What exactly is the soul?

[Abba]

You can read over my posts here to see what I have said. The brain, since it is a physical instrument, cannot do anything that is spiritual. So, are memories physical or spiritual? I say they are spiritual, that they are an act of the intellect. But it is only an opinion.

Linus2nd

Will do. My Sunday break is over and I need to get back to attending my family, but, I will read over the thread and check throughout the week to see what is cooking if anything.

Elephants have memories and have an ‘animal soul’ versus a ‘rational soul’… I suppose the animal soul is spiritual but not eternal.

Could it be that as part of the instincts of humans in the mechanism of the body itself there can be stored some memories? Or, more importantly in the fundamental mechanism of the soul and/or spirit, there can be a kind of innate ability that is fundamental to the soul - kind of like instincts which is ‘sensory’?

I don’t agree with Aristotle and Aquinas when it comes to the soul… the angels are intelligent yet are pure spirit. The angels do not need a body to be rational… aquinasonline.com/Topics/soul.html

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Im sincere, and I mean pretty much the entire conversation.

OK,
if its important do walk me through the relevant sentences and explain what you think it means and why it confuses you.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

I haven’t changed my mind and I can’t help what other people think .

Linus2nd

So explain why you believe you have not now taken a different position Linus?

I don’t know why you bother responding with emptiness.

That is not a sign of someone openly discussing points in good faith - only someone who wants to have the last-word right or wrong .

 

[Blue_Horizon]

It is the best I can do at the time.

I don’t see how an image, by any definition, could be material. If it is not material, it must be spiritual ( immaterial ). There are no " photo graphic plates " in the brain. And " image, " in this context would have to cover not only sight, but sound, touch, taste, snell as well. And see below…

This is not the case. There can be “material images” which, being essentially a representation in matter, are eminently suitable candidates for being stored permanently in brain tissue [as does colloidal silver a pattern of light in a sepia photo].
Indeed, this is exactly what Aquinas means by the phantasm, it is a material image. It is his abstracted concept that is immaterial.

Linus I have better things to do with my time and education than discuss philosophy with someone who hasn’t done his homework and completely misunderstands Aquinas’s system wrt how understanding arises from the senses, produces the sensible species, then the phantasm then the spiritual concept.

Neither do you correctly understand the role of material and immaterial in this process.

I can only point out to you that you have systemic errors in your appreciation of Aquinas in this area. I hope you redo your homework one day but I haven’t got time to bring you up to speed here sorry. I don’t think you will even listen.

Perhaps you are an autodidact in this area, that would explain it.
For my part I sat through many hrs of professorial lectures, tutorials, debates, assignments and Fri night discussions with my Dominican teachers at their monastery over beers.

Just search on aquinas phantasm and “material image” you will find that all I say is true.
You are punching far above your weight on these fine points.

 

[JuanFlorencio]

Well, let’s step away from leading-edge research and just skim the following two pages in a neurobiology textbook at UT Houston:

Visual Processing: Eye and Retina - neuroscience.uth.tmc.edu/s2/chapter14.html
Visual Processing: Cortical Pathways - neuroscience.uth.tmc.edu/s2/chapter15.html

All of that relies on what was once leading-edge research, and in the last section (15.7) of the second page, some of that knowledge is used in an example diagnosis of a stroke patient who can no longer recognize faces.

The brain, the stuff between the ears of the patient, has suffered damage due to the stroke, and so the mind, the faculty of awareness and consciousness, can no longer recognize faces.

Now that doesn’t rely on any philosophical debate about the mind, it’s simply a brute fact which is part of reality for many doctors and patients worldwide. We could, I guess, claim that’s not really the mind, the mind is elsewhere, but if we look at all the other aspects of mind that are known to stop working following damage to various areas of the brain, there’s nowhere else for the mind to hide.

Perhaps wondering where the mind might be was a interesting question in 350 BC, but I think we moved on long ago.

btw did you know we have the same number of neurons in our gut as a cat’s brain? And, there, it turns out, is another aspect of mind: ‘For instance when we experience “butterflies in the stomach”, this really is the brain in the stomach talking to the brain in your head. As we get nervous or fearful, blood gets diverted from our gut to our muscles and this is the stomach’s way of protesting.’ - bbc.com/news/health-18779997

I guess you believe that those of us who distinguish two different realms of reality should be surprised at this fact: the patient could see, but he was unable to recognize faces, right?

I don’t know what can happen to an individual who suffers damage to a specific brain area or to a determined combination of areas; but it is clear to me that his interaction modes will be affected to a greater or lesser degree. No need to say that, in general, damage to any part of our body will have an effect on our interaction modes as well, to a greater or lesser extent.

You probably would say that if a given brain area is damaged and consequently we lose certain ability -usually attributed to the mind, or the soul, or the spirit-, it would prove that such ability has to be attributed to the brain alone. Then, by studying the multitude of cases of brain damage you might feel you have the right to conclude that nothing else is needed, besides the brain, to explain consciousness, perception, knowledge, etcetera. It would be like saying that it is the wheel which drives the car because if you remove it, driving the car is no longer possible. I promise to myself I will never use such kind of arguments. You might feel that you wouldn’t need to provide the positive explanation about knowledge, for example, saying -like Nietzsche used to say-, “we don’t know all of which the body is able”.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Elephants have memories and have an ‘animal soul’ versus a ‘rational soul’… I suppose the animal soul is spiritual but not eternal.

Correct, the animal soul is spiritual but not eternal. Good point.

Could it be that as part of the instincts of humans in the mechanism of the body itself there can be stored some memories?

Aquinas held that humans do not have instincts in the same sense as animals. In man the soul does the all the things which would be done by the animal soul. So, strictly speaking, these would be intelligent acts.

Or, more importantly in the fundamental mechanism of the soul and/or spirit, there can be a kind of innate ability that is fundamental to the soul - kind of like instincts which is ‘sensory’?

The soul directs all of the bodies actions, including those of the mind. So yes, it does the many of things done by the sentient soul of animals, and by the vegetative soul of plants.

Linus2nd

I don’t agree with Aristotle and Aquinas when it comes to the soul… the angels are intelligent yet are pure spirit. The angels do not need a body to be rational… aquinasonline.com/Topics/soul.html

Linus2nd

 

[Linusthe2nd]

So explain why you believe you have not now taken a different position Linus?

I don’t know why you bother responding with emptiness.

That is not a sign of someone openly discussing points in good faith - only someone who wants to have the last-word right or wrong .

Sorry you feel that way, I’m doing the best I can.

Linus2nd

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Linus I have better things to do with my time and education than discuss philosophy with someone who hasn’t done his homework and completely misunderstands Aquinas’s system wrt how understanding arises from the senses, produces the sensible species, then the phantasm then the spiritual concept.

Neither do you correctly understand the role of material and immaterial in this process.

I can only point out to you that you have systemic errors in your appreciation of Aquinas in this area. I hope you redo your homework one day but I haven’t got time to bring you up to speed here sorry. I don’t think you will even listen.

Perhaps you are an autodidact in this area, that would explain it.
For my part I sat through many hrs of professorial lectures, tutorials, debates, assignments and Fri night discussions with my Dominican teachers at their monastery over beers.

Just search on aquinas phantasm and “material image” you will find that all I say is true.
You are punching far above your weight on these fine points.

Always glad to have your spirited opinions.

Linus2nd

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Elephants have memories and have an ‘animal soul’ versus a ‘rational soul’… I suppose the animal soul is spiritual but not eternal.

Correct, the animal soul is spiritual but not eternal. Good point.

Could it be that as part of the instincts of humans in the mechanism of the body itself there can be stored some memories?

Aquinas held that humans do not have instincts in the same sense as animals. In man the soul does the all the things which would be done by the animal soul. So, strictly speaking, these would be intelligent acts.

Or, more importantly in the fundamental mechanism of the soul and/or spirit, there can be a kind of innate ability that is fundamental to the soul - kind of like instincts which is ‘sensory’?

The soul directs all of the bodies actions, including those of the mind. So yes, it does the many of things done by the sentient soul of animals, and by the vegetative soul of plants.

I don’t agree with Aristotle and Aquinas when it comes to the soul… the angels are intelligent yet are pure spirit. The angels do not need a body to be rational… aquinasonline.com/Topics/soul.html

What don’t you agree with? You are correct about angels.

Linus2nd

 

[inocente]

I disagree. Nature is not limited to material substances - at least in my opinion. God made man a part of nature by breathing life into him. So eventhough the soul is a spiritual substance, it is a natural substance. Since the soul functions as God created it, it does not break any laws. Of course it breaks laws of science. I agree that when angels intervine in the physical world, they are breaking laws of nature.

I think you make things very complicated. Below, you say you use a posteriori reasoning, in other words justified by empirical evidence and experience, but what you’ve written here is independent of any empirical evidence, and as a result you’ve had to invent a new kind of law of nature which not justified by evidence, which come on, you have to admit is a bit weird.

O.K. In post # 57 I said, " The conscious mind ( in some mysterious way we will never know ) observes what is taking place, collates the various types of information and stores it in the soul for later reference. And from this point we get into the discussion that has been going on on the thread. " Yes, we may speculate, but we cannot know with absolute certainty because we cannot " touch " the mind.

Then you’ve really weakened your position, since earlier you said “we will never know” but now you say “we cannot know with absolute certainty”. But that applies to just about everything in the a posteriori land of science, because for instance while we can say on past evidence the Sun will almost certainly rise tomorrow, we can’t know with absolute certainty.

Sounds like you’re trying to invent a new category of reasoning, which is justified by evidence except when it isn’t.

*By using the type of *a’ posteriori ** reasoning used by A & T and some of the Church’s dogma. The Chruch teaches dogmatically that man has a rational soul. We also know that man’s actions are divided between the physical and the intellictual, which Aquinas calls immaterial ( spiritual ). And to me to remember is an act of the intellect. It takes a mind to remember. In my opinion, whatever physical impressions the brain recieves from the outside or from the body are physical and cannot be called memories.

You obviously believe this, but you can’t call it a posteriori as there’s no empirical evidence for this division.

Your claim that memories are not physical sounds a bit weird in an age of hard drives and memory sticks.

*Yes, you said, " And, of course, that would be a huge claim requiring lots of evidence, since it would mean that some aspect of the human mind is the only composite phenomenon in the entire universe which is so disordered that it follows no pattern, even in principle, and is therefore forever inexplicable. "

I merely point out that the mind is not a composit. In fact it is merely a power of the soul, which is a spiritual substance. And spiritual substances cannot be composits, in themselves. Man is a composit of body and soul. And I it would be a serious error to call the soul ( and its powers of intellect and will ) disordered. All we have to do is observe how man lives, thinks, wills, remembers to see that the soul is not disordered. A & T have done a fine job of explaining the nature of the soul and how the mind works.*

You and I have different ideas of what is evidence. The only sentence there which purports to refer to evidence is “All we have to do is observe how man lives, thinks, wills, remembers to see that the soul is not disordered”. But observing man can only tell us that man is not disordered, it doesn’t provide any evidence at all for the existence of soul, spiritual substance, etc. and the other categories you use.

As for Aristotle and Thomas doing a fine job of explaining how the mind works, no they don’t, or medicos and psychologists would use them instead of modern science.

Yes, until the soul is reunited with the body after the General Judgment it is like a duck out of water. Yes, the soul is, in a metaphysical sence, incomplete with being united to its proper body. But I disagree that the brain is the seat of the mind. In a metaphysical sence the soul and the intellect are identical. So we can call the soul the mind. Rationality is the act of the intellect or the act of the soul or mind. The brain is the organ through which the intellect knows the world and through which it governs the body.

As I said, it’s not my theology, but I don’t see how this prevents the brain being the seat of the mind.

I didn’t intend to be controversial on this thread, to me all the evidence we have is that the mind emerges from the brain, and I’ve still seen no evidence otherwise.

 

[inocente]

I guess you believe that those of us who distinguish two different realms of reality should be surprised at this fact: the patient could see, but he was unable to recognize faces, right?

No, it’s me who is surprised. I thought it should be obvious that, even though a cell phone may have a camera on-board, it can’t recognize faces without also having a facial recognition app (and probably a CPU well beyond anything currently available).

Therefore, by analogy, we cannot recognize faces just by having eyes. Perhaps the underlying issue here is appreciating the huge processing power needed to effortlessly carry out complicated tasks such as facial recognition.

*I don’t know what can happen to an individual who suffers damage to a specific brain area or to a determined combination of areas; but it is clear to me that his interaction modes will be affected to a greater or lesser degree. No need to say that, in general, damage to any part of our body will have an effect on our interaction modes as well, to a greater or lesser extent.

You probably would say that if a given brain area is damaged and consequently we lose certain ability -usually attributed to the mind, or the soul, or the spirit-, it would prove that such ability has to be attributed to the brain alone. Then, by studying the multitude of cases of brain damage you might feel you have the right to conclude that nothing else is needed, besides the brain, to explain consciousness, perception, knowledge, etcetera. It would be like saying that it is the wheel which drives the car because if you remove it, driving the car is no longer possible. I promise to myself I will never use such kind of arguments. You might feel that you wouldn’t need to provide the positive explanation about knowledge, for example, saying -like Nietzsche used to say-, “we don’t know all of which the body is able”.*

I get the feeling you were struggling a bit there. Anyway, it didn’t quite work.

Yes, it might be comforting to believe that granny’s mind is still working perfectly, it’s only her “interaction modes” which are suffering dementia. Alternatively, it might be horribly discomforting, given that it would mean granny’s mind has to live day after day trapped and devoid of any dignity due to failing “interaction modes”.

In other words there’s a moral dimension to speculating about the existence of occult things for which there is no evidence, since it compromises granny’s treatment. The speculative “there’s more things in heaven and earth, etc.” kind of philosophy has its place, but it takes away any urgency to finding more effective treatments for granny and all the others.

 

[Aloysium]

A visit to the corner store is sufficient evidence that there exist persons who relate to one another. We have brains and minds which participate in the unity that is the person. Mind and body are one in life. The brain is a component of the body and functions according to physical principles. It is not a physical action that causes mental phenomena. To believe this is to actually believe in the occult. The mind and its workings are of a different order than those of the body; they have different rules. If you want to fully understand a person’s behaviour, you will try to formulate what is happening biologically and psychologically (which includes sociological factors). Carve it up intellectually whatever way you want, there remains the reality of one person, whole in relation to the world and his Creator.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

I think you make things very complicated. Below, you say you use a posteriori reasoning, in other words justified by empirical evidence and experience, but what you’ve written here is independent of any empirical evidence, and as a result you’ve had to invent a new kind of law of nature which not justified by evidence, which come on, you have to admit is a bit weird.

I guess it would be a’ priori reasoning, since it does not rely on scientific experiment.

Then you’ve really weakened your position, since earlier you said “we will never know” but now you say “we cannot know with absolute certainty”. But that applies to just about everything in the a posteriori land of science, because for instance while we can say on past evidence the Sun will almost certainly rise tomorrow, we can’t know with absolute certainty.

You’re quibbling.

Sounds like you’re trying to invent a new category of reasoning, which is justified by evidence except when it isn’t.

It is called philosophical reasoning. I’m not establishing a new category.

You obviously believe this, but you can’t call it a posteriori as there’s no empirical evidence for this division.

Sorry for the confusion.

Your claim that memories are not physical sounds a bit weird in an age of hard drives and memory sticks.

Yes, and these inventions confuse the modern mind. It blocks it from philosophical truth. Memory is an act of the intellect, without the mind there is no memory - wherever you want to put it. And if you want to put it in the brain, it doesn’t get there without the mind ( intellect ), even the basic perceptions are not received. Because it is the mind or soul which governs all of man’s acts - physical, intellectual, spritual.

You and I have different ideas of what is evidence. The only sentence there which purports to refer to evidence is “All we have to do is observe how man lives, thinks, wills, remembers to see that the soul is not disordered”. But observing man can only tell us that man is not disordered, it doesn’t provide any evidence at all for the existence of soul, spiritual substance, etc. and the other categories you use.

Not scientific evidence, no. But all the communication taking place on these forums proves we have a soul. We are engaged in intellectual ( loosely understood ) operations, and intellecual acts are immaterial ( spiritual ) acts. A spiritual act must be sourced in an intellectual ( spiritual ) substance. We call this substance a soul. God breathed life into man, giving him a living, intellect, a human soul.

As for Aristotle and Thomas doing a fine job of explaining how the mind works, no they don’t, or medicos and psychologists would use them instead of modern science.

Sorry you don’t think so.

As I said, it’s not my theology, but I don’t see how this prevents the brain being the seat of the mind.

Man’s mind, intellect, soul are all univical terms. The soul is a living intellect, an intellectual substance. Augustine and Aquinas taught that the whole soul is in every part of the body. So it cannot exist only in the brain. It governs all of man’s acts through the brain. It doesn’t " live there. " It works there, but it works in every part of man’s body. That is why every thing stops when it leaves the body.

I didn’t intend to be controversial on this thread, to me all the evidence we have is that the mind emerges from the brain, and I’ve still seen no evidence otherwise.

That’s fine. The reason why people think that is because the brain is the organ through which the soul controls all of man’s activities.

Linus2nd

 

[Faith1960]

You can read over my posts here to see what I have said. The brain, since it is a physical instrument, cannot do anything that is spiritual. So, are memories physical or spiritual? I say they are spiritual, that they are an act of the intellect. But it is only an opinion.

Linus2nd

I’d say memories are stored in the brain. Take a PET scan and have the subject recall something and see how the brain lights up like a Christmas tree.

 

[Aloysium]

I’d say memories are stored inbthe brain. Take a PET scan and have** the subject recall something** and see how the brain lights up like a Christmas tree.

 

[GEddie]

I’d say memories are stored in the brain. Take a PET scan and have the subject recall something and see how the brain lights up like a Christmas tree.

Because **consciousness **requires the body, so **conscious **recollection resides in the head.

A knock on the back of the neck shorts out all mental activity, including the memory, but not because memory resides there, but rather because consciousness, a body function, becomes disabled.

ICXC NIKA

 

[Faith1960]

Aloysium:
Whats your point? They can be instructed to recall eating an ice cream cone or their first kiss, it doesnt matter what they are told to remember.

 

[Faith1960]

Because **consciousness **requires the body, so **conscious **recollection resides in the head.

A knock on the back of the neck shorts out all mental activity, including the memory, but not because memory resides there, but rather because consciousness, a body function, becomes disabled.

ICXC NIKA

This makes no sense to me. You just said recollection resides in the head.

 

[Aloysium]

A person recalls.
The memory is in the person.
The person puts together the “jig-saw” pieces of thoughts, perceptions, feelings and the like which are associated with the part of the brain that “lights up like a Christmas tree”. (It doesn’t really)

 

[Faith1960]

A person recalls.
The memory is in the person.
The person puts together the “jig-saw” pieces of thoughts, perceptions, feelings and the like which are associated with the part of the brain that “lights up like a Christmas tree”. (It doesn’t really)

It most certainly does. Havent you seen pics of PET scans of active brains?

I have MS. I havent’t had a PET scan but when i have my MRIs there are plaques seen in my brain and cervical spine that affect parts of my body.
Im fairly certain my neuro would say my brain controls my body.