists? I admit that of course there is a problem with the first, but I in no way see a problem with the second, in fact the Aristotle’s understanding just about demands that the second occur.

I’d say because “a snowdiscall…has as its matter a chunk of snow and as its form any shape between being round and being disc-shaped.”

Let’s call a perfectly round chunk of snow 1, and a slightly imperfectly round chunk of snow 2, and so on until we get to a chunk of snow that is disc-shaped, say, 100.

We can stipulate that a snowball is any chunk of snow between 1 and 25.

Further, a snowdiscall is any chunk of snow from 1 to 100.

Suppose you have a snowball, and you flatten it (i.e., it becomes 100). You’ve destroyed the snowball because you’ve deprived it of its essential form, yet you still have a snowdiscall. Further, you’ve always had a snowdiscall (i.e., 1), it was sharing matter with the snowball. So, you had two things in the same place at the same time.

 

[sw85]

I think thing is broad enough to incorporate a ‘pattern in which matter is arranged.’ But, you’re committed to saying that nearly an infinite amount of snowballs and snowdiscalls are in the same place at the same time. You might say ‘but these are just forms’, I don’t see how that changes things though. Might just be a difference of intuition.

But if you take “thing” that broadly, there’s no reason to suppose that two things can’t exist in the same place at the same time. In essence I think you’re banking on an equivocation between two different senses of the word “thing.” It’s not two different “things” but two different instances of matter that can’t occupy the same place at the same time.

Again, I am both human and male; so I instantiate these two forms separately. There’s no conflict there.

I don’t think nominalism is all that complicated. But, even if it were, it’s not obvious that it’s complexity is more of a cost than the bloated ontology of hylemorphism.

Like most forms of reductionism, I don’t think it’s complicated, either; I just think it’s wrong. What I was saying was that even if you suppose every single thing corresponds to a form of its own, that doesn’t really tell us anything. Those individual forms still correspond to greater forms (such that the Form of Fido and the Form of Rex both correspond to the Form of the Dog), and those greater forms still tell us what we need to know about Fido and Rex. In other words, the objection really isn’t fatal to realism even if it were true – and, again, given that it’s just as reasonable to say X instantiates form Y better or worse as it is to say that every X(ij) perfectly instantiates form X(ij), I don’t see why we should agonize over it.

SW85:

I think you need to be careful here. Taking the idea of aristotle’s forms as given, one has to allow for different kinds of forms, those which dictate what a being is, and those which dictate how that kind of being exists in an individual, in otherwords, there is not the same contradiction between saying that a person is a man, however, there is a contradiction in saying either that a person is a cat, or that a man is a woman.

Sure, but my point was just to demonstrate that a thing can instantiate multiple forms simultaneously, so clearly we need a stricter definition of “thing” than “whatever can be thought to exist in some way.” Otherwise we end up with the logical absurdity that my being both a man and a human constitutes a logical impossibility because it’s a case of two things occupying the same space at the same time.

 

[clmowry]

Suppose you have a snowball, and you flatten it (i.e., it becomes 100). You’ve destroyed the snowball because you’ve deprived it of its essential form, yet you still have a snowdiscall. Further, you’ve always had a snowdiscall (i.e., 1), it was sharing matter with the snowball. So, you had two things in the same place at the same time.

So I’m a Father, Son, Brother, Human, Male, Animal, Mammal, etc.

I’m not one “me” I’m X number of different “things” existing in the same space?

Really?

Chuck

 

[Perplexity]

So I’m a Father, Son, Brother, Human, Male, Animal, Mammal, etc.

I’m not one “me” I’m X number of different “things” existing in the same space?

Really?

Chuck

I don’t think this is analogous. See, all those things are predicates of a subject: you, in this case anyways. But, snowball and snowdiscall aren’t properties. They’re subjects that have properties.

 

[clmowry]

I don’t think this is analogous. See, all those things are predicates of a subject: you, in this case anyways. But, snowball and snowdiscall aren’t properties. They’re subjects that have properties.

Isn’t is simply the overlap of defining properties that allows the one thing to be both a snowball and snowdiscall at the same time?

Chuck

 

[steve_b]

I am good at bringing evidence for the existence of God through reason and science but I don’t have any good reasons for the existence of the soul.

Can someone offer me evidence for the soul based on reason and logic, it would be appreciative.

When you look into the eyes of a person who is alive, they look back. If you look into those same eyes after they are dead, they don’t look back. You know by just looking, that the person is gone. It wasn’t untill I saw this with a friend, that I realized the meaning of the saying the eyes are the windows of the soul

When Jesus said, the flesh is nothing, it’s the spirit that gives life that becomes visual when a person dies, when the soul is gone, the body dies. The soul doesn’t die, just the body.

how do we know?

A scriptural example of the soul not dieing is, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. How does the rich man communicate with Lazarus and Abraham? All 3 are dead. How is it they see each other, they converse with each other, they have memory of their life they left behind, they have intellect still, and they have will, and they sense fully their surroundings. They feel their surroundings regarding pleasure and pain… Their body isn’t experiencing this, their bodies are dead and decomposed. What’s experiencing all this? It’s their soul. Remember, Jesus is telling the story.