With regard to the basic metaphysical proposition of dualism, I believed Aquinas made an unsatisfactory effort to effectively deal with the problem that comes with his view namely that of how the body and the mind interact with each other at all. It seems to me that most of his arguments are just really him repeating the premise of infinite regression being unstable. With regard to the chain of being concepts I found them to be completely contingent upon his metaphysical presuppositions. While reading this piece I kept thinking of the sad state of affairs that was middle age philosophy, it seems that with the disappearance of democracy the business of genuine philosophy died and was replaced by a priesthood of a totalitarian state religion. It seems to me that metaphysical problems are problems of dimension, it is indeed possible and very likely that there are actual answers to metaphysical questions; but it is my assertion that due to the factor of dimension it is incredibly foolish to maintain that we can ever know such propositions with anything close to certainty.
1. Much of what I read from Aquinas in his discussion reminded me of what Plato talked about in the Phaedo, which I am reading in PHI 242 currently. During our last discussion, Prof. Cavallero mentioned how much of Plato's work was evident in the early Christian philosophers and I could not help to find this to be very evident in Aquinas' discussion. 2. One example of what I was mentioning above was when Aquinas' states, "Therefore a soul, as the primary principle of life, is not a body but that which actuates a body. Much as heat, as the source of the heating process, is not the body heated, but a certain actuation of it" (208). This sounded to me very similar to Plato's theory of the forms.
- Aquinas take on the human soul didn't really sit well with me. The reason I say this is because it seems like he really didn't explain how the body and the mind connect with each other. He even talks about to the intellect united with the body that would have a limited nature. I feel as if the mind is limited, then there is no way that the body will be able to grow. - Something I thought was interesting that he made a point in his argument is that, "there are not many intellectual principles as there are human bodies but rather one intellect in all men". I thought this was pretty interesting because everybody has a different intellect, and has different knowledge on topics. He even goes to say that since there isn't many souls in one man that there is an intellective principle for all. There isn't many souls because every body has one soul, but a man can have many forms of different intellects.
1. The limitations of of the products of thought without real evidence in garnering practical and predictive systems of thinking must have been stifling. With the exception of the rigidity of certain dogmatic assumptions that would have been impossible to let go of, I would think the type of wishy washy relativism of postmodern 'thought' would have bloomed more readily in an environment where one was forced to assume things (the Christian God, the soul, the immutability of celestial bodies) without proof. When faced with ideas about how the soul must be corporeal because it causes changes in the body (causes it to move) and things that cause change must make contact with the things they change and, if the soul makes contact with the body, it must be a body or corporeal, I would think a person with the ability to think coherent and practical thoughts would wonder if the people in charge were merely writing boring fiction. I would also imagine that thought would spur others to write their own versions of fiction-as-fact stories and bring about a sort of relativism where various 'theories' competed for primacy. Of course, relativism is a difficult position to adopt when the state has picked a particular fairy tale and has a monopoly on violence.
2. And then I read this;
"So if my intellect is different from yours, what is understood by me must be different from what is under- stood by you. And so what is understood will have numerical individuality and will be understood only potentially, and it will be necessary to abstract whatever common content there is in our separate minds (in any group of things, no matter how diverse, there is always some intelligible aspect common to all of them). But this goes against the very notion of intellect, since it does not seem to distinguish it from imagination". (215)
He addresses relativism here and states that there IS common content. He then goes on to dismiss the possibility of imagination playing any role in intellect. I am not sure precisely how he is using the term intellect but it would seem that it refers to some sort of universal certainty in which interpretation (imagination) plays no role. While I agree that there is common content and that some things are shared universally in human experience, there is still room for a great deal individual interpretation with respect to the facts of the world. This is not to say that we do not make progress and that one rational framework does not do a better job of accounting for the phenomena of the world, including those of 'human physics', better or more completely than another. I think the mistake that people who fall prey to the easily digested and thus tempting wares of relativism make primarily lies in their reaction to the flawed concept that a complete and unassailable theory is possible. Imagination is necessary because a complete theory is impossible. Limited beings produce limited results. Limitation is likely a necessity of being. Without something other who could say "I am"? For a theory produced by a being to exist it has to be limited. How could I hold a mirror to the universe and where would I put such a mirror?
I am relieved to know that I am not the only one who feels that Aquinas' attempt to argue for dualism in the beginning was mediocre at best. There was a lot of monotony with no clear explanation as to the way in which the mind and body interact if at all. I felt as though this reading was analogous to a word salad of premises with circular argumentation.
One thing I did find interesting was how Aquinas goes about distinguishing between the intellective and sensitive souls. He names a third, the nutritive soul, but doesn't seem to explain anything about it and how it is corruptible; however, he does explain how the sensitive soul is corruptible but the intellective soul is not. He depict the sensitive soul as the animal, more primal side of humanity - the side that comes in direct contact with the world, whilst the intellective is the intelligible and intangible side that humans have which give way to ideas and abstractions. I find it interesting and something I can agree with in the moment, I'd have to ruminate on it more to know if I can wholeheartedly about the incorruptible side, but since humans are animals, it only makes sense that there exists a side that is mutable and constantly evolving, as a direct result of constant contact and interference from the surrounding world. People enjoy what they like, which is not always right, so it also makes sense that this is "corruptible" to some extent.
Compared to other readings this semester, I thought this one was easier to understand throughout. Even though Aquinas is technical, I was already familiar with Aristotle’s De Anima. Aquinas seems to agree with Aristotle for the most part on the issue of the materiality of souls. They both say that the soul is not a part of the body, but a sort of actualization. Aquinas compares this notion to heat. The heat is not a thing for itself, but it does influence change in a thing. Likewise the soul is not a thing, but it animates a thing to the capacity which it is able.
Aquinas also seems to agree with Aristotle on the human soul actualizing man’s intellect. They call rationality the defining characteristic of man, and suppose animals are not capable of the same (if any) thought. I am not at all familiar with the metaphysics of angels, and so any real consideration of this matter is interesting to me. It seems to stand to reason that Angelic souls don’t “inform matter” the same way human souls do if angels are immaterial. I wonder how revolutionary Aquinas’s ideas about angels are compared to his predecessors and his contemporaries.
1) I couldn't help but notice how Aquinas uses a few different terms to represent 'soul', and throughout this section he uses them interchangeably. He call's the 'soul' the 'principle of understanding'. This definition is rather philosophically loaded, and he indulges it by referring to the 'principle of understanding' as the 'mind' or 'intellect'. We of course know now that the 'mind' or 'intellect' is certainly corporeal. However, the way we refer to soul now entails something incorporeal. We see the soul as an existential phenomenon, which seems to be what Aquinas is going for as well.
2)I followed Aquinas' argument about how there is no one collective intellectual soul. This is rather obvious, as some people have a 'larger' or 'deeper' intellective soul than others. However, this opens up some metaphysical questions on the soul that perhaps Aquinas doesn't want to touch. What do the differences in intellectual ability between individuals tell us about the form and matter of the soul?
A part of the reading I found interesting was the portion about how the soul is corporeal. I did not know what the word so I looked it up and found the definition. Corporeal means consisting of physical material body or not spiritual. I found this definition to be interesting because the author is essentially saying that the soul is not spiritual it is an actual physical thing. What I believe the author is trying to convey is that the soul I is a real thing a part from the human body. This means that it has the potential to live forever even without a human body.
Another part of the reading that caught my interest is when the author mentioned that nothing can bring on change without being changed itself. I found it interesting because it is a simple idea generally not contained in writings we usually read. Additionally, it is a saying that can often be proven true. If someone wants to change something about themselves or their lives, they have to do change before this change occurs. They cannot continue to live the same way they have been living and expect a different result.
1. I found myself wishing that there was more of a discussion on the soul itself and how it works. I feel like there are just some things that aren't being addressed which allow disagreement to continue. I can always understand why Aquinas is arguing certain things and I find myself having a hard time finding a balance between letting him have a pass on every statement that he makes or finding objections in every sentence that he has written. As always with this discussion I also feel myself to have somewhat of an unfair advantage because science and neuroscience have shown me things that Aquinas did not know at the time.
2. Its kind of amusing to see Aquinas's agenda come through in his arguments about whether the soul subsists. Regardless, I find it useful to suspend disbelief and appreciate his arguments for their merits. It's interesting to thing of these things from an entirely different point of view than I normally do.
Aquinas gives an interesting analytical explanation and argument for why souls must be corporeal. I find it interesting how he relates back to Aristotle as well and tries to explain that things which are causing change must be subject to change.
The first thing that struck me when reading this argument is whether or not this applies to God because it seems as though Aquinas does believe in God's immutability however he states that something unchanging cannot cause change.
With regard to the basic metaphysical proposition of dualism, I believed Aquinas made an unsatisfactory effort to effectively deal with the problem that comes with his view namely that of how the body and the mind interact with each other at all. It seems to me that most of his arguments are just really him repeating the premise of infinite regression being unstable.
ReplyDeleteWith regard to the chain of being concepts I found them to be completely contingent upon his metaphysical presuppositions. While reading this piece I kept thinking of the sad state of affairs that was middle age philosophy, it seems that with the disappearance of democracy the business of genuine philosophy died and was replaced by a priesthood of a totalitarian state religion. It seems to me that metaphysical problems are problems of dimension, it is indeed possible and very likely that there are actual answers to metaphysical questions; but it is my assertion that due to the factor of dimension it is incredibly foolish to maintain that we can ever know such propositions with anything close to certainty.
1. Much of what I read from Aquinas in his discussion reminded me of what Plato talked about in the Phaedo, which I am reading in PHI 242 currently. During our last discussion, Prof. Cavallero mentioned how much of Plato's work was evident in the early Christian philosophers and I could not help to find this to be very evident in Aquinas' discussion.
ReplyDelete2. One example of what I was mentioning above was when Aquinas' states, "Therefore a soul, as the primary principle of life, is not a body but that which actuates a body. Much as heat, as the source of the heating process, is not the body heated, but a certain actuation of it" (208). This sounded to me very similar to Plato's theory of the forms.
- Aquinas take on the human soul didn't really sit well with me. The reason I say this is because it seems like he really didn't explain how the body and the mind connect with each other. He even talks about to the intellect united with the body that would have a limited nature. I feel as if the mind is limited, then there is no way that the body will be able to grow.
ReplyDelete- Something I thought was interesting that he made a point in his argument is that, "there are not many intellectual principles as there are human bodies but rather one intellect in all men". I thought this was pretty interesting because everybody has a different intellect, and has different knowledge on topics. He even goes to say that since there isn't many souls in one man that there is an intellective principle for all. There isn't many souls because every body has one soul, but a man can have many forms of different intellects.
1. The limitations of of the products of thought without real evidence in garnering practical and predictive systems of thinking must have been stifling. With the exception of the rigidity of certain dogmatic assumptions that would have been impossible to let go of, I would think the type of wishy washy relativism of postmodern 'thought' would have bloomed more readily in an environment where one was forced to assume things (the Christian God, the soul, the immutability of celestial bodies) without proof. When faced with ideas about how the soul must be corporeal because it causes changes in the body (causes it to move) and things that cause change must make contact with the things they change and, if the soul makes contact with the body, it must be a body or corporeal, I would think a person with the ability to think coherent and practical thoughts would wonder if the people in charge were merely writing boring fiction. I would also imagine that thought would spur others to write their own versions of fiction-as-fact stories and bring about a sort of relativism where various 'theories' competed for primacy. Of course, relativism is a difficult position to adopt when the state has picked a particular fairy tale and has a monopoly on violence.
ReplyDelete2. And then I read this;
"So if my intellect is different from yours, what is understood by me must be different from what is under- stood by you. And so what is understood will have numerical individuality and will be understood only potentially, and it will be necessary to abstract whatever common content there is in our separate minds (in any group of things, no matter how diverse, there is always some intelligible aspect common to all of them). But this goes against the very notion of intellect, since it does not seem to distinguish it from imagination". (215)
He addresses relativism here and states that there IS common content. He then goes on to dismiss the possibility of imagination playing any role in intellect. I am not sure precisely how he is using the term intellect but it would seem that it refers to some sort of universal certainty in which interpretation (imagination) plays no role. While I agree that there is common content and that some things are shared universally in human experience, there is still room for a great deal individual interpretation with respect to the facts of the world. This is not to say that we do not make progress and that one rational framework does not do a better job of accounting for the phenomena of the world, including those of 'human physics', better or more completely than another. I think the mistake that people who fall prey to the easily digested and thus tempting wares of relativism make primarily lies in their reaction to the flawed concept that a complete and unassailable theory is possible. Imagination is necessary because a complete theory is impossible. Limited beings produce limited results. Limitation is likely a necessity of being. Without something other who could say "I am"? For a theory produced by a being to exist it has to be limited. How could I hold a mirror to the universe and where would I put such a mirror?
I am relieved to know that I am not the only one who feels that Aquinas' attempt to argue for dualism in the beginning was mediocre at best. There was a lot of monotony with no clear explanation as to the way in which the mind and body interact if at all. I felt as though this reading was analogous to a word salad of premises with circular argumentation.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I did find interesting was how Aquinas goes about distinguishing between the intellective and sensitive souls. He names a third, the nutritive soul, but doesn't seem to explain anything about it and how it is corruptible; however, he does explain how the sensitive soul is corruptible but the intellective soul is not. He depict the sensitive soul as the animal, more primal side of humanity - the side that comes in direct contact with the world, whilst the intellective is the intelligible and intangible side that humans have which give way to ideas and abstractions. I find it interesting and something I can agree with in the moment, I'd have to ruminate on it more to know if I can wholeheartedly about the incorruptible side, but since humans are animals, it only makes sense that there exists a side that is mutable and constantly evolving, as a direct result of constant contact and interference from the surrounding world. People enjoy what they like, which is not always right, so it also makes sense that this is "corruptible" to some extent.
Compared to other readings this semester, I thought this one was easier to understand throughout. Even though Aquinas is technical, I was already familiar with Aristotle’s De Anima. Aquinas seems to agree with Aristotle for the most part on the issue of the materiality of souls. They both say that the soul is not a part of the body, but a sort of actualization. Aquinas compares this notion to heat. The heat is not a thing for itself, but it does influence change in a thing. Likewise the soul is not a thing, but it animates a thing to the capacity which it is able.
ReplyDeleteAquinas also seems to agree with Aristotle on the human soul actualizing man’s intellect. They call rationality the defining characteristic of man, and suppose animals are not capable of the same (if any) thought. I am not at all familiar with the metaphysics of angels, and so any real consideration of this matter is interesting to me. It seems to stand to reason that Angelic souls don’t “inform matter” the same way human souls do if angels are immaterial. I wonder how revolutionary Aquinas’s ideas about angels are compared to his predecessors and his contemporaries.
1) I couldn't help but notice how Aquinas uses a few different terms to represent 'soul', and throughout this section he uses them interchangeably. He call's the 'soul' the 'principle of understanding'. This definition is rather philosophically loaded, and he indulges it by referring to the 'principle of understanding' as the 'mind' or 'intellect'. We of course know now that the 'mind' or 'intellect' is certainly corporeal. However, the way we refer to soul now entails something incorporeal. We see the soul as an existential phenomenon, which seems to be what Aquinas is going for as well.
ReplyDelete2)I followed Aquinas' argument about how there is no one collective intellectual soul. This is rather obvious, as some people have a 'larger' or 'deeper' intellective soul than others. However, this opens up some metaphysical questions on the soul that perhaps Aquinas doesn't want to touch. What do the differences in intellectual ability between individuals tell us about the form and matter of the soul?
A part of the reading I found interesting was the portion about how the soul is corporeal. I did not know what the word so I looked it up and found the definition. Corporeal means consisting of physical material body or not spiritual. I found this definition to be interesting because the author is essentially saying that the soul is not spiritual it is an actual physical thing. What I believe the author is trying to convey is that the soul I is a real thing a part from the human body. This means that it has the potential to live forever even without a human body.
ReplyDeleteAnother part of the reading that caught my interest is when the author mentioned that nothing can bring on change without being changed itself. I found it interesting because it is a simple idea generally not contained in writings we usually read. Additionally, it is a saying that can often be proven true. If someone wants to change something about themselves or their lives, they have to do change before this change occurs. They cannot continue to live the same way they have been living and expect a different result.
1. I found myself wishing that there was more of a discussion on the soul itself and how it works. I feel like there are just some things that aren't being addressed which allow disagreement to continue. I can always understand why Aquinas is arguing certain things and I find myself having a hard time finding a balance between letting him have a pass on every statement that he makes or finding objections in every sentence that he has written. As always with this discussion I also feel myself to have somewhat of an unfair advantage because science and neuroscience have shown me things that Aquinas did not know at the time.
ReplyDelete2. Its kind of amusing to see Aquinas's agenda come through in his arguments about whether the soul subsists. Regardless, I find it useful to suspend disbelief and appreciate his arguments for their merits. It's interesting to thing of these things from an entirely different point of view than I normally do.
Aquinas gives an interesting analytical explanation and argument for why souls must be corporeal. I find it interesting how he relates back to Aristotle as well and tries to explain that things which are causing change must be subject to change.
ReplyDeleteThe first thing that struck me when reading this argument is whether or not this applies to God because it seems as though Aquinas does believe in God's immutability however he states that something unchanging cannot cause change.