- Mark
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Re: Two Questions: Sin as Irrationality and the Soul as Body's Form
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?
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Re: Two Questions: Sin as Irrationality and the Soul as Body's Form
You have several different questions/issues on the table here. Let me try to tackle some of them one at a time:
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.
Well, sort of. More to the point, though, the Thomist understanding of "matter" doesn't rule out sentience the way (e.g.) the substance-dualist understanding does. In fact the sentience of a dog, for a Thomist, is material. The immateriality of forms doesn't mean that the substances whose forms they are are even partly immaterial; all forms are "immaterial," even the forms of substances that are themselves obviously material and nonsentient, like water or gold. The substance is primary, remember, and material substances are composites of form and matter.
What I'd like to know is why animals have sentient forms, or how we know that they do.
Those are two very different questions. First, forget about animals having "sentient forms"; the "forms" of animals aren't sentient. "Dogness" isn't sentient. Animals are sentient. Second, whether any particular supposed "animal" really is sentient is an empirical question; what looks like a "dog," for example, might turn out to be a cleverly programmed robot that isn't sentient at all. But generally, "how we know" is that we infer animals' sentience from their behavior.
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.
Those are two different issues as well. A dog has the substantial form of a dog, period. That's true whether or not dogs are sentient. If tomorrow we discovered that a dog was actually a variety of cabbage, we'd have discovered that dogs aren't sentient after all (and therefore that, in Aristotle's terms, they have vegetative souls rather than sensitive souls). But they'd still be whatever it is that the things we call "dogs" really are, and they'd still have whatever forms they really have -- and had all along, even if we didn't know it until then.
(In another sense, we could decide that "dog" means a certain kind of animal and then investigate whether the things we usually call "dogs" really are that kind of animal. But that's not what you have in mind, as in that sense non-sentient "dogs" wouldn't be dogs.)
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.
Sure; not all of my attributes are associated with my substantial form as a rational animal. I have lots of merely accidental forms too. I'd still be human even my eyes were brown instead of green, or if I liked mushrooms rather than loathed them. I wouldn't be human if I didn't by nature* have an intellect, though, because in this context human means "rational animal."
It's also possible to use the term "human" in a strictly biological sense, and something could (as far as we know) be biologically human without being by nature intelligent just as something could (as far as we know) be a "dog" in the biological sense without being by nature sentient. All our evidence is against it, but I'm not sure we could ever absolutely rule it out in principle.
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*I say "by nature" because I'd still be human even if, say, a severe head injury left me in a vegetative state. My normal state is "sentient and intelligent."
Last edited by Scott (8/15/2015 10:17 am)
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Re: Two Questions: Sin as Irrationality and the Soul as Body's Form
whether any particular supposed "animal" really is sentient is an empirical question; what looks like a "dog," for example, might turn out to be a cleverly programmed robot that isn't sentient at all. But generally, "how we know" is that we infer animals' sentience from their behavior.
It would seem then that the Thomist has no better reason for believing animals are sentient than the substance dualist? If philosophical zombies are possible, the inference from animal behavior seems tenuous. Feser denies their possibility in humans; does he have an argument against it in animals?
.
Those are two different issues as well. A dog has the substantial form of a dog, period. That's true whether or not dogs are sentient. If tomorrow we discovered that a dog was actually a variety of cabbage, we'd have discovered that dogs aren't sentient after all (and therefore that, in Aristotle's terms, they have vegetative souls rather than sensitive souls). But they'd still be whatever it is that the things we call "dogs" really are, and they'd still have whatever forms they really have -- and had all along, even if we didn't know it until then.
(In another sense, we could decide that "dog" means a certain kind of animal and then investigate whether the things we usually call "dogs" really are that kind of animal. But that's not what you have in mind, as in that sense non-sentient "dogs" wouldn't be dogs.)
Sure; not all of my attributes are associated with my substantial form as a rational animal. I have lots of merely accidental forms too. I'd still be human even my eyes were brown instead of green, or if I liked mushrooms rather than loathed them. I wouldn't be human if I didn't by nature* have an intellect, though, because in this context human means "rational animal."
Maybe I’ll never understand Aquinas or Aristotle, but I still don’t see the point. I’m not asking about our concept of “dog” or about what makes a “dog” what it is. Rather, I’m wondering why dogs can experience qualia while plants, presumably, do not. Unless I misunderstand (likely) it seems that the answer given thus far to this question is basically “because dogs have substantial forms which can experience qualia” or “because if they weren’t sentient they wouldn’t be dogs.” That answer seems uninteresting or circular. Maybe another way to ask the same question is this: The substance dualist knows cucumbers aren’t rational because cucumbers do not have souls, and the reductionist knows this because cucumbers don’t have brains. How does the Thomist go about showing the non-rationality of cucumbers?
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Re: Two Questions: Sin as Irrationality and the Soul as Body's Form
Rather, I’m wondering why dogs can experience qualia while plants, presumably, do not.
Your original question was about "what the soul does" that "makes sense of the first-person nature of our existence (i.e. qualia)." So let's take it again from the top.
First of all, for A-T hylemorphic dualism, "souls" are forms, and cucumbers (that is, cucumber plants) therefore most certainly do have souls. But their souls are vegetative souls; cucumber plants aren't sentient. We know this mainly because cucumbers just don't have the sensory apparatus to support sentience.
Dogs do. A dog has eyes, ears, a central nervous system, a brain, and so forth. We know what those things do; we have them ourselves. Somebody might conceivably fake up a pseudo-dog that behaved outwardly like a dog well enough to fool us, but on closer inspection we would (or in principle could) discover the ruse. Even less likely, it might turn out that what a dog has aren't really "eyes" but something that resembles them and yet doesn't support vision. But if dogs have (nondefective) eyes (and a brain), they can see.
The claim of A-T hylemorphic dualism here is that this sort of sentience is purely material and doesn't require "mental" properties to be daubed on to a material substrate with a metaphorical paint brush. The advantage of this view is that we don't have to explain (as the substance dualist does) how otherwise unsentient matter somehow "gets to be" sentient. Any matter can be sentient with the right form.
But that's not because the sentience is only "in" the form considered by itself (as it is in the substance dualist's independently substantial "soul"). It's because "matter," for A-T hylemorphic dualism, is at bottom nothing more than pure potency for any property or power that it's logically possible for a material substance to have -- including sentience.
Such matter (called "prime matter") doesn't exist on its own any more than forms do, and it would be misleading to think that somehow there's first some prime matter and then a form somehow comes along and gets added to it. But it's all right to say that in any existing substance, "form" is whatever activates a material potency for this or that power or property. So what a dog has that a cucumber doesn't have is a form that activates matter's potency for sentience. But in each of them, the matter itself (considered separately) has such a potency for sentience, which is why I say it's misleading to think of the sentience as somehow just "coming from" the form. The form doesn't confer sentience on matter that doesn't already in any way have it; it activates a potency for sentience that is in a sense "already" present in any and all matter.
In the final analysis, though, what a dog has that a cucumber doesn't have is just sentience. When God makes* a dog, He makes a sentient substance; the "form" is (really and objectively) part of the substance, but taken on its own as something independent, it's an intellectual abstraction from that substance. For A-T hylemorphic dualism, the "form" isn't invoked as an explanation of where sentience ultimately "comes from," and it doesn't need to be; sentience ultimately "comes from" God.
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*Whether by creation ex nihilo or by concurring in the operation of the usual secondary causes of a biological reproductive process.
Last edited by Scott (8/25/2015 12:15 pm)
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Re: Two Questions: Sin as Irrationality and the Soul as Body's Form
Ah, okay that makes sense. Cool, thanks 
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Re: Two Questions: Sin as Irrationality and the Soul as Body's Form
Good, glad we hit it that time. Thanks for your patience; I really was having trouble working out exactly what your question was.
EDIT: By coincidence (or is it?), Ed has just today posted a link to a review of his that is very much on point.
Last edited by Scott (8/25/2015 5:53 pm)
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Re: Two Questions: Sin as Irrationality and the Soul as Body's Form
OK, hold up, I just read an old post of Feser's and now I'm confused again. He wrote in a post on human genesis that this is his preferred theory:
The Flynn-Kemp proposal is this. Suppose evolutionary processes gave rise to a population of several thousand creatures of this non-rational but genetically and physiologically “human” sort. Suppose further that God infused rational souls into two of these creatures, thereby giving them our distinctive intellectual and volitional powers and making them truly human. Call this pair “Adam” and “Eve.” Adam and Eve have descendents, and God infuses into each of them rational souls of their own, so that they too are human in the strict metaphysical sense. Suppose that some of these descendents interbreed with creatures of the non-rational but genetically and physiologically “human” sort. The offspring that result would also have rational souls since they have Adam and Eve as ancestors (even if they also have non-rational creatures as ancestors). This interbreeding carries on for some time, but eventually the population of non-rational but genetically and physiologically “human” creatures dies out, leaving only those creatures who are human in the strict metaphysical sense. On this scenario, the modern human population has the genes it does because it is descended from this group of several thousand individuals, initially only two of whom had rational or human souls. But only those later individuals who had this pair among their ancestors (even if they also had as ancestors members of the original group which did not have human souls) have descendents living today. In that sense, every modern human is both descended from an original population of several thousand and from an original pair. There is no contradiction, because the claim that modern humans are descended from an original pair does not entail that they received all their genes from that pair alone.
Huh? Three things: First, I thought language of "infusing" with a form is a no-no? Second, how can two beings that are pretty much the same physiologically have different forms; doesn't that create the possiblity of philosophical zombies (which Feser calls a "metaphysical impossiblity")? Third, aren't essences passed down from parents, e.g. a dog is a dog because it is the offspring of dogs? So how can the he have it that the human essence could be fully transmitted through a human-nonhuman pairing?
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Re: Two Questions: Sin as Irrationality and the Soul as Body's Form
Three things: First, I thought language of "infusing" with a form is a no-no? Second, how can two beings that are pretty much the same physiologically have different forms; doesn't that create the possiblity of philosophical zombies (which Feser calls a "metaphysical impossiblity")? Third, aren't essences passed down from parents, e.g. a dog is a dog because it is the offspring of dogs? So how can the he have it that the human essence could be fully transmitted through a human-nonhuman pairing?
Sorry, I didn't see this when you first posted it. I'll try to give you a longer reply over the weekend when I have more time, but the first point to note is that not everything true of (merely) animal souls is true of rational souls.
For example, the Church holds that each human soul is a special creation by God, not simply passed down from one's parents*. And it's this act of special creation that is called "infusion"; it doesn't mean the soul of a specific human being pre-existed that human being's body** as a separate "thing" and was joined with it "from the outside." This soul comes into existence at the very moment of conception.
Your original question was about qualia and subjective experiences (which, as I've said, don't require a rational soul***) and I answered accordingly; no revisions required, either to my statements or to your understandings thereof. 
EDIT: In rereading and editing this post later in the day, I see that I've basically addressed all three of your questions. So I'll leave it to you to let me know if I need to say more.
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*Although presumably many of its subforms are, specifically those that are genetically determined.
**Beyond perhaps subsisting in the divine intellect.
***Which is why the view I described in the preceding paragraph doesn't commit us to the possibility of "philosophical zombies." A hominid without a rational soul still has a sensitive ("animal") soul, so there's "somebody home," as it were. (And since the intellect itself is strictly immaterial and independent of any bodily organ, it's possible in principle for two physiologically similar beings to differ in whether they possess an intellect.)
Last edited by Scott (9/12/2015 10:02 am)