About which kind of behavior are you thinking? ( Oops, I forgot, you don’t think in terms of differentiation or classification . Makes communication kind of hard. ) I assume, you are talking about moral behavior. The problem is that in your purely natural world there is no grounds for any moral or immoral behavior - anything goes if you can get away with it. There are only events and if there are desired outcomes they can be inforced only at the " point of a gun. "
Amazing! Do animals think, do they write books, do they build skyscrapers, do they plan for every eventuality, do they do matematics, science, medicine? Yes indeed, men are a special species, we are a species with an intellectual soul, with a will to do what is right and avoid doing what is wrong, to plan and to do, to accomplish what is good.
These are activities of the human intellect and will and animals do not have it at all. Animals operate strictly by instinct by the law of their nature given them by God. And I admit it is clearly amazing at times but still blind instinct. And what we are able to teach some animals has no thought involved. You may teach a monkey to add two bannas to his pile to make four. But he will never develope a system of mathematics. You will never find him surveying his jungle with rod and string. He is not rational, we are.
Yes they can be much more clever than we are - at a few things. God made them that way for survival. Your last sentence really is pointless. Humans plan everything except a few things done by instinct ( jumping at a loud noise or a lightening strike too close, etc.) Of course some humans plan better for various reasons. That is a given. And there are the mentally challenged who can do little or no planning whatsoever. So ? :tiphat
Absolutely. The kinds of ‘purposes’ you’re talking about are a different class of thing than the kind of telos that I’m asserting here. Yours is an individual purpose: one person’s ‘goal’ is to become an NBA star; another’s, to be President; another’s, to be a good spouse and parent. Each of these are goals, per se, but they’re goals of a particular life, as it’s lived. That’s not what I’m talking about. Rather, I’m talking about the telos of as person qua person.
From the very nature of their existence. Note that this notion of telos does not, I would assert, arise from the notion of the existence of a God. Rather, it arises from the notion of the existence of the person. (We Christians might assert that the way that the telos is defined is dependent on the creator, but we’re not even talking about the assignment of the value yet.) To steal a metaphor from algebra: we’re just saying that variables have values by virtue of the fact that they’re variables. The particular value for a particular variable at a particular point in time… isn’t what you and I are discussing at this point. You’re asserting that a particular variable (“humanity”) has no concept of “contains value”. I’m asserting that, because it exists, a variable (by definition) must have a property called ‘value’.
Stretching the metaphor, then: you’re saying that variables don’t have the notion of ‘value’, per se, although they do take on states. That just doesn’t make sense. Telos exists where existence exists; telos neither depends on a particular state nor is disproved by the fact that states exist. Rather, telos is what gives rise to states.
LOL…! This notion isn’t defensible “in terms of human nature” – this notion is the notion of human nature! By stating that human nature exists, you’re already saying that you concede the point…!
Then we can’t yet claim that we have free will at all, since our decisions are generally explicable, if we look closely enough, by the circumstances in which we find ourselves - both internal and external.
:yup:
I think you’ll find that a person’s actions are, to a large extent, predictable if you know their general circumstances. They would be precisely predictable if you knew the exact state of their brain - and the rest of their body - prior to any given action. We like to maintain the fiction that we have a free will capable of making any decision regardless of circumstance, but this simply isn’t the case.
Yes. You begin to see my point.
On the contrary, the fact that we often feel like we have free will is a phenomenon that requires explanation, as is the fact that our behaviour is influenced by social expectations and sanctions. In this regard, we have all the grounding we need for personal responsibility in the context of our social existence - because whatever else we may be, humans are social animals. It’s one thing to dismiss the idea of an extra part of our selves that independently governs our behaviour - this is the part supposedly played by the soul, by free will - but it’s another thing altogether to abandon the notion that humans must exist as part of a society that unavoidably exerts demands upon our behaviour.
From the point of view of maintaining your belief in God, that is good, because it’s not at all clear that we have a soul or free will.
You mean you don’t believe of your own independent volition?
Those are very substantial 'if’s.
Then you must have some criterion by which you choose your revelation, since pretty much every supernatural religion claims some revealed ‘wisdom’. What discernment do you apply to pick one revelation over another?
This is particularly detailed knowledge for the Catholic Church to peddle - how does it know all this? Where are the detailed descriptions of the obvservation of souls and how they interact with bodies? What is the basis of any of this supposed ‘knowledge’?
Um, ‘dangerous’ in what respect? It’s not convincing enough to sway my beliefs…
We have direct experiential access to our intangible thoughts, choices and decisions which are not self-evidently in the same category as external events. “natural” should therefore taken to include that which cannot be perceived with the senses.
Is nature self-explanatory? If not your conclusion is invalid.
Intangible events are far more common than tangible events - even when we are asleep.
How do explain the success of science, human rights and moral responsibility?
Animal activity is scientifically explicable and morally neutral whereas personal activity is not. Why the difference?
“Generally explicable” isn’t the same as “completely predictable”. If you were able to do the latter, then you might be able to begin to make the case for “no free will.” If you cannot, you cannot reasonably claim “no free will”, for precisely the same reasons that you cannot claim a greater or lesser free will when actions are predictable to a lesser or greater extent!
Again, “to a large extent” doesn’t help – this isn’t like horseshoes… ‘close’ doesn’t cut it!
And this, itself, is a wonderful statement of faith – but science hasn’t borne it out. Are we getting to the point where we see correspondences between brain states and actions? Yes. Does this disprove free will? No. Does this prove that we’ll get to a point where we’ll have absolute mapping of brain states and actions? No. The best we can say is “current research allows us to get closer and closer to a point where we’ll be able to make an absolute correlation”; but, lacking that achievement, your assertion is more an assertion of faith than of science…
Whether or not the popular conception of ‘free will’ implies “any decision in any circumstance”, that’s not what the philosophical notion of free will implies. Popular notions of the lottery also assert that we have a reasonable chance of winning the Powerball Lottery if we buy a ticket; are you going to require us to hold to those conceptions, as well?
That there are many religious traditions does not disparage the notion of ‘divine revelation.’ The reasons to believe in the Judeo-Christian tradition are many. In fact, that discussion could spawn a (quite long) thread of its own. I invite you to search the forum in order to engage in that discussion – or, if you wish, to start a new thread exploring that question – but I would ask that you keep this thread, on this particular topic, within scope. Fair enough?
Of course knows it through Divine Revelation. But it is backed up by common sense and by the Philosophy of Human Knowledge in Thomas Aquinas, which proves the human intellect is able to know material reality as it really exists and to make valid a posteriori inferences to the the existence and nature of God. If you would care to read the references I have given in my posts, you would see.
Yes, I know this.
But why should existence in and of itself contain or attach to value - for humans - when it apparently doesn’t for other entities? We might ascribe value to other entities, it’s true, but for the most part, this value is related to their utility for us - and this holds true of most religious conceptions of the value of nonhuman animals or nonliving entities. The most obvious example of this comes in our treatment of those nonhuman animals we use to meet our needs for food, primarily, clothing and so forth. This treatment of our nonhuman brethren even ignores any possibility that such beings might have the capacity to conceive of purposes for themselves…
It’s funny how believers will cling to any straw, however flimsy, that allows their belief to continue unabated. No, I cannot claim ‘no free will’, despite ample evidence that our decisions and actions are caused by prior circumstances - that would involve negating all possible conceptions of free will.“Generally explicable” isn’t the same as “completely predictable”. If you were able to do the latter, then you might be able to begin to make the case for “no free will.” If you cannot, you cannot reasonably claim “no free will”, for precisely the same reasons that you cannot claim a greater or lesser free will when actions are predictable to a lesser or greater extent!
The null hypothesis is that the nature of reality is unknown. You have a very long way to go before you can claim matter is the primary and sole reality - especially when you consider:
If we have direct experiential access to our thoughts, they should be considered natural. How else would we have access to them in the first place?
Is anything ‘supernatural’ self-explanatory? If not, what need has nature to be ‘self-explanatory’? You’re surely not suggesting that our human actions are self-explanatory. If you were, you’d be putting generations of psychologists and psychiatrists out of business.
Depends upon what you mean by ‘intangible’, and what importance you attach to actually being able to grasp and hold any experience in order for it to be considered ‘real’ or ‘natural’. Again, the accessibility of an experience - our ability to actually experience anything - points to that particular phenomenon being part of nature. We might not be able to cling to our dreams, for example, but that does not mean they are not part of the nature we inhabit. It seems to me that if they had some more permanent existence somewhere apart from being the fleeting, transitory products of our physical mental processing, we ought to be able to go back and analyse them after the fact - but if you’ve ever tried to recall a dream, you’ll be aware that the harder you try to pin it down, the more elusive it becomes.
How do you explain them? My explanation is relatively easy - science is a product of our observation of the world we inhabit, and changes with the varying degrees of accuracy we achieve in this endeavour; human rights boil down to our recognition that we are all the same type of animal, with similar (if not identical) needs and desires, and the notion that if we uphold said needs and desires in general, others will (mostly) do likewise for us - the ethic of reciprocity, writ large; moral responsibility is a useful concept for engineering our adherence to the ethic of reciprocity, of spelling out our social obligations and recognising the extent to which we are responsible for our own actions. You’re surely not suggesting that any of these concepts point to an entity fundamentally separate from our physical existence - if they did, why would we be discussing them in the first place? We could just leave it to our supernatural essences and let them hash it out.
First of all, what’s so straightforward about ‘animal activity’ that makes it in principle explicable in scientific terms, when ‘personal activity’ is not so? Secondly, why do you imagine that other animals don’t have any notion of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in the context of their existence? I am referring in particular to other social animals, who do, according extensive field observation by naturalists, exercise a recognisable form of morality. Finally, what’s ‘personal’ activity? What precisely separates it from the kinds of animal activity displayed by our furry, feathered, scaled or finned cousins?
This both does and doesn’t make sense - it’s like you’re claiming there are two parts to a human, mind and body, and the soul is what holds them together, as if they cannot function separately.
Only if it is assumed without evidence that everything is natural.
We have direct access to our thoughts because we have a mind. Why do we need a physical organ as a means of accessing them?
In courts of law and in daily life our actions are explained as “our” actions. In other words they need no further explanation. “We” are accepted as the explanation! If our actions are attributed to natural events we cease to be the explanation and become just links in a chain.
“intangible” means not accessible to the physical senses.,
Our ability to experience our mental experiences is not self-evidently dependent on our brain. Nothing in nature corresponds to intangible experiences - if nature is defined as a set of tangible entities.
The inability to recall dreams certainly does not imply dreams are the “products of our physical mental processing”! (BTW “products” and “processing” don’t constitute an explanation.
There are many facts we can’t remember but they don’t cease to be facts - which are intangible and don’t fit into the materialist’s scheme of things.
Observation without insight is sterile…
Human rights are distinguished from animal rights by all civilised people.
The ethic of reciprocity is an intangible principle that cannot be explained scientifically.
A concept is worthless unless it corresponds to reality.
There is no evidence that physical existence is the sole form of existence. Our mental experiences are so dominant and pervasive they should be our starting point, not “products of our physical mental processing”…
Neither of those terms has been mentioned in this discussion. They are simply distract from the power of the mind on which reasoning depends.
Animal activity is only scientifically explicable as far as moral neutrality is concerned. There is no evidence at all that animals lack minds but there is also no evidence that they have moral insight or responsibility.
There is no evidence that animals can grasp abstract concepts or principles.
Not one by which they are regarded as morally culpable or innocent.
All the achievements of human civilisation! Could they reasonably be described as animal activity?
In one sense, we don’t necessarily need to be concerned with it, strictly speaking. The human telos exists independently of our awareness of it. If you wanted to live a life, blissfully ignorant of the purpose of human life, that’s a possibility.
I’m not making the claim that other beings don’t have a telos; however, I’m also not saying that each of these is identical for each type of being.
Hmm… this is an interesting concept; but why are you laying it at the feet of religious believers? Certainly, from a Catholic perspective, we wouldn’t say that a chicken’s telos is “to become my dinner”! If you want to argue in this manner, you’re free to do so: please realize that you’re setting up a straw man when you do…
You say that you know the difference between the telos of a species that derives from its nature and the goal that an individual sets for itself. Yet, here again, you’re demonstrating that you conflate the two. If a horse had “the capacity to conceive of a purpose” for itself, that would be an example of the latter, not the former – and it’s the former that we’re discussing here.
It’s also funny how non-believers will cling to the notion of the scientific weight of their arguments, until a believer points out that they haven’t proven their case (and are, ironically enough, therefore people of faith, too!). By pointing to a believer’s faith and belittling it, then, they feel justified in allowing their own faith to continue unabated.
No, I’m not arguing for a ‘god of the gaps’ – rather, I’m pointing out that there is a gap where you had posited none exists (given the state of science, which is ‘generally’ able to say what you want it to say). Your own case fails to hold. Sorry…
And, for you, a certain amount of evidence is sufficient. That doesn’t mean that it proves the case, of course – just that you have a particular standard (based on your preconceived notions) and the current state of science meets the burden of proof that you individually impose. Note that there’s a difference between ‘facts’ and ‘proof’. Although you feel confident in your conclusion, that doesn’t imply you’re right, either – you, too, “have a long way to go before you can claim any such thing.”
You’re making quite the odd argument here: the likelihood of a proposition depends on the amount or quality of evidence that a person has at his disposal to prove or disprove the assertion? No – a proposition is or it is not; whether or not you can prove it is immaterial to the truth of a proposition. The notion of the existence of God is no more or less likely, based on the current state of science!
Perhaps I stated it poorly. The Church teaches that man is a Single Unit, a single Person, composed of body and soul. The soul is the Form of the body and brings existence to the body, giving the entire unit life, intellect, and will. And Thomas Aquinas would go on and say that the soul directs all the activities of the man, physical, intellictual, volutional ( intentional), understanding, and directs all his " external " movements as well. Though he depends on the body as well. Actually, he can do nothing entirely without the body. Thomas demonstrates all this, though it would be a job to rake through all the different places he discusses these things. A better solution would be a good text in Thomistic Human Psychology as I suggested to Shike in my post just now under " Being. "
Right I do not discriminate, women are great - my dear Mother, whom I loved more than any human in my life, was a woman.
We aren’t separating him into parts. Every thing in the universe is composed of Potency and Act. Angels are spiritual beings whose Essences are in Potency to their Existence, their " to be. "
And you are absolutely correct in everything you said there. After death the soul exists as an incomplete substance until the general resurrection.
I see where this makes sense, certainly - and I’m very much opposed to the notion of merely using others in a transitory fashion for one’s own gratification. This can, of course, be done in more ways than just sexually!