Aristotle's definition of soul: the first grade of actuality of a natural body having life potentially in it. — Metaphysician Undercover
No metaphor here, this is a description of reality. Prior to what I think you mean by "gene expression", we need to account for the creation and existence of genes themselves. If we are describing things in terms of semiotics, we cannot just refer to the reading and interpreting of signs, we must account for the creation and existence of signs. — Metaphysician Undercover
It is often the case that we can describe the same act by referring to either a physical agent or a non-physical agent. If we say that a certain person did such and such, the person, a physical human being, is a physical agent, acting in the world. But if we turn to the person's intent, then we must account for the non-physical cause of that physical agent's action. Here we must turn to a non-physical agent. — Metaphysician Undercover
This would appear to be our fundamental point of disagreement. — Galuchat
Evolution accounts for the creation of gene expression. Phosphodiester and hydrogen bonds are examples of expression between the handful of molecules comprising and animating DNA? — Read Parfit
Digging further into what causes these molecules to express themselves through these bonds seems to be a broader question than the subset of nature that we call life? — Read Parfit
Evolution accounts for the creation of gene expression. — Read Parfit
Which part do you disagree with, that what creates genetic code is somewhat unknown, or that the logic leads us to conclude that this cause is non-physical? — Metaphysician Undercover
An agent is something active, actual. In semiotic processes it is required that there is an agent which produces signs and an agent which interprets signs. That's why it doesn't make sense to say that both the categories, mind and matter, emerge from semiotic process. — Metaphysician Undercover
Hopefully, it is not based on an Aristotelian/Thomist equivocation of "soul". — Galuchat
The article you referred describes the chemical composition of DNA, and the duplication of genetic material, it does not describe what created it, or caused its existence. Nor does evolutionary theory explain this cause. — Metaphysician Undercover
What do you mean by "Aristotelian/Thomist equivocation of "soul'? — Metaphysician Undercover
So, Aquinas changed the meaning of "soul" from "form" to "mind" and separated it from "body" for theological reasons. — Galuchat
Aquinas changed the meaning of "soul" from "form" to "mind" and separated it from "body" for theological reasons. — Galuchat
What Aquinas argues in this passage is that the intellect and the soul of the human being are united as one, such that the human soul is an intellectual soul. The soul was always understood as separable from the body, even following Aristotle's definition, designating it as the form of the body, because forms are in principle separable. The question considered by Aquinas was whether the intellect is separable in the same way that the soul is separable. Aquinas argues that the human soul is an intellectual soul. So the soul maintains its status as the form of the living body, but in the case of intellectual beings, the soul is an intellectual soul
So it is not as you claim, that Aquinas changes the meaning of "soul" to "mind". What he argues is that the soul of an intellectual being is a special type of soul, an intellectual soul. "Soul" maintains its definition as the first actuality (form) of a living body, but he gives the intellectual soul special status in comparison with the vegetative soul, etc.. — Metaphysician Undercover
Also your earlier comments in this thread about the inherent conflict between scientific and religious views are likely to incline you against such a philosophy. — Wayfarer
I find it unfortunate that Aquinas conflated soul (form) and mind, because it is:
1) Theologically unnecessary. Other theologians have managed to posit human beings consisting of a united body and mind, and separable spirit (i.e., tripartite being).
2) Metaphysically unnecessary and confused. It doesn't derive from the intuitively obvious unity of human mind and body. — Galuchat
I agree that a triadic formulation of human substance is more complicated than a dyadic one. Whether or not it's necessary depends on the relevant science and one's theology (or lack thereof). — Galuchat
The following compounds appear as probable candidates for central involvement in prebiotic chemistry: metal sulphides, formate, carbon monoxide, methyl sulphide, acetate, formyl phosphate, carboxy phosphate, carbamate, carbamoyl phosphate, acetyl thioesters, acetyl phosphate, possibly carbonyl sulphide and eventually pterins.
I have enjoyed this conversation. I think your assumption that a soul is a separate entity is an error that makes further conclusions based on the assumption nonsensical. In my life, I have heard plenty of personal testament about a separate soul, but have seen no evidence. What I have seen is science continually discovering physical activities in our brain and the rest of our body that humans have historically assumed is the work of a separate soul. — Read Parfit
If the living body only exists as directed activity, then the thing which directs the activity must be prior to the physical bod — Metaphysician Undercover
Such things as logical truths and geometric proofs are known with a directness and intuitive certainty that is not characteristic of the knowledge of the sensible (sense-able) domain — Wayfarer
So very simplistically, intellect perceives the form (morphe), and the senses perceive the matter (hyle) which is 'accidental'. But this is very different from Cartesian dualism, because there's no conception of 'spirit' and 'matter' being separable in that way. I suppose it is more like a dual-aspect monism in some ways; 'the soul is the form of the body'. — Wayfarer
why do 99% of humans really suck at maths in this fashion? :razz: — apokrisis
The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatio-temporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. — Nagel, Mind and Cosmos
The fundamental absurdity of materialism consist in the fact that it starts from the objective; it takes an objective something as the ultimate ground of explanation, whether this be matter in the abstract simply as it is thought, or after it has entered in to the form and is empirically given, and hence substance, perhaps the chemical elements, together with their primary combinations. Some such thing it takes as existing absolutely and in itself, in order to let organic nature and finally the knowing subject emerge from it, and thus completely explain these; whereas in truth everything objective is already conditioned as such in manifold ways by the knowing subject with the forms of its knowing, and presupposes these forms. Materialism is therefore the attempt to explain what is directly given to us from what is given indirectly. Everything objective, extended, active, and hence everything material, is regarded by materialism as so solid a basis for its explanations that a reduction to this....can leave nothing to be desired. All this is something that is given only very indirectly and conditionally, and is therefore only relatively present, for it has passed through the machinery and fabrication of the brain, and hence has entered the forms of time, space and causality, by virtue of which it is first of all extended in space and operating in time. — Arthur Schopenhauer
Unaware of his own intellect's spiritual activity, which he cannot do without, but which he has repressed in his unconscious, he gladly enjoys a mental behavior in which human reason limits itself to the most clever and intelligent use and penetration of the animal field of sense-experience.
...The myopic intellect uniquely concentrated on the empirical world acquires increased efficacy in this inexhaustible [but] limited field, especially thanks to that wonderful instrument, the mathematical analysis of sense-observable and measurable phenomena. What is wrong is not physico-mathematical science, which is a splendid token of the creativity of the human spirit. What is wrong is the fact that the modern man has sacrificed wisdom to science instead of uniting them. Thus the extraordinary power he is gaining over matter is paid for by his estrangement from human and spiritual realities, and his desperate loneliness.
Consider that the entire living body, any living body, consists of directed activities. I think that there is evidence of this, that every part of the physical body is active, and directed in the sense of acting as a part of a whole. This means that no physical part of the living body could come into existence without consisting of a directed activity. — Metaphysician Undercover
Therefore we must conclude that the thing which directs the activity of the physical living body is prior in time to the physical body itself. This is the non-physical soul. Do you see what I mean? If the living body only exists as directed activity, then the thing which directs the activity must be prior to the physical body. — Metaphysician Undercover
Semiotics does overcome this to some extent, but only by its ability to impart or project mind-like attributes to the natural domain; however this is still supposed to be a result or consequence of an essentially mindless process, so ontologically it is still derivative rather than primary. — Wayfarer
We have the semiotics of maths piled upon speech, piled upon neurons, piled upon genes, to result in some sharp division between conscious beings and their mechanised environments. — apokrisis
The soul's deeper parts can only be reached through its surface. In this way the Eternal Forms, that mathematics and philosophy and the other sciences make us acquainted with, will by slow percolation gradually reach the very core of one's being, and will come to influence our lives; and this they will do, not because they involve truths of merely vital importance, but because they [are] ideal and eternal verities. — C S Peirce
But as I think we have agreed, the 'furniture of reason' is not the product of the brain. At that point of evolution, the mind is sufficiently advanced to discover a pre-existing order: — Wayfarer
You are talking as if the mind is the kind of thing that eventually arrives at direct access to the truth of being. All we have is a more sophisticated umwelt forming our phenomenal experience. — apokrisis
You mean, like the information of a genome? — apokrisis
These very physical and basic molecular activities, which are driven by chemical bonds, are that force I think you miss. — Read Parfit
Since there is a broadly plausible and very physical explanation for how our bodies came into existence, I disagree that we must conclude anything non physical is necessary. Overwhelming fossil and biological evidence provide a detailed story of how living creatures developed our capacity to conduct directed activity through physical means over millions of years. — Read Parfit
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