What exactly is the soul?

[Richca]

Not really.

The mind can reside in the brain/head/body, without, because nonphysical, being any of them.

And certainly, while one is alive, the mind occupies the human body in some way or form.

ICXC NIKA

I think yes, really. Your first sentence is a little confusing but it appears to me that you are blurring the distinction between a human being’s spirit or soul which possesses the spiritual, immaterial powers of intellect and will and which is immortal with his/her body which is mortal. The intellect and will are not any part of the body which is why they are called spiritual powers while the body is material. It is through these spiritual powers of the soul that we are made in the image and likeness of God who is a pure spirit as the catechism says. The intellect and will belong to that part of man which is his/her spirit or soul and which can survive the death of the body.

 

[JuanFlorencio]

That’s an insightful question that your aquaintances were unable to answer

Just look this rather global one up on the Net, if you strike a particular problem fee free to put your more insightful question to me.

It was a simple question, right? I think I always ask just simple questions. Why should it be otherwise? Anyway, when they were answering it, they were talking to me about"signals", “information”, “reading”, “interpretations”, etcetera, attributing all this to computers. I just told them, pointing towards my computer: “Wait a minute; please don’t tell me there is information, reading, and interpretations here. It will be much better to me if you explain all we can see in terms of electrical pathways, electrical pulses, electromagnetic fields, transducers, etcetera. Everything which happens here should be described as a succession of physical interactions, otherwise I will not be able to comprehend”. Strangely, it seems it was not so easy for them. However, it appears that it will be an easy task for you, which makes me glad. But, did you want to share something with me, or you wanted me to have another look at Inocente’s link?

 

[Blue_Horizon]

It was a simple question, right? I think I always ask just simple questions. Why should it be otherwise? Anyway, when they were answering it, they were talking to me about"signals", “information”, “reading”, “interpretations”, etcetera, attributing all this to computers. I just told them, pointing towards my computer: “Wait a minute; please don’t tell me there is information, reading, and interpretations here. It will be much better to me if you explain all we can see in terms of electrical pathways, electrical pulses, electromagnetic fields, transducers, etcetera. Everything which happens here should be described as a succession of physical interactions, otherwise I will not be able to comprehend”. Strangely, it seems it was not so easy for them. However, it appears that it will be an easy task for you, which makes me glad. But, did you want to share something with me, or you wanted me to have another look at Inocente’s link?

I don’t know why they first started talking signals, reading interpretation, first pass that is unnecessary jargon not required to understand how electronic memory chips work or what they do.

This link is a good starting point.
batronix.com/shop/electronic/eprom-programming.html

This paragraph seems helpful.
“A memory chip is an electronic component which can store data.
Data could consist, for instance, of temperature values taken by a temperature measurement system, or any other data.”

It would be good if you could formulate specific questions quoting the phrases you may have difficulty with here - then I will better understand where you are coming from.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

No, the Pope didn’t and won’t. That is the job of science.

Linus2nd

And how do we infallibly know that a Pope has never admixed prudential propositions (eg the “soul” of pagan Greek Scientia) when explaining/clothing infallible articles of faith?

 

[Blue_Horizon]

I don’t think I have.

You hold that because the immaterial human soul (mind) is not rigorously proven philosophically that it can be safely dismissed. I say that you can disbelieve anything you care to, but the Church is run by philosophers, and so whatever it teaches is going to hold up in that respect. This includes the IHS(M).

ICXC NIKA

Yes you’ve missed the point then.
I did not dismiss the soul, only the strength of some arguments alleged wrt some of its powers.
Never mind.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

I don’t think I called the phantasm an " immaterial image. " But it certainly cannot be a material image, since it is the product of man’s cognative faculty.

Yet you have stated:
*“In my view anything that can properly be called the subject of memory must be very like a phantasm, it is basically immaterial…”

“I don’t see how an image, by any definition, could be material. If it is not material, it must be spiritual ( immaterial ).”

“It is difficult to understand how the brain could sort out and oollate the different nuances of sense impressions to form anything that could be described as an image or phantasm.”*

Linus you have made a beginner’s mistake, confusing the intellectual image with the sensible image. The phantasm, in Aquinas, is a sensible image - that is why it is considered “material”. It certainly belongs to the sensible powers of the body, not the cognitative (ie spiritual intellective) faculty as you opine.

Please look this up in systemic writings of the trusted Thomist philosophers instead of trying to interpret isolated chunks of text on your own. This is the weakness of auto-didactism.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Yet you have stated:
*“In my view anything that can properly be called the subject of memory must be very like a phantasm, it is basically immaterial…”

“I don’t see how an image, by any definition, could be material. If it is not material, it must be spiritual ( immaterial ).”

“It is difficult to understand how the brain could sort out and oollate the different nuances of sense impressions to form anything that could be described as an image or phantasm.”*

Linus you have made a beginner’s mistake, confusing the intellectual image with the sensible image. The phantasm, in Aquinas, is a sensible image - that is why it is considered “material”. It certainly belongs to the sensible powers of the body, not the cognitative (ie spiritual intellective) faculty as you opine.

Please look this up in systemic writings of the trusted Thomist philosophers instead of trying to interpret isolated chunks of text on your own. This is the weakness of auto-didactism.

Apparently you didn’t read post 446

In part it says:

" …Therefore the power by which in other animals is called the natural estimative, in man is called the “cogitative,” which by some sort of collation discovers these intentions…"

S.T., part 1, art 78, ans 4

Thomas also places these powers in the soul.

" On the contrary, Avicenna (De Anima iv, 1) assigns five interior sensitive powers; namely, “common sense, phantasy, imagination, and the estimative and memorative powers.”

" I answer that, As nature does not fail in necessary things, there must needs be as many actions of the sensitive soul as may suffice for the life of a perfect animal. If any of these actions cannot be reduced to the same one principle, they must be assigned to diverse powers; since a power of the soul is nothing else than the proximate principle of the soul’s operation. "

S.T., part 1, art 78, ans 4

So while the subject or content of memory may be images or phantasms of the singular or material, arising from the senses as it does, Aquinas refers to it as a power of the soul.
If then it is a power of the soul it cannot be a part of the organ we call the brain. If you want to say that the memorative power of the soul resides in this organ somewhere, I do not object as long as you don’t odentify any part of this material organ as memory. My own choice would be to say only that the soul’s memorative power, like all its other powers resides in the soul, yet uses the brain.

I am not confusing " sensible images with intellectual images. " Firstly, Aquinas does not refer to " intellectual images, " because you cannot have an image of a universal. Secondly, sensible images are those found in the phantasms, produced by the imagination. And these are among the powers enumerated above which Aquinas places in the soul.

Linus2nd

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Apparently you didn’t read post 446
I am not confusing " sensible images with intellectual images. " Firstly, Aquinas does not refer to " intellectual images, " because you cannot have an image of a universal. Secondly, sensible images are those found in the phantasms, produced by the imagination. And these are among the powers enumerated above which Aquinas places in the soul.

Linus2nd

You do understand “intellectual image” refers to the “concept” or “idea” don’t you?

Linus, it doesn’t matter how you do your post-mortem. You clearly opined the the phantasm is immaterial. It is not, that is an error of Hume and company.

But don’t argue with me, argue with respected Thomists - for example the J. Maritain tradition:*
10. …This intellectual image should not be confounded with the sensible image, or phantasm, which is a material representation of material objects, and which is formed by the imagination, by means of the material organ of the brain. The difference between these two images is great, and distinction between them is of vital importance in Philosophy. For instance, I intellectually conceive a triangle by apprehending a figure enclosed by three lines and thus having three angles. My notion or idea contains this and nothing more; it is very precise, and every one who conceives a triangle conceives it exactly the same way. But when I imagine a triangle, I cannot help imagining it with sensible material accidents, as being of such or such a size and shape, a foot long at one time, a mile long at another. The picture may be vague, various pictures of triangles may be blended together; but it can never be universal, representing all possible triangles, as my idea does. This imagination is a phantasm. True, phantasms are often called ‘ideas’ by English writers; in fact, the whole school of Berkeley, Hume, and their followers fail to trace any difference between them; it is the fundamental error of their pernicious philosophy. Thus, for instance, Huxley maintains that God, the soul of man, etc., are unknowable and unthinkable,{1} because we can form no phantasm of them. This makes them simply unimaginable, not unknowable nor unthinkable; we know what we mean when we speak of them. (On the difference between ideas and phantasms see, further, Logic, by Richard Clarke, S.J., c. vi.) "*

 

[Vico]

If you mean the intellect may be distinguished from the body then that would be a relatively non problematic translation/interpretation. But if this is to be understood as saying the intellectual soul is substantial without the body I believe that would be controversial.

It seems Aristotle was wrong here… it seems it took a long time before it was realised what the brain actually did and that it was indeed a bodily organ associated with intellect. Then again he may not be using an aposteriori argument at all. He may simply be making a conclusion that the intellect cannot possibly have need of a bodily organ because it is purely hidden or spiritual. That would be an apriori argument.
Given the science of the time maybe he meant both.
Perhaps his reasoning would not have been so certain if he understood the purpose of the brain as fully as we do nowadays.

If you read what S. Marc Cohen wrote: Intellect is broader than perception

You can think about anything. This universality of the objects of thought has several important consequences. Intellect is “unmixed”

The first is that the intellect “must be unmixed,” i.e., must be pure potential (since it can think about anything, it must be only potentially that thing). So it has no nature of its own—if it did, it would be unable to think about that nature.

…

Intellect is reflexive in a way that perception is not

There is another important difference between perceiving and thinking that is clearly a consequence of the universality of thought—thought is capable of thinking of itself.

When the intellect becomes each thing … it is still potential in a way … and then it is capable of understanding itself. (429b6-9)
Further, intellect itself is an object of intellect in the same way is its objects are. (430a3)

archive.is/WSiUh#selection-349.0-361.95

 

[Linusthe2nd]

You do understand “intellectual image” refers to the “concept” or “idea” don’t you?

Linus, it doesn’t matter how you do your post-mortem. You clearly opined the the phantasm is immaterial. It is not, that is an error of Hume and company.

But don’t argue with me, argue with respected Thomists - for example the J. Maritain tradition:*
10. …This intellectual image should not be confounded with the sensible image, or phantasm, which is a material representation of material objects, and which is formed by the imagination, by means of the material organ of the brain. The difference between these two images is great, and distinction between them is of vital importance in Philosophy. For instance, I intellectually conceive a triangle by apprehending a figure enclosed by three lines and thus having three angles. My notion or idea contains this and nothing more; it is very precise, and every one who conceives a triangle conceives it exactly the same way. But when I imagine a triangle, I cannot help imagining it with sensible material accidents, as being of such or such a size and shape, a foot long at one time, a mile long at another. The picture may be vague, various pictures of triangles may be blended together; but it can never be universal, representing all possible triangles, as my idea does. This imagination is a phantasm. True, phantasms are often called ‘ideas’ by English writers; in fact, the whole school of Berkeley, Hume, and their followers fail to trace any difference between them; it is the fundamental error of their pernicious philosophy. Thus, for instance, Huxley maintains that God, the soul of man, etc., are unknowable and unthinkable,{1} because we can form no phantasm of them. This makes them simply unimaginable, not unknowable nor unthinkable; we know what we mean when we speak of them. (On the difference between ideas and phantasms see, further, Logic, by Richard Clarke, S.J., c. vi.) "*

I see. So when you accuse me of being ignorant of Thomistic philosophy, or that I should take up a course in philsosphy by a qualified Professor, you mean that I am ignorant of the interpretations of J. Maritain or Richard Clark. Sorry I have not read them. But in my library, which includes the complete S.T and the complete S.C.G. I have a good sampling of many others, including Gilson.

And when you asked whether I understood the difference between " material image " and " intellectual image " you were not referring to terms Aquinas used ( nor that I used ), but to terms one or the other of these gentlemen used. Though Clarke did not use the term " material image " in the quote above, I do understand what he means by " sensible image, " which is a a term Thomas may have used. And I do understand what he means by " intellectual image, " though I don’t believe Thomas ever used it.

Now, I do not agree with Clarke ( as worthy as he may be ) that the imagination and its phantasm are products of the brain. And Aquinas never said anything like that either. Certainly the brain is involved, just as it is involved necessarily in all of man’s activities. But it can only be the product of the soul’s cognative activity, which is an activity of man’s intellect, and this means it and memory are powers of the of the soul, as Avicenna said, and with which Thomas agrees ( see my last post ). And I wholeheartedly agree. If they are powers of the soul, they cannot be powers of the brain, nor can their images and phantasms be produced by the brain - in my opinion.

Linus2nd

 

[inocente]

If we are speaking Aristotle/Aquinas we need to properly understand what is meant by “occult”.

These days it has New Age, Spiritualist implications which is not at all what the above philosophers mean.
Even the word “hidden” is ambiguous.

Take the accelerated movement of the celestial bodies (ie allegedly circular motion).
Now Aquinas is surely correct that whatever is moved (ie accelerating) must be moved (ie persistently acted upon) by another. (OK he prob didn’t mean it quite this way but I am interpretting him in the best light consistent with Newtyonian physics).

Therefore Aristotle/Aquinas had a problem … where in the sky is the cause…what material thing is causing this effect? Ultimately there isn’t a material one to be found.

Consequently logic suggests, if the above principle is true, that there must be a cause that is immaterial. In other words, there is a realm of “being” that is non-material…yet is capable of “animating” matter - whether it be a brain, a planet or a star.

I find that a perfectly acceptable form of logic and philosophic conclusion.
It isn’t necessarily “occult” (though it could easily lend itself to that sort of New Age spin).

Of course, in the above example, Aristotle was wrong.
The cause was of course “not material”, but different from how he thought of it (“Uncaused Cause”) … it was the invisible force of gravitational attraction…which ultimately is caused by the mass of all other material bodies in space.

Are such forces “material” or “non-material”. While its an interesting question I think its a tangent. They are but instrumental agents in the movement of the celestial bodies. The originating efficient cause is really just other celestial bodies which clearly are material.

But back to brains.
Can the activities brains exhibit (“effects”) be explained adequately by chains of material causality…or must we posit the existence of something we cannot observe/sense as the primary cause? If we do then this is all we mean by “occult” or “hidden” or “spiritual”.
Hence the soul stuff.

And if we do have to go this way there is a further decision to be made.
Is this “soul” standalone (ie can exist even apart from the matter it effects) or is the soul and the organised matter it “effects” so intertwined that it is illogical to speak of one without the other?

This is where classic Aristotle and Aquinas seem to part company. Classic Aristotle had no time for a soul that persists when a man dies. Aquinas clearly does under the Christian imperative.

Confusingly, “Christian” philosophers of Aristotle hold that Aristotle did imply the eternity of the human soul. It appears Aristotle was ambiguous on this point in his writings…at least according to christians.

I’m apparently being told by some posters that they know there is something about mind which will forever be inexplicable, which even in principle can never be explained by cause and effect, and is therefore beyond not just science but beyond all rational inquiry.

That would mean the mind involves mystical, supernatural phenomena, and I think occult is the exactly the right word to use for that. I’ve not read Aristotle or Thomas but very much doubt either of them would agree with such an idea, and hope the Church doesn’t either, since it supposes there are things which are forever hidden and can never be brought into the light of reason, which is the kind of doctrine that Christians have traditionally fought against.

PS sorry for the delay in replying, real-life intervened.

 

[inocente]

So this would not be the first time you have heard something similar and your answer remains “no”.

Yes, I hear it from certain posters whenever they get into difficulties.

inocente;13057432:

Isn’t emergence a fairly straightforward idea? - elephants have properties and behaviors which couldn’t be predicted from the properties and behaviors of the elementary particles of which they’re composed.

You do realize you have stated nothing here.
If you are going to propose that mind emerges from matter, you have to provide a mechanism whereby this happens.
Otherwise you are engaging in the very “occult” gobbledegloo that you rail against.
How does the totality that is an elephant emerge from elementary particles?
What properties in nature have to exist in order to do this?
Right here and now, where you as a person have to listen to me, another person take you to task about simplistic thinking, really what properties inherent to matter would be required for this reality, for your experience to happen?
What is it that would make my comment unpleasant?

I’m arguing that the mind can be explained, and have linked partial explanations of the visual system and memory, yet you say my thinking is simplistic and occult, unlike posters who can’t explain their view and argue that the mind can never be explained? I suggest that wasn’t one of your better arguments bro.

Anyway: *"In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence is a process whereby larger entities, patterns, and regularities arise through interactions among smaller or simpler entities that themselves do not exhibit such properties.

Emergence is central in theories of integrative levels and of complex systems. For instance, the phenomenon life as studied in biology is commonly perceived as an emergent property of interacting molecules as studied in chemistry, whose phenomena reflect interactions among elementary particles, modeled in particle physics, that at such higher mass—via substantial conglomeration—exhibit motion as modeled in gravitational physics. Neurobiological phenomena are often presumed to suffice as the underlying basis of psychological phenomena, whereby economic phenomena are in turn presumed to principally emerge.

In philosophy, emergence typically refers to emergentism. Almost all accounts of emergentism include a form of epistemic or ontological irreducibility to the lower levels." - en.wikipedia.org/?title=Emergence*

So it’s the idea that mind emerges from the lower levels, but cannot be reduced to them, in the same way that an elephant is made of quarks and electrons but cannot be explained by the properties of quarks and electrons. The explanation of the elephant entails a number of levels of complexity, and the mind would also emerge from simpler underlying systems. As such that’s basically the null hypothesis, since it doesn’t involve having to propose any non-physical phenomena which are inaccessible to inquiry.

 

[inocente]

Are you too on the electronics business? I have read the article. Actually, I had read several of them already. Please, show me what is next.

Not electronics, information technology. Not sure what you want, basically all memory technologies involve addressing a bit or group of bits, setting the state of a bit/group, and reading the state of a bit/group. Then higher level systems organize that into usable information.

Not exactly, Inocente. Before the existence of computers there were already discourses about memory. Memory was what those discourses were about. When computers came into the scene, the same word was used to refer to certain processes and objects in those apparatuses by analogy. I think we should classify all those phenomena to which the word is applied nowadays, and, by doing so -I think-, we will be able to see the differences between them. Then, we will need to invent new words, or revive old ones, to add precision to our speech. Meanwhile, I say that human memory is not the same as computer memory.

I’d agree that they differ quite a lot in terms of mechanism, for example our memories fade or change. But memory is used to mean any kind of recording, for instance a scar is a memory of a wound and geological forms are said to be the memories of the events which produced them.

Yes, “emergence” is an straightforward idea. Precisely that is why I am able to tell you that you don’t see the mind emerging from matter. You don’t see elephant behaviors and elephant properties emerging from the elementary particles of which elephants are composed either.

No, the idea in emergence is that new properties and behaviors emerge which did not exist in the underlying levels, for if they did exist in the underlying levels there would be nothing new to emerge.

So “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts” means that something new emerges when the parts are put together which did not exist in any of the parts. For instance there is no need to propose a non-physical factor to explain chemistry, it emerges naturally in an explicable way from the underlying phenomena. Etc.

 

[Aloysium]

A person exists at a primary level obvious to all who are not lost in thought. The sum of the parts that constitute the person, be they mental, physical, or some amalgam of both do not combine to form some Frankenstein whole. The person is basic reality.

 

[ynotzap]

If you read what S. Marc Cohen wrote: Intellect is broader than perception

You can think about anything. This universality of the objects of thought has several important consequences. Intellect is “unmixed”

The first is that the intellect “must be unmixed,” i.e., must be pure potential (since it can think about anything, it must be only potentially that thing). So it has no nature of its own—if it did, it would be unable to think about that nature.

…

Intellect is reflexive in a way that perception is not

There is another important difference between perceiving and thinking that is clearly a consequence of the universality of thought—thought is capable of thinking of itself.

When the intellect becomes each thing … it is still potential in a way … and then it is capable of understanding itself. (429b6-9)
Further, intellect itself is an object of intellect in the same way is its objects are. (430a3)

archive.is/WSiUh#selection-349.0-361.95

 

[Blue_Horizon]

I see. So when you accuse me of being ignorant of Thomistic philosophy, or that I should take up a course in philsosphy by a qualified Professor, you mean that I am ignorant of the interpretations of J. Maritain or Richard Clark. Sorry I have not read them. But in my library, which includes the complete S.T and the complete S.C.G. I have a good sampling of many others, including Gilson.

And when you asked whether I understood the difference between " material image " and " intellectual image " you were not referring to terms Aquinas used ( nor that I used ), but to terms one or the other of these gentlemen used. Though Clarke did not use the term " material image " in the quote above, I do understand what he means by " sensible image, " which is a a term Thomas may have used. And I do understand what he means by " intellectual image, " though I don’t believe Thomas ever used it.

Now, I do not agree with Clarke ( as worthy as he may be ) that the imagination and its phantasm are products of the brain. And Aquinas never said anything like that either. Certainly the brain is involved, just as it is involved necessarily in all of man’s activities. But it can only be the product of the soul’s cognative activity, which is an activity of man’s intellect, and this means it and memory are powers of the of the soul, as Avicenna said, and with which Thomas agrees ( see my last post ). And I wholeheartedly agree. If they are powers of the soul, they cannot be powers of the brain, nor can their images and phantasms be produced by the brain - in my opinion.

Linus2nd

Slice and dice any way you wish Linus.
No Thomist will agree with you that the phantasm is immaterial and belongs to the intellective faculty of the soul.

Consequently I warn readers here you have a systemic misunderstanding of the issue under discussion - at least wrt Aquinas.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

I’m apparently being told by some posters that they know there is something about mind which will forever be inexplicable, which even in principle can never be explained by cause and effect, and is therefore beyond not just science but beyond all rational inquiry.
.

Fair enough. I do find a priori philosophic propositions not amenable to falsification by empirical reality in any way more rhetoric than reason also.

I think this means, for them, that it is some of the effects seen in the brain that will forever remain inexplicable if we search for a further efficient material cause.
This appears to be based on an unbreakable principle - which therefore makes this seem like an a priori proof.

The principle seems to be that concepts being abstractions from sensibility, they cannot be represented in any material brain matter, therefore they must be held and processed in a spiritual substance.

These propositions are not fully coercive to me, which is why I believe the nature of the powers of the intellect can be somewhat critiqued by experiment, most obviously wrt memories.

There is a sense in which sensible experiences can be represented internally in a manner whereby the representation may be considered “material”.
If that is the case then even the Scholastics would agree there is no apriori case against the brain storing/processing these representations. In point of fact it seems by aposteriori reasoning (ie scientific observations) they would not accept memory involved such representations… though I find expositions conflicted on this point. Memory to the Scholastics does not seem to be what we call memory today.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Slice and dice any way you wish Linus.
No Thomist will agree with you that the phantasm is immaterial and belongs to the intellective faculty of the soul.

Consequently I warn readers here you have a systemic misunderstanding of the issue under discussion - at least wrt Aquinas.

Your paternalistic concern is simply overwhelming. But I think they are capable of thinking for themselves without dire warnings from less than objective sources. :yup:

Linus2nd

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Your paternalistic concern is simply overwhelming. But I think they are capable of thinking for themselves without dire warnings from less than objective sources. :yup:

Linus2nd

Linus I am a truth seeker, as best I can, for the sake of others and I really hope you are too.

I didn’t study Aquinas six years full time with three different Dominican professors just to stand idly by while Thomistic basics become obfuscated on a Catholic apologetics/philosophy forum.

As the Dominican mottoe goes “to contemplate and give to others the fruit of contemplation.”

Sincere Catholics who have not had the opportunity, money or discipline to receive a similar education ought to be able to reliably understand the undisputed basics of Aquinas from that living Thomistic tradition. If you are correct then all three of my professors are wrong as are the manuals we worked from.

“Phantasms” are considered “material”.
I was taught this means that they are internalised representations of sensed realities, belonging to the body’s sensitive faculties.

Sensible universals are immaterial (or spiritual) (ie ideas/concepts) in Aquinas and belong to the mind as you say. Modern commentators often loosely call these “intellectual images” which may be confusing but fairly obviously mean “concepts” if one is schooled in the basics of Thomistic theory of apprehension.

However a material phantasm (mental image or material image if you wish) is always associated together with such immaterial concepts in Aquinas because human “consciousness” is not capapble of grasping a purely spiritual concept without a mentally “seen” material representation of it imagined at the same time.

I do not say your final position isn’t the view of Aquinas, but at least be careful that the allegedly Thomistic path you take to get to there actually is Aquinas.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Linus I am a truth seeker, as best I can, for the sake of others and I really hope you are too.

I didn’t study Aquinas six years full time with three different Dominican professors just to stand idly by while Thomistic basics become obfuscated on a Catholic apologetics/philosophy forum.

As the Dominican mottoe goes “to contemplate and give to others the fruit of contemplation.”

Sincere Catholics who have not had the opportunity, money or discipline to receive a similar education ought to be able to reliably understand the undisputed basics of Aquinas from that living Thomistic tradition. If you are correct then all three of my professors are wrong as are the manuals we worked from.

“Phantasms” are considered “material”.
I was taught this means that they are internalised representations of sensed realities, belonging to the body’s sensitive faculties.

Sensible universals are immaterial (or spiritual) (ie ideas/concepts) in Aquinas and belong to the mind as you say. Modern commentators often loosely call these “intellectual images” which may be confusing but fairly obviously mean “concepts” if one is schooled in the basics of Thomistic theory of apprehension.

However a material phantasm (mental image or material image if you wish) is always associated together with such immaterial concepts in Aquinas because human “consciousness” is not capapble of grasping a purely spiritual concept without a mentally “seen” material representation of it imagined at the same time.

I do not say your final position isn’t the view of Aquinas, but at least be careful that the allegedly Thomistic path you take to get to there actually is Aquinas.

As per the texts of Aquinas himself, I have not misrepresented his teaching. I cannot account for what your Dominican professors taught you. I do not know whether they were working from Thomas’ texts or merely interpreting those texts or perhaps they were using manuals based on someone elses interpretation.

You are free to go back and reread my posts and any references I gave, so is everyone else. I have indicated how I think Aquinas should be read, it is my interpretation. I used my own judgment in those areas where Thomas was not clear, based on personal arguments I have made.

And that is about all I need to say. There is no point in rehashing everything again. You and I disagree that’s all. No reason to get all worked up or persona about it…

Linus2nd