Thomism and "Libertarian Free Will"

[arthur42]

Hey everyone, this is my first post. I’m a non-Catholic who is very interested in St. Thomas Aquinas! I also study experimental psychology, so I am interested in the implications of Thomism in consciousness and will.

I have read quite a bit on hylemorphism (Feser and Oderberg). I think I understand the idea of forms, act and potency, and the four causes, and I must say that I find it a lot more plausible a theory of metaphysics/consciousness than, say, Cartesian dualism, partly because it seems incoherent to talk about matter lacking final and formal causality. I thought that I had it down pretty well.

However, I have noticed (even in these forums) that Thomism doesn’t seem to talk about *libertarian *free will. A quick Google search shows that Thomists seem to side-step the issue. However, I assume that Thomism allows for free choices between alternatives. So there still seems to be an issue with the distribution of energy, right? If I will my body/neurons to do one thing, energy is distributed in one way, and if I will my body/neurons to do something else, energy goes a different way.

So I have a hint that there’s a crucial piece of the puzzle that is missing in my understanding of Thomistic consciousness/metaphysics. Is energy not distributed differently on different alternatives?

 

[Katholish]

I am not quite sure I understand the core of your question. Are you asking how the soul (form of the body and source of free will) interacts with the body such that two alternative choices could produces two different effects in the body?

 

[arthur42]

I am not quite sure I understand the core of your question. Are you asking how the soul (form of the body and source of free will) interacts with the body such that two alternative choices could produces two different effects in the body?

Yes, that is the essence of my question (no pun intended). Thanks for decoding it. As I said above, I am guessing that my question reveals that there is an important, fundamental piece of the puzzle I am not getting.

 

[Katholish]

Well, I don’t think it will be terribly surprising if I say that physical organ called the brain is were much of the important interaction occurs, but I do want to point out that unlike Descartes theory that the soul in fact interacts through only one small part of the body (which he calls the pineal gland), St. Thomas is quite clear that the soul is the form of the whole body and as such the soul is wholly in each part of the body. (Summa I, Q. 76, A. 8)

That being said, the imagination, which is a material function of the brain and not part of the immaterial intellect, is how much of the interaction occurs. We will first ask the question, “How does the soul acquire new knowledge from the body?” This occurs from the 5 senses taking in information from the outside world and compiling it into a single image/construct called a phantasm. Through the process of abstraction, the Active Intellect strips away all of the material components from the phantasm and passes on the underlying forms to the Passive Intellect which is purely immaterial.

Ok, so how does that process work in reverse? How does the Passive Intellect communicate an idea or a command to the body? Sense data is not the only thing which can create a phantasm in the imagination. The Passive Intellect can also create phantasms. Those phantasm are not mere pictures, but have other modifiers, things like: bad, good, do, avoid, etc. Thus, when the imagination receives a new phantasm from the intellect, it can basically have instructions encoded within it that the body is pre-programed to obey.

By using terms like modifiers and encoding, I am departing a little from the terminology that St. Thomas might have used, but I think I am accurately explaining his teaching.

 

[JohnJFarren]

Hello arthur42 – 18 Feb 2012
I am physically an old man. Two master’s degrees, Religion and Philosophy. My life has been steeped in Aquinas and in Metaphysics.

Two outstanding people have been profoundly effective in my life.
Jacques Maritain … Preface to Metaphysics and The Degrees of Knowledge (2nd ed, Phelan trans). For some years I searched for a rock bottom rational certitude … one single absolute self-evident place to plant my foot. Maritain gave it to me in SCIO ALIQUID ESSE.

The other … Brother Benignus FSC and his work Nature Knowledge and God. This work is the best overall presentation of Thomas Aquinas. I refer you especially to the section on hylemorphism, Part II, Section 4. The work has long been out of print but I am certain you can purchase cheaply a copy from www.alibris.com They have never failed me.

I thank God for your strong interest in Aquinas and (authentic Thomistic, a la Maritain) metaphysics. It is truly a gift from God.

All Blessing my non-Catholic brother … your Catholic brother John

 

[arthur42]

Katholish:

I appreciate your overview of Aquinas’ view of consciousness. As an experimental psychologist I’m still wondering how exactly this would be modeled given what we do know about the brain. My own personal view is that both materialism and plain vanilla interactionist dualism are wholly insufficient to explain what goes on in the brain/mind, and I think that hylemorphism provides a few of the answers. As such, I am thinking that the next generation of research psychologists should be more willing to rethink the metaphysics we use on a regular basis (instead of just borrowing the metaphysics of current physics). So for me, I would like to enjoy a life-long pursuit of adapting hylemorphism to future research. Thanks for getting me closer.

JohnJFarren:

I appreciate your readings. During my summer vacation I will consider adding your books to my reading list.

I will likely have questions in the future and therefore I will think of this forum as a place to go!

 

[Trevor_Stamm]

Have you read Feser’s Philosophy of the Mind? Great read on this subject.

 

[empther]

God and the angels do some pretty profound thinking without a brain, and they get the information around.

I have said many times that I believe man’s memory, understanding, judgement and will are greater than any physical brain alone could do. That is, while the brain has some importance in memory, how much is impossible to measure, the soul’s intellect seems to be an infinite receptacle. Shouldn’t we run out of neurons eventually?
As for understanding and judgement, can the physical brain alone explain one tenth of what we know? I think not. What neural system could organize the virtually infinite variety of concepts we can understand. And yet we get all this information and understanding across the barrier into our speech, and into our hands for typing it all in the form of books etc.

Since nobody will say the physical brain can control or influence the spiritual soul, I have to say the soul controls the body. How? It’s spiritual. We don’t understand it. But God controls the universe. Angels have some limited power to control the world. Even the devil has played some tricks in the world and it certainly wasn’t with God’s help.

Spirit controls matter. Or else, we would be prisoners in a body that ran automatically and unwillfully like the animals without regard for what we wanted to do.

 

[Katholish]

Since nobody will say the physical brain can control or influence the spiritual soul.

The material body (including the brain) most certainly can and does influence (but not “control”) the soul. Just think about how the passions influence your decisions. Body and soul are combined in such a profound manner, that it is very much a two-way street.

 

[arthur42]

The material body (including the brain) most certainly can and does influence (but not “control”) the soul. Just think about how the passions influence your decisions. Body and soul are combined in such a profound manner, that it is very much a two-way street.

This is quite evident to me as I have studied many psychological dysfunctions. A person with schizophrenia (it is hypothesized) has issues with a dopamine imbalance in the brain. This will disconnect them from objective reality in a way that makes them hard to talk to and interact with. It is not a disease of their “will,” it is a disease of their brain.

Similarly, I cannot will myself to fly by flapping my arms. There are physical limitations on my will that prevent me from simply fulfilling whatever my will desires.

And the reason I find hylemorphic dualism attractive is that it takes into account the fact that the body certainly is a crucial part of the soul, and damage, disease, passions, perspective, etc. will all influence what my whole soul does. This does not mean we are hopeless but, in my belief, Christ can overcome all these things, and thus we rely on Christ to “make up the difference.”

 

[arthur42]

Hello friends, I came across a piece of the puzzle that I believed was missing when I posted my question. I was still conceiving of matter mechanistically, and so I was still thinking of the intellect as a Cartesian soul that “pushes around” matter. I wrote about my revelation here.

If I’m completely off-base with my conclusion, feel free to correct me!

 

[Katholish]

I read your whole post, and I do think it is off a little. Man is bound by his final cause the same way a match is. Man’s freedom comes, not in determining a final cause (or perhaps more precisely, an “end”), but in determining means to pursue a certain goal. This is probably one of the strongest of all the themes in St. Thomas. Man’s end is happiness. He cannot change that. He cannot will to be unhappy, though he can will things which he thinks will make him happy, but which rather end up making him unhappy.

Man’s will has an “object” or “end” which it always and everywhere pursues and follows, i.e. that which it perceives as “good”. I feel like your post was moving in a different direction, one absolutely foreign to St. Thomas.

 

[arthur42]

I read your whole post, and I do think it is off a little. Man is bound by his final cause the same way a match is. Man’s freedom comes, not in determining a final cause (or perhaps more precisely, an “end”), but in determining means to pursue a certain goal. This is probably one of the strongest of all the themes in St. Thomas. Man’s end is happiness. He cannot change that. He cannot will to be unhappy, though he can will things which he thinks will make him happy, but which rather end up making him unhappy.

Man’s will has an “object” or “end” which it always and everywhere pursues and follows, i.e. that which it perceives as “good”. I feel like your post was moving in a different direction, one absolutely foreign to St. Thomas.

Okay, sounds good. I have withdrawn the post and I will work on it some more. I guess the main idea I was getting at is how in practice the energy in the brain could be “re-routed” based on the whims of the intellect. The fact of the matter is, the only way I conceive of any kind of free will is through a penalty: namely, the denial of the Law of Conservation of Energy. Energy does what it does because it has a natural Final Cause. As such, what I thought I was getting from Feser is that the Final Cause is the horse that pulls the cart, so to speak, of the other three causes. Am I at least right in getting that? If my intellect does one thing rather than another, the energy in question may or may not follow the course it would have taken otherwise.

 

[arthur42]

I have stumbled across the Catholic Encyclopedia’s entry on the Law of Conservation of Energy, and there is a discussion of this very issue. I will read it over the next couple of days and see if I can refine my essay in a way that will save it from the trash can. Otherwise I will write a new one based on my findings. Exciting!

Thanks for being patient with me. As I said above, I would very much like a complete model of mental causation because I would get a lot of mileage out of it in my psychology career.

 

[Katholish]

Okay, sounds good. I have withdrawn the post and I will work on it some more. I guess the main idea I was getting at is how in practice the energy in the brain could be “re-routed” based on the whims of the intellect. The fact of the matter is, the only way I conceive of any kind of free will is through a penalty: namely, the denial of the Law of Conservation of Energy. Energy does what it does because it has a natural Final Cause. As such, what I thought I was getting from Feser is that the Final Cause is the horse that pulls the cart, so to speak, of the other three causes. Am I at least right in getting that? If my intellect does one thing rather than another, the energy in question may or may not follow the course it would have taken otherwise.

You are definately right about Final Cause being the pre-eminent and primary cause, but in this case, i.e. that of the will, the Final Cause is somewhat static and stable. The Final Cause of any will act is the perceived “good”. It simply cannot be anything else. I suppose, though I don’t know this with certainty, that it is the Formal Cause which most changes and differs between different acts of the will. The Material Cause would be the Intellect and perhaps some of the brain operations, the Efficient Cause is the one willing, and the Final Cause is the good. The Formal Cause, however, is that which determines a thing to be a particular way, and hence gives distinction to each act, in other words, it is the principle of differentiation.

In this regard, the Formal Cause would seem like the means chosen by the efficient cause to bring about the Final Cause or end.