G
- Status
Science is Gods friend. 
L
Linusthe2nd
Guest
Sounds like he has been reading too much science fiction or perhaps he has been listening to Coast to Coast in the A.M. too long.
" Intention of This Article.
I want to make it clear that my intention of presenting this information is to demonstrate that thoughts, intentions, prayer and other units of consciousness can directly influence our physical material world. Consciousness can be a big factor in creating change on the planet. Sending thoughts of love, healing intent, prayer, good intention, and more can have a powerful influence on what you are directing those feelings towards "
Strictly " New Age " stuff, boarding on idol worship. Nothing to it. Stay away from this stuff.
Now if you want to talk about the substantial reality of atomic and, subatomic matter or even energy that is a different question. But I think I have given my views about some of that above.
Your questions should be specific. Don’t leave us the task of discovering what is really on your mind. Spell it out.
Linus2nd
G
GaryTaylor
Guest
Thats no question, just dead wrong opinion, this is fact…
google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FPlanck%25E2%2580%2593Einstein_relation&ei=K2LeVN_APIi9ggTi1oJ4&usg=AFQjCNEw4pbdd815rn3Sygmhn8EZMCdnXg
The article has simplistic understanding much correct, what its speaking of is.
Its completely in line with where we are at.
G
GaryTaylor
Guest
OK thanks, you were losing me only with how you worded the prior thinking. The Spirit we will be lost to fully explain working in reverse, which is fine but the consciousness and energy its pretty clearly indicated. Its the same connecting consciousness to higher intelligence where no accidents exist.
Anyway we have a sound theory working.
B
Bahman
Guest
G
GaryTaylor
Guest
Linus, whats your thoughts from a Thomas view of the physical reality of the real presence body and blood? What do we say is the substance in reality of the body and blood? It was changed yet remained the same? What did you think of the USCCB take or the CA link?
N
Nixbits
Guest
Linusthe2nd, thank you for your continuing patience in trying to explain this to me, but I still don’t get it. Ockam’s Razor suggests to me that there is only matter/energy, and this illusive undetectable ‘substance’ is just an abstract concept and not something that exists in reality. You’ve taken enough time trying to explain it to my dull materialistic mind, so I’ll bow out of this thread.
L
Linusthe2nd
Guest
If you are saying that human consciousness infulences matter, even at its smallest lever, then I would disagree profoundly.
Linus2nd
B
Bahman
Guest
Come on man, how you could move your body then?
L
Linusthe2nd
Guest
I move my body through the activity of the soul, sometimes automatically and some times through an act of the will. But it is not my consciousness that does it. And how would you explain the body’s movements, neutrition, breating, excretion, blood flow, the movement of the heart, the functioning of the other organs, in a person who is unconscious?
Linus2nd
B
Bahman
Guest
Well, very simple: No change is possible in absence of consciousness. At least this make sense to you when you are conscious of your action. And that is a correct objection when you asked what about other changes that we are not conscious of them. Well, very simple: You are on shoulders of other conscious beings, subconsciousness for example. There is no reason to think that their world view is similar to you. They are conscious of their own worlds. It is like a give and take game.
L
Linusthe2nd
Guest
Bahman you are incredible, in a world of ideologues you win the prize. Excuse me, that is just :whacky:
Linus2nd
B
blase6
Guest
A machine doesn’t require a soul to function. I do not think any of those functions are beyond the level of a biological machine.
B
Blue_Horizon
Guest
Excellent question Linus - just noticed.
The problem is, I suppose, is that most wouldn’t know the philosophic history of the word.
Does that matter is another interesting question.
Who is the judge as to what a word “should mean”?
Unlike substances words evolve over time and by reason of translation and jumps into other cultures.
Does “substance” (English) have to mean the same as “substantia” (Latin) or any other allegedly equivalent word in any otgher language preceding or postceding Greek?
What right did the Philosophers of Greece (who disagreed amongst themselves) have to take a relatively vague everyday word from the common Greek people and give it a much narrower and very specific meaning anyway?
But to answer your question…
For me as a colonial English speaker trained in ancient and modern Philosophy, who prefers to speak philosophy in modern everday terms … I think “substance” refers to “something” that has an enduring, recognisable identity.
Usually I would also mean that it stands in its own right (hence “red” is not really a substance because it only exists in something else as a quality). But people don’t always hold fast to that bit in practise.
That opens a whole can of worms.
How do we know when that identity, through time and outward change, is no longer there?
That is the far more difficult question.
But the really hard question I think is the practical applicability of such a concept:
…if we can only have an abstract “definition” of “substance” like I defined above … and never with certainty be able to apply it to any particular changing sensible thing … what is the real point of having such a precise word in our toolbox?
Sure, it is mostly obvious when complex living creatures (which we would rightly call a substance) are no longer there (ie death). Though its hard to tell sometimes as a person on life support may not actually be human any longer (just a warm corpse artificially kept from corrupting).
But inanimate objects … its hard to know on what basis we might say water and clouds are the same substance, have the same identity.
O2 behaves differently from O … yet chemists tell us there is an abiding identity so they must be the same substance.
H2O and D2O are pretty much the same - yet chemists aren’t convinced we can say there is an abiding identity between the two because D2 is not really H2 at the atomic level.
Isotopes are problematic when it comes to defining identity even for Chemists.
But all that’s fine.
Over time we learn that our concepts of the real world always fall short of what the “real world” actually does as we learn more about it by observation and experiment.
The problem is, I suppose, is that most wouldn’t know the philosophic history of the word.
Does that matter is another interesting question.
Who is the judge as to what a word “should mean”?
Unlike substances words evolve over time and by reason of translation and jumps into other cultures.
Does “substance” (English) have to mean the same as “substantia” (Latin) or any other allegedly equivalent word in any otgher language preceding or postceding Greek?
What right did the Philosophers of Greece (who disagreed amongst themselves) have to take a relatively vague everyday word from the common Greek people and give it a much narrower and very specific meaning anyway?
But to answer your question…
For me as a colonial English speaker trained in ancient and modern Philosophy, who prefers to speak philosophy in modern everday terms … I think “substance” refers to “something” that has an enduring, recognisable identity.
Usually I would also mean that it stands in its own right (hence “red” is not really a substance because it only exists in something else as a quality). But people don’t always hold fast to that bit in practise.
That opens a whole can of worms.
How do we know when that identity, through time and outward change, is no longer there?
That is the far more difficult question.
But the really hard question I think is the practical applicability of such a concept:
…if we can only have an abstract “definition” of “substance” like I defined above … and never with certainty be able to apply it to any particular changing sensible thing … what is the real point of having such a precise word in our toolbox?
Sure, it is mostly obvious when complex living creatures (which we would rightly call a substance) are no longer there (ie death). Though its hard to tell sometimes as a person on life support may not actually be human any longer (just a warm corpse artificially kept from corrupting).
But inanimate objects … its hard to know on what basis we might say water and clouds are the same substance, have the same identity.
O2 behaves differently from O … yet chemists tell us there is an abiding identity so they must be the same substance.
H2O and D2O are pretty much the same - yet chemists aren’t convinced we can say there is an abiding identity between the two because D2 is not really H2 at the atomic level.
Isotopes are problematic when it comes to defining identity even for Chemists.
But all that’s fine.
Over time we learn that our concepts of the real world always fall short of what the “real world” actually does as we learn more about it by observation and experiment.
G
GaryTaylor
Guest
What can your soul do without consciousness? Is the soul a soul without consciousness. How are we defining soul? Is it a substance? Whats the difference between conscious and unconscious? Does unconscious even exist?
Important, did consciousness exist before creation and did your soul? Matter and energy are an extension of Gods consciousness.
A
Aloysium
Guest
The way I see it is this.
I am writing these words.
If I have a stroke the words will disappear and I will stop writing.
My body is writing these words down.
To make sense of this otherwise weird behaviour, that might even appear random, one has to consider the mind and the spirit.
The spirit is not a force that moves matter, just as matter does not cause reason.
A human being is one entity.
Concepts such as substance help us understand this because they address the unity that exists in and of itself and not as an illusory mental construct imposted on what are the presumedly more real constituent parts.
I am writing this. That is the short and the long of it. Dissect me, and you will discover what I am composed of, but you will destroy he who writes.
I am writing these words.
If I have a stroke the words will disappear and I will stop writing.
My body is writing these words down.
To make sense of this otherwise weird behaviour, that might even appear random, one has to consider the mind and the spirit.
The spirit is not a force that moves matter, just as matter does not cause reason.
A human being is one entity.
Concepts such as substance help us understand this because they address the unity that exists in and of itself and not as an illusory mental construct imposted on what are the presumedly more real constituent parts.
I am writing this. That is the short and the long of it. Dissect me, and you will discover what I am composed of, but you will destroy he who writes.
G
GaryTaylor
Guest
I think we can attribute consciousness to God, as Omniscience means all-knowing. and further through ourselves very nicely. Further I see no reason why our consciousness wouldn’t exist eternally just in the concept that you were created to exist, you will never not exist. You will just continue to exist in the present moment of your perceived reality.
So when we say spirit is not a force, depends how we now define spirit and force. If I was to say the Holy Spirit, then I would have to concede first Omnipotence thus supreme power. Then to say He could move matter by force would seem logical. Also it would indicate consciousness isn’t the all of Gods essence. Further Gods supreme power we can deduce energies of God, and scientifically deduce the Universe is energy and as to the matter, in its reduced form is energy, and specifically to you a dna, or code-signature within the energy. Which is further reduction of substance of our species.
However if we were to say our spirit, we would need to define what this means, or as I was saying with soul, or mind etc. I agree concepts such as substance help us understand they are historically consistent.
I think we already concluded love and morality and immortality are universal to believers.
I think we can see omnipresence.
B
Bahman
Guest
Put aside your metabolism for a second. Is our conscious world is similar to :whacky:? You say something and I say something and there is a infrastructure, Internet, computer, etc that we don’t need to be aware of. Are there conscious being who take care of all complexity, Internet, ett.? Of course there are.
L
Linusthe2nd
Guest
Good questions. I had two objectives. First I wanted to see just were some of our posters were. Secondly, I wanted to eventually get to the meaning of the word in Aristotelian/Thomistic philosophy, since that is the philosophy I am most interested in and the one I regard as essential to a true understanding of metaphysics.
I’m sure it does but I am just assuming that.
I don’t think that idea entered into their thinking. They were attempting to understand the world they lived in in a scientific way and for that they needed a " scientific " vocabulary so each teacher and each student would understand exactly what they were talking about. The same as science today. Science today wouldn’t have gotten where it is if there was not a uniform understanding of what terms stood for.
I agree.
Yes, as used in daily communication among the people its usage is flexible.
We could look at dictionaries from different periods. Or we could just ask the speaker how they meant the word to be understood.
To be able to understand the science of Scholastic philosophy - if one is interested in that. Thomas and Aristotle faced the same problem. That is why they spent so much time explaining what certain terms meant - so everyone interested in the discipline could be on the same page.
Aristotle and Thomaa ( and other philosophers following their brand ) were not so much interested in analyzing each specific example of all possible substances or accidents. They were interested in explaining and passing on the principles of their philosophy which was directed at discovering the metaphysical structure and causes of reality. And for this they needed only a few examples and they tended to use the same ones over and over again, but in the context of different philosophical topics and questions.
Yes, but we don’t need many examples to establish the principles. But most of the Thomistic philosophers I’ve read ( in English ) for the last hundred years tend to use that specific example. Whereas, the more modern Thomistic writers, like Feser, are more adventurous.
The writers I mentioned above tried to avoid questionable examples for the reasons I have given.
As I said, there are always questionable cases. The point is to establish the principles and not to explicate each possible example. That would be more in the line of the hard sciences. The philosophical point is that every true substance stands on its own and is the foundation or platform for " accidents " which cannot stand on their own. From a philosophical point of view the universe is composed of substances and their " accidents. "
Yes, science can help philosophy and philosophy can help science.
Linus2nd
L
Linusthe2nd
Guest
We are conscious beings that is true but it is our intellect that does the understanding and the communicating. And the world is not conscious.
Linus2nd
- Status