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Robert_Sock
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Yes animals have a mind and can reason, but only in a very narrow definitional sense. I see people arguing one way or another, but I fail to see definitions of key terms that they are using.
What is spirit, and how does it interact with our physical bodies?
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Roscoe_Turner
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Although we strayed 
- I think this from the Catholic Encyclopedia is relevant to the original question.
Or perhaps because we are both spirit and corporeal, it is our spirit nature that can be acted upon not the corporal nature.
- I think this from the Catholic Encyclopedia is relevant to the original question.So with the exception of God. It seems that incorporeality of Angels has more to do with our limited senses. There is something there just not able to be normally perceived.
Or perhaps because we are both spirit and corporeal, it is our spirit nature that can be acted upon not the corporal nature.
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Robert_Sock
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That’s most interesting that only God is pure spirit, and not the angels! The material aspect of angels may explain why they would have an effect on our physical being. I have to wonder if angels act as an undetectable wave that is capable of penetrating our brain?Although we strayed
So with the exception of God. It seems that incorporeality of Angels has more to do with our limited senses. There is something there just not able to be normally perceived.
Or perhaps because we are both spirit and corporeal, it is our spirit nature that can be acted upon not the corporal nature.
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GEddie
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I thought the “Aquinian” concept was that angels are indeed pure spirit.
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Robert_Sock
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I was just going by the Catholic Encyclopedia, as quoted in post #42. This topic interests me greatly, and I would like it discussed further.
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jonathan_hili
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Our minds are not physical, and neither are our thoughts, yet they affect our bodies (physicality). I’m not sure why only material things should affect material states.
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Robert_Sock
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Does our mind and thoughts exist independently of our brain? My contention is that spirit must affect the brain in order for it to affect our mind and thoughts, but I may very well be wrong.
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Roscoe_Turner
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jonathan_hili
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I don’t think our “mind” exists independently of our brain, though this might be possible. However, we are body-mind composites. All it needs to show is that something non-physical can affect something physical, and vice-versa.
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Roscoe_Turner
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To me a more plausable answer is that “spiritual” is an umbrella term that means undetectable by our senses. So where Angels are spirtual in that they aren’t flesh but they are material. How would an ancient veiw x-rays or ultra violet light. A spiritual force, no?
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Ismael
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I would NOT go there. That’s reductionism.
The Soul is immaterial. One of the BIG mistakes is to reduces things that are immaterial into material things like fields.
There’s where bad metaphysics starts and where some atheist scientists make metaphysical blunders.
If the mind or soul are just physical states we encounter immediately some contraddictions (i.e. how can a physical state have free will, be conscious, be moral… atheists solve this by claiming that there is no free will or consciousness or intentionality, but that’s like sweeping the dirt under the rug…)
That said the mind (or spirit) - body interaction problem is a vast one.
Edward Feser talks about it here: edwardfeser.blogspot.it/2011/05/mind-body-problem-roundup.html (see in particular the links regarding the interaction problem)
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Ismael
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No.
I think ancient philosophers did not say ‘what you cannot see normally is a spirit’. Not classical theists or classical greek philosophers anyway.
The ‘invisible’ was for the what could not in ANY WAY be seen by the senses in any way direct or indirect.
UV and IR or X-rays are detectable by the senses (not directly perhaps, but still detectable).
A spirtual, i.e. non-material, thing is somthing that cannot be detected by the senses either directly or indirectly.
hence the spiritual also falls outside the scientific investigation, since science bases itself on direct or indirect ‘sensorial’ detection (in the end you have graphs or data on a screen!),
Angels and souls are therefore NOT material. An angel, MIGHT decide to interact with matter (i.e. appear to someone) but does not need to necessarely do so and there is nothing we can do in any way to ‘detect an angel’ or any other spirit.
The soul interacts with the body (actually it’s more complex than that) but There are no experiments that make the soul detectable through either direct or indirect methods (certainly if a soul has no body, like a dead person).
The point is that something to be MATERIAL it has to have “material proterties”:
1- have some property like charge, mass, energy, momentum, etc…
2- interact according to the laws of physics through the forces of nature (strong, weak, electomagnetic, gravity and perhaps some other forces we still ignore, if they exist)
NOTE: a material thing NEEDS to have (1) to acheive (2). If there exists a thing that has no material properties it will never interact according to the physical forces either.
Spiritual beings do not have (1), so do not have (2) either.
How spiritual beings interact with the material world, clearly, must go beyond materialist reductionism and beyond whay is possible to investigate scientifically.
FOR EXAMPLE: some materialist complain that the ‘soul-body’ interaction violates ’ conservation of energy’… but that would be true only if there was some form of energy tranfer or energy creation involved… hece the sould would need to have some material properties (eg energy to give to the body or interact with the body such as the body gets energy).
Yet that is NOT the case.
So the materialist complaint is futile and trivial.
A problem is that for a materialist ‘information’ is either matter or energy (a massive or massless particle, like an electron or a photon)… so for they reduce the exchange of information to exchange of energy and matter. That is however in itself a problematic assumption.
As Feser writes (Philosophy of Mind, p.206):
Indeed if we assume only material things are real and we assume that only physical sciences give us information we play the game cheating, since the assumptions of materialism and scientism are based NOT on physical reality nor on what science can investigate (so we run immediately into a paradox).
That said it does NOT mean that we look at the spiritual world or even the soul in a ‘Cartesian dualist’ way, where the soul is a completely distinct entity from the body.
Indeed it is in Cartesian Dualism where the mind-body problem really arises, but such dualism has always been refuted by Classical Theists in the first place. (Yet even with Cartesian Dualism there are solutions…)
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Roscoe_Turner
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So when Jacob wrestles the angel it was a spiritual battle? Externally it would look like mental anguish? In your opinion.
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GEddie
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A spiritual battle, in that the angel was a spirit.
But he was affected physically; he was lamed in his sciatic nerve.
To this day, the sciatic nerve of any animal is “nonkosher”.
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Roscoe_Turner
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So that brings us back to the original question. How does the spiritual interact with the physical?
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Robert_Sock
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But we know that angels can sometimes take on physical bodies.
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jonathan_hili
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I suppose that’s possible, but it’s unclear how a material being without certain organs or parts can be cognisant or intelligent.
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GEddie
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That assumes that any cognitive embodiment would have our biology. A big assumption there.
In any case, in terms of angels, I imagine the term “asomatic” rules out their having a “material being”. A material, living being is a priori a “body” or soma.
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Roscoe_Turner
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I’m just proosing that it beyond our scope of detection for now. I think as our understanding of the universe increases the technology that allows that understanding grows as well. Our understanding of the universe is very limited but it grows everyday. Dark matter and dark energy are the most prolific “stuff” in the universe and we have little idea what it is. So the idea of Angels as intellegent engery isn’t out of the realm of possibility. To say that they are undetectable for all time forever puts them into the realm of fantasy and imagination IMO.
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myelin
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If the individual is in consideration by a spirit then he or she is in a state of being measured.
If this is true then boundaries such as gravity and space time must step aside or be affected somewhat in their roles , measure…so it may be connected to these adjustments in the realities of our existence in time, all that the force’s. the brain would be a detector device one boundary and the setting always all in motion, the other. So a consideration or acknowledgement by a spirit would interfere by the measure involved or implicated, in the process of considering…maybe that will work…i donno. It is a mutual agreement of suggestion so some unity could be in the establishing, along with some common ground.
If this is true then boundaries such as gravity and space time must step aside or be affected somewhat in their roles , measure…so it may be connected to these adjustments in the realities of our existence in time, all that the force’s. the brain would be a detector device one boundary and the setting always all in motion, the other. So a consideration or acknowledgement by a spirit would interfere by the measure involved or implicated, in the process of considering…maybe that will work…i donno. It is a mutual agreement of suggestion so some unity could be in the establishing, along with some common ground.
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