| Theoretical Philosophy » Two Questions: Sin as Irrationality and the Soul as Body's Form » 8/13/2015 7:40 am |
- seigneur
- Replies: 37
-
DanielCC wrote:In which case it behoves you to spell them out...?
Edit: the sentiment of that message may be misinterpreted. You and anyone else are of course welcome nay encouraged to criticise aspects of Thomism you find insufficient (I’m planning to make a topic specifically for this but do go ahead and pre-empt me there if you wish) but please, please give arguments in support of these criticism and any proposed solutions.
Given the problems with the A-T metaphysics that I specified, I expected some answers concerning the distinction of the soul and substance (because you evidently deny their identity, and so would anyone properly rooted in Aristotelian terminology).
And if there are immaterial substances, then how are they accounted for? Because, if I understood you rightly saying, the form is a human abstraction from instances, then how do you assert the existence of angels (immaterial substances) as anything other than human abstraction?
I personally lean towards Neo-Platonism where words like substance, essence, and soul denote aspects or nuances of the same thing, i.e. are basically identical.
| Theoretical Philosophy » Two Questions: Sin as Irrationality and the Soul as Body's Form » 8/13/2015 6:32 am |
- seigneur
- Replies: 37
-
Scott wrote:
Indeed he does. But Aquinas (which is, after all, who we're discussing) is not Aristotle, and Aquinas allows for the existence of immaterial substances -- e.g.the aforementioned angels.
So I can concur with the OP, "I feel like I'm not understanding something basic about it." Except that I am fairly well acquainted with the system and my conclusion is that there are better systems.
| Theoretical Philosophy » Two Questions: Sin as Irrationality and the Soul as Body's Form » 8/12/2015 4:21 pm |
- seigneur
- Replies: 37
-
John West wrote:
On hylemorphic dualism, a human being is one substance with both corporeal and incorporeal components. The body is corporeal and the intellect is incorporeal. As a result, when the body dies, the substance still exists because it still has its actualized incorporeal components[1].
And where does the soul fit in? Isn't it the same as the incorporeal component? If not, what differs?
John West wrote:Since the human being's substance persists after death, the form of that substance (the soul) also persists after death.
But what is it that persists after death? After death we all still see the decaying body. What relation, if any, does the dead matter have to the "form of that substance"?
Scott wrote:No, it doesn't mean "apart from the human substance." The human substance persists after bodily death, but without its corporeal aspects (and thus as an "incomplete substance," as John rightly says). True, that's as close as that substance can come to "pure form" and still exist at all, but it's still not form apart from and independent of substance. (Even an angel, which is entirely incorporeal, isn't just a pure "form." An angel is a substance that has a substantial form.)
In Metaphysics, Aristotle defines substance as form and matter (incorporeal and corporeal components, as John West put it above).
…
Substance = Form + Matter. When matter is removed, you say "incomplete substance" remains, and the form is not independent (of the substance). Frankly, given the equation, looks like only the form remains and I don't see how it makes sense to still talk about the substance after death and of the soul's dependence on the substance.
| Theoretical Philosophy » Two Questions: Sin as Irrationality and the Soul as Body's Form » 8/10/2015 1:10 am |
- seigneur
- Replies: 37
-
Scott wrote:
Well, I'm still not sure quite what you're asking, but it still seems to me that you're coming at the question the wrong way round. The "form of a human being" has intelligence because a human being has intelligence. The human being is the substance, which is the basic reality and comes ontologically first. The human being's "form" is an intellectual abstraction from that substance; it has no independent existence and doesn't somehow confer powers on the substance (even if God uses the subsistent "form of a human being" as an exemplar for creation).
This doesn't seem right. It's precisely the other way round where I am coming from, but let's forget for now where I am coming from.
Remember that the opening poster first asked about the soul. The form of the human body is the soul. Is it right to say that the soul is an intellectual abstraction without independent existence and doesn't confer powers on the substance?
If it were true that human form is a mere intellectual abstraction without independent existence, the soul would be non-existent after death. Reading (and following) Feser, the soul is in a "radically diminished state" after death. Whatever that means, it doesn't mean "without independent existence" and it seems to mean somehow apart from the human substance.
| Theoretical Philosophy » Critics of Natural Theology » 8/08/2015 3:03 pm |
- seigneur
- Replies: 2
-
Karen Armstrong, but she's probably not atheist enough.
| Practical Philosophy » Best Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage » 8/08/2015 1:31 am |
- seigneur
- Replies: 172
-
DanielCC wrote:
Even if Marriage referred to no categorical item, universal or otherwise, if it had merely conventional 'existence', then it wouldn't follow that it had no value, only that its value was reducible to the joint value of the real properties out of which it was constructed. For instance a game has no categorical existence - there is no property corresponding to the word 'Game' - but it can still have value in as much the capacities which are exercised within e.g. logical thinking, imagination do.
So, whatever value it has, its value is reducible, i.e. it has no intrinsic value. This is what I mean when I say iwpoe's question should not have arised.
His demands to me to state an intrinsic value of marriage to him are unjustified. His own presuppositions block any such possibility. In the ordinary world, survival is as intrinsic as it gets.
iwpoe wrote:seigneur wrote:Is it individual or is it an act of a couple?
It is an act of two individuals who are usually part of a couple, but it is not an act of a couple, as such. That would make no sense. It would be as if when I say 'I ate some chips.' I was saying 'I eat chipness, itself as such.'
I don't see the analogy at all. What is "chipness"?* And I don't see how you can bring yourself to say that reproduction - which in human species cannot occur by any other means that by a couple, or by a sperm and ovum (two things, male and female) - "would make no sense" when it's an act of a couple.
I tell you that what you are saying is plain nonsense. Reproduction is irreducibly an act of a couple. It is contrary to biological fact to reduce it to the individual level. And this is so self-evident that I should not have to say it.
* This is one of the reasons why I am not Aristotelian. He saw those "-ness" things where they make no sense and he built his metaphysics of forms on it. "Chairness"? No, thanks.iwpoe wrote:Sure, I'll just grant you the language. But then I'll say
…
| Theoretical Philosophy » 'God is not a being but Being itself' » 8/06/2015 10:07 am |
- seigneur
- Replies: 22
-
quotidian wrote:
Well I would say that God is being itself - but not existence. That avoids pantheism - but the distinction between 'being' and 'existing' has to be able to be made. That is what I am on about.
The distinction that you are aiming at can be expressed in terms of degrees of reality. Phenomena and appearances are less real as they come and go. Their existence is less relevant. Immutable immaterial things like universals are more real, precisely because they are immutable.
For example cold and warm are less real, because a place is either warm or cold, but temperature is more real, because anywhere you turn you will find temperature. By the same logic, since God is the absolute, God is the truest existence, the greatest reality, and all lesser things are gradually less real.
| Practical Philosophy » Best Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage » 8/06/2015 3:59 am |
- seigneur
- Replies: 172
-
iwpoe wrote:
Because marraiges exist, but the members act. My question about marriages inherant value with respect to you is one about reproduction, since you seem to rest your case there.
And what is reproduction to you? Do you acknowledge that it's an act? Or does it merely exist without any action? Or does it neither act or exist? Is it individual or is it an act of a couple? To me it's the last mentioned thing, self-evidently. To question this is rather convoluted.
iwpoe wrote:It's your theme.
No. It's your theme. You asked about some "inherent" or "intrinsic" value. I answered survival. Somehow this is not "inherent" to you, as if societies were not born, living and dying.
This is the weirdest discussion I have had in a long while. It takes a very special kind of person to think that society could just vanish and it would not matter, because society has no will, no life, nothing.
Family is the nucleus of society. Family is born, grows, and may die too. Society is extension of family. It all revolves around reproduction. If reproduction matters to society, then society will sanctify family by instituting marriage. This is not a theory, but what you see in every country in the world. The meaning of marriage is the same everywhere in the world.
A historical note. Ancient Greece is said to have been very gay-friendly. Every male was supposed to go through a half-compulsory homoerotic phase in their lives. But somehow it never occurred to them to demand "gay rights" or "equal rights to marriage".
| Theoretical Philosophy » 'God is not a being but Being itself' » 8/05/2015 8:48 pm |
- seigneur
- Replies: 22
-
(I will be ignoring the language question. Hopefully you don't mind.)
quotidian wrote:So I generally regard the scope of 'existing things' to be identical with 'phenomena' or the putative domain of the natural sciences. Using the word that way, God is not 'something that exists' and indeed, as every phenomenon that does exist, is composed of parts and has a beginning and an end in time, then God could not be 'an existing thing' in the same way that phenomena are.
As your sig says, "Not everything that counts can be counted." On some metaphysical views, the domain of natural sciences is not existence, but appearance. This is what 'phenomena' means, appearances. You see things around you and you count them, but is that all that can be said to exist? Like in an old Indian parable, you are forgetting to count yourself.
quotidian wrote:However as I am not atheist, I believe that God is - and that 'is-ness' is what is referred to when it is said that God is 'being itself'. So in the above passages where the phrase 'transcending being' is used, what I think that really means is 'transcending existence' (or existents, i.e. individual things that come into and go out of existence.)
If God transcends existence, this could mean that, different from the existents that exist, God approaches non-existence.
On the metaphysical view that I implied above, God rather transcends appearances. That which transcends appearances approaches reality, true existence.
The appearances are apparent existents that borrow their existence from something else. God is Existence Itself.
| Practical Philosophy » Best Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage » 8/05/2015 8:26 pm |
- seigneur
- Replies: 172
-
iwpoe wrote:
A couple is real, but when I say "a couple wants to buy a house" I am using a loose metaphor to mean that Bob and Sally both want or some one of them wants while the other at least participates. I do not mean that the couple, as such, has a desire as separable from the desires of its members.
But if a couple, by your logic, cannot want to buy a house, then it cannot want to get married either, and thus marriage is a metaphor in the worst nominalist sense - ignorable, non-existent. So, please, how can you ask for an inherent value of something like that? If your logic were consistent, the question should not even arise.
iwpoe wrote:The couple, as such, may have properties not reducible to the properties of its members, [...]
And the properties that are not reducible are....? I'm listening. (The relevant point is, of course, whether your list of such irreducible properties can be related to marriage.)