| Theoretical Philosophy » Two Questions: Sin as Irrationality and the Soul as Body's Form » 8/14/2015 6:16 pm |
- Mark
- Replies: 37
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Oh wow a lot of converation while I was out.
Scott wrote:Unless Mark has further questions, I'm inclined to take it that his original question about Aquinas has been addressed.
Erm, I'm still a little lost. I might not be explaining my confusion well, since I feel like I'm getting answers to a different question. Maybe I could state it a different way:
Humans experience qualia and everything that goes along with a first person perspective, and we do so ostensibly on account of our particular form/soul. A substance dualist could feasibly deny that animals have that first person perspective because animals lack a soul. Some reductive materialsts have denied that qualia exist anywhere because they say nothoing has an immaterial substance for a soul. Now, on the Thomist position, my understanding from Feser is that both humans and animals have immeterial forms, and by merit of these forms they are sentient.
What I'd like to know is why animals have sentient forms, or how we know that they do. You say that a dog has the form it does because without it it wouldn't be a dog. But I dunno, seems to me a dog would be a dog regardless of whether it were sentient or not.
In the same way, when Feser says that the matter of our bodies has the immaterialsoul hardwired into it (in perhaps a more intimate way then that phrasing conveys) and together they are a substance, I'm still left wanting to know what a human's immateriality is the way it is, has the powers and faculties it does, and isn't some other way. I can think of things about our form that I could change (like the dog and sentience) and I think we'd still be human. So why the particular way we are?
| Theoretical Philosophy » Two Questions: Sin as Irrationality and the Soul as Body's Form » 8/09/2015 2:49 pm |
- Mark
- Replies: 37
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Scott wrote:Mark wrote:
I guess I'm more wondering why any given substance has the form it does and not another one.
Hmm, I'm not sure what sort of answer you're looking for here. In one sense, a cat-substance has the form of a cat and not the form of a dog because if it had the form of a dog, it would be a dog. In another sense, a cat-substance has the form of a cat and not the form of a dog because its parents were cats and it's in the nature of cats to give birth to cats rather than to dogs. Does either of those address your question?
Both of those answers explain why a particular cat has the form it does, but I'm wondering about the form of cats generally. Why is catness expressed in the form that it is? Similarly, why do humans have an intelligent form where tables do not? Different forms have different powers, but I'm wondering about the source of those differences. I hope that question makes more sense.
| Theoretical Philosophy » Two Questions: Sin as Irrationality and the Soul as Body's Form » 8/08/2015 4:46 pm |
- Mark
- Replies: 37
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Well sure, I don't mean yo ask how God literally assembled them. I guess I'm more wondering why any given substance has the form it does and not another one. Feser says the connection is "one of metaphysical necessity," But why?
| Theoretical Philosophy » Two Questions: Sin as Irrationality and the Soul as Body's Form » 8/06/2015 2:45 pm |
- Mark
- Replies: 37
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OK, that's helpful, I think I'm beginning to understand. So how then do particular forms get 'hooked up' to particular chunks of matter? Could the form of a human be coupled with what looks like a table? It seems from Feser's explanation that it absolutely could not. But since the form doesn't reduce the material, I'm having some trouble seeing how Aquinas connects particular forms with particular chunks of matter.
This is, by the way, extremely interesting to me. Studying Aquinas via Feser -- and not by, say, short explanations from professors using snippets from anthologies -- has opened up a whole new area of philsoophy that I didn't even really know existed.
| Theoretical Philosophy » Divine Hiddenness » 8/06/2015 2:32 pm |
- Mark
- Replies: 6
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danielcc wrote:
The standard response to the reply that God remains hidden because he wants humans to choose Him freely is how can one be expected to choose freely if one has no knowledge of the veracity and nature of what one is choosing? That can be partly answered with the above though.
That argument seems rather weak considering the vast majority of people believe in God, or at least something in that direction (maybe not the exact God of monotheism). The amount that God hides himself seems actually pretty effective at still allowing people to know he exists.
| Theoretical Philosophy » Divine Hiddenness » 8/05/2015 8:44 am |
- Mark
- Replies: 6
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While the above two respones may be legitimate, I'm not sure they'd be very satisfying to those not already committed to theism. I think an approach that attempts to meet the objection rather than dismiss it is more helpful. My answer would be to say that God loves humanity, and that means that he wants our ultimate good and to be in union with us (and since he is the good, to be in union with him is our ultimate good). But to be in union with God, to love him, requires a great deal more than just knowing he exists. Were he more obviously present we might in our sinfulness find him overbearing and chafe at his presence, or we might flee in terror and shame from his holiness. Neither reaction would advance God's desire for our good, and thus he chooses instead to speak to us through his prophets, his Word, his Church, and his Spirit.
| Theoretical Philosophy » Two Questions: Sin as Irrationality and the Soul as Body's Form » 8/04/2015 9:52 pm |
- Mark
- Replies: 37
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So I've completed reading Feser's book on Aquinas, and I'm left with two questions. The first is pretty simple: If the intellect precedes the will and all sin is irrationality, what accounts for the fall of men and angels? Were they created with defective intellects?
The second is a bit more perplexing to me and comes from his chapter on Thomistic psychology. As useful as Feser makes hylomorphic dualism sound, I feel like I'm not understanding something basic about it. I get that the soul is the form of the body and that their connection is metaphysically necessary, but I'm still not sure what the soul does. Feser writes that, on the Thomistic view, the soul is to the body as the table is to the wood that composes it. But the forms of the tablse aren't capable of doing anything beyond just what the wood of the table can do (well, it can have other properties, such as immateriality, but it can't perform any actions etc.). I still can't seem to figure out how this view makes sense of the first-person nature of our existence (i.e. qualia).
Help here would be most appreciated.
| Religion » Roman Catholicism and Transubstantiation » 7/21/2015 3:44 pm |
- Mark
- Replies: 52
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This thread has become a little too full, I think. Perhaps it should be split?
Scott wrote:For the record, I'm afraid most of this is simply wrong. A consensual and otherwise valid marriage between two baptized spouses has been ratified[/url]; it's valid, period, whether or not they "consummate" it*. And an unconsummated marriage is not allowed to be "ended without a divorce" (i.e. by a decree of nullity) merely because it hasn't been consummated; [url=]what is allowed is its dissolution, which is most assuredly not a declaration that the marriage never existed.
Sorry, I suppose I should have examined what the canon law actually says before making claims about it (as a non-Catholic, I probably shouldn’t assume my impressions are equal to reality).
But my imprecision notwithstanding, in what sense are unconsummated couples married? They’ve had a ratified wedding, yes, but they’re not bound indissolubly and they’re not bound physically. Thus they have neither commitment nor physical union. But both of those seem vital elements of marriage? What is marriage if “spiritual marriage” can be a real marriage? It seems to me very unclear what function it provides, and why it would not be permitted for numbers greater than two, for close relations, or members of the same sex.Scott wrote:The "sexual union" is not, in short, a "necessity" for marriage, and the Church has blessed "spiritual marriages" for as long as it has existed. The marriage of Mary and Joseph is the very examplar and type of such marriage.
Do you think you could provide a link in the common law for spiritual marriages as well? That would be helpful.
Scott wrote:It's understood, though, that such marriages require a special vocation and are "fruitful" in ways other than physical reproduction. Alexander is thus right in spirit th
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| Religion » Roman Catholicism and Transubstantiation » 7/21/2015 3:27 pm |
- Mark
- Replies: 52
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John West wrote:
Okay. On scholasticism, a substance is also the ground of properties (which are real). So the relevant distinction here isn't between form and matter, but between substances and properties.
I’m still pretty new to scholastic thought (and in fact my purpose in joining this forum was to be around those who were more facile with it), so my understanding of scholastic thought on substance could be way off. I’m happy to be wrong if you can help me see where I’ve made a mistake. Does substance ground all properties? It would seem odd to me that it would ground properties related to the material makeup of the thing in which it is instantiated.
John West wrote:Do you think identical twins[1] are (at least in principle) possible?
Yes, so far as intrinsic qualities go. But if their extrinsic qualities were also identical, then no, I don’t think they could be numerically distinct. Why?
Scott wrote:I'm still failing to see what's supposed to be "overly specific" about the doctrine of transubstantiation.
If you have no trouble with the Real Presence itself (the consecrated Host* has become, and really is, the body and blood of Christ even though it looks, smells, tastes, etc. like bread), then I don't know what new problem arises when the exact same claim is expressed in the language of substance and attribute.I think what’s problematic is that, as you’ve pointed out, the Eucharist is a mystery, so we don’t know exactly what that means. I know there are degrees of mystery and that mystery doesn’t mean we know nothing, but at the end of the day the Real Presence goes beyond our ken. Thus, when Christ says that the bread is his real body, why not leave it at that? If you make a more specific claim than that (i.e. give a concrete metaphysical explanation) then you to give an explanation for how that claim impacts our philosophical paradigm. And there seem to be a lot of problems on that front
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| Religion » Roman Catholicism and Transubstantiation » 7/20/2015 9:55 am |
- Mark
- Replies: 52
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John West wrote:
I thought the skepticism issue was about how we know whether any thing has the substance we think it has or ought to have
That is the issue isn't it? I'm not sure we disagree.
John West wrote:To be honest, I'm still not sure what the issue concerning substances is. Are you referring to whether identical properties can be instantiated on multiple (different kinds of) particulars in different places, Wycliffe's criticism concerning changing the grounds of properties and the properties not going out of existence, or something else? It might also help for you to clarify what it is you take a substance to be
I take a substance to be form and matter coupled together. If forms can change without a change in matter, then what on earth are forms? And if we don't know what forms are, we don't know what things are.
Alexander wrote:Firstly: It's not "no one believed something in Church history", it's "practically everyone believed something completely opposed to that something, and held it to be a genuine teaching of the apostles". That's quite a different situation.
Fine, I'll reword that: practically everyone believed something something completely opposed to, for example, an evolutionary interpretation of Genesis.
[color=#000000]As to the relevance of Mary's perpetual virginity, that's not too difficult. It's just the claim that Mary (and, I suppose, Joseph) was dedicated entirely to Jesus.
Which is interesting, but not the sort of "basic" believe the Church ought to be making dogma out of. (And also something I'm not sure the Holy Spirit takes an interest in making sure we have correct beliefs about.) On a different note though, it makes little sense that Mary would remain a virgin for the sake of Jesus: The sexual union is designed (along with procreation), to bring a couple closer together, which is why the apostle Paul says that
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