. And I don't believe any of that supports this contention: — Wayfarer

Well we have the body on one side with the animal spirits and imagination, and then soul on the other. Soul has ethical obligations with how it uses it's body. So this ethical duty to use soul, animal spirits, and imagination in moral coordination. would amount to a personality. Which is why I provided the SEP link on his ethics on passions and such. This is what I meant by "ego". What did you mean by it?

Where do they say this? If you claim to have been reading the Summa since you were 12, why can't you provide any citations for your opinions? — Leontiskos

What citations do you want? I said that some of what Aquinas wrote on this I don't find philosophically meaningful but when you take the meat from it, you have the same Descartes, a body and soul, with different presentations of it. Am I not allowed to take what I want from Aquinas or must I accept all of it. The spiritually significant reality is the truth of body and soul. Cartesians and Thomist use to condemn each other. Maybe they can live in harmony. But the SEP list given in above post shows how distinctions can lead to skepticism

While it’s true that the description of his position in terms of other schools of though might be a matter of debate, Descartes’ dualism is a fact of his philosophy. — Wayfarer

Here is what the SEP says:

In the secondary literature, one finds at least the following interpretations.

1) Descartes was a Scholastic-Aristotelian hylomorphist, who thought that the soul is not a substance but the first actuality or substantial form of the living body (Hoffman 1986, Skirry 2003).
2) He was a Platonist who became more and more extreme: “The first stage in Descartes’ writing presents a moderate Platonism; the second, a scholastic Platonism; the third, an extreme Platonism, which, following Maritain, we may also call angelism: ‘Cartesian dualism breaks man up into two complete substances, joined to another no one knows how: one the one hand, the body which is only geometric extension; on the other, the soul which is only thought—an angel inhabiting a machine and directing it by means of the pineal gland’ (Maritain 1944, p. 179). Not that there is anything very ‘moderate’ about his original position—it is only the surprising final position that can justify assigning it that title” (Voss 1994, p. 274).
3) He articulated—or came close to articulating—a trialistic distinction between three primitive categories or notions: extension (body), thought (mind) and the union of body and mind (Cottingham 1985; Cottingham 1986, ch. 5).
4) He was a dualistic interactionist, who thought that the rational soul and the body have a causal influence on each other. This is the interpretation one finds in most undergraduate textbooks (e.g., Copleston 1963, ch. 4).
5) He was a dualist who denied that causal interactions between the body and the mind are possible and therefore defended “a parallelism in which changes of definite kinds occurrent in the nerves and brains synchronize with certain mental states correlated with them” (Keeling 1963, p. 285).
6)He was, at least to a certain extent, a non-parallelist because he believed that pure actions of the soul, such as doubting, understanding, affirming, denying and willing, can occur without any corresponding or correlated physiological events taking place (Wilson 1978, p. 80; Cottingham 1986, p. 124). “The brain cannot in any way be employed in pure understanding, but only in imagining or perceiving by the senses” (AT VII:358, CSM II:248).
7) He was a dualistic occasionalist, just like his early followers Cordemoy (1666) and La Forge (1666), and thought that mental and physical events are nothing but occasions for God to act and bring about an event in the other domain (Hamilton in Reid 1895, vol. 2, p. 961 n).
8) He was an epiphenomenalist as far as the passions are concerned: he viewed them as causally ineffectual by-products of brain activity (Lyons 1980, pp. 4–5).
9) He was a supervenientist in the sense that he thought that the will is supervenient to (determined by) the body (Clarke 2003, p. 157).
10) The neurophysiology of the Treatise of man “seems fully consistent […] with a materialistic dual-aspect identity theory of mind and body” (Smith 1998, p. 70).
11) He was a skeptical idealist (Kant 1787, p. 274).
12) He was a covert materialist who hid his true opinion out of fear of the theologians (La Mettrie 1748).

So you are taking one interpretation of Descartes and since that is how other Descartes articles on SEP interpret him, you think it must be correct. Is it because it is the majority opinion?

So I found the SEP article I was looking for. This section tells how the nature of Descartes position is much debated.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pineal-gland/#BodySoul

The Church rejected Descartes but it's long overdue "ecumenically" -so to speak- for Cartesians and Thomists to see each other's avenues and understand the power of their explications on philosophy, physics, and theology. The language Aquinas was used to was different from the later Descartes, who tried to write philosophy in a new language. Descartes should never have been on the Index of forbidden books however. As I said above, a Thomist will say that his arm is not his soul and in fact he will say that the soul is simple and therefore nowhere in space (and yet the body is in space). Descartes "Passions of the Mind" makes clear that the human being, for him, was a complete personality, not a divided ontological contraction, and this is dispayed in practical reason
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-ethics/

Does not a Thomist say his arm is his body, not partly his soul?

Ive read the Summa since i was 12 years old. My point was that for Descartes held the soul and body to be held by one ego, one I, so that they are perfectly united. Sometimes he says they are two substances, but clarifies that they are in perfect union. Wayfarer was arguing that Aquinas had a more subtle explanation of this, but prime matter and extention are not different so I apply Wittgenstein here.. The soul forms the body for Aquinas while Descartes the ego is completely united by the pineal gland with all the rest of the entire body. Any differences are in language and presentation, not concept

You posit something there is no answer to: a formless piece of matter needing a soul? That's the solution to the invisible interaction problem? Descartes stated things simpler but I was uniting traditions but you want to separate for doubt's sake. There is no bridge between body and soul. No need. Descartes doubted too much on this matter

That's just a word salad. Distinctions where none are necessary. You commit the scholastics' mistake. There is body and soul, one alive spirit.

You're not answering my objection. Why is there a problem with interaction in either description of the human person by Aquinas and Desacrtes? The same doubt should apply to both. Should we assume a priori that soul shouldn't unite with matter? And more precisely Descartes said the human person was two substances united as if to be one

You would have to convince me that Descartes said something different from Aquinas. How can soul have anything to do with body we can still ask. Descartes described a human as one substance composed of body and soul. I dont where this ghostly sense about it comes from. And a body IS prime matter. Matter just forms differently according to its source

I dont see why the interaction problem would apply to Aquinas any less than to Descartes. The soul is the same for both. Aquinas has prime matter vs Descartes's particularized extentions. The difference is the act of the soul on the "body" is more complete with Aquinas. But i can still ask "HOW can the soul interact with prime matter". Matter is all matter in principle, by definition

The 5 ways of Aquinas are all different linguistic formulations of a single assumption: namely that only the highest good could complete the symmetry of the world. The fourth way doesnt even provide an argument for God but it tries to bring out an instinct that the universe cannot simply be an eternal series without the greatest good as its grounding.

What Krauss provided was a modern physical description of creation. Creation is seen as something supernatural in the religions. But what do they mean when they say God has the "power" to create from nothing. What does power mean but "from itself". But what is God? The MIND asks this. Or maybe this God can't produce from himself because he can not be imitated. This is the God that the atheists fight against. Then this God's action of creation was truly magic

What do you think about "something from nothing" in terms of physics?

I find the idea of will instead of substance causing reality very interesting because it's so abstract

If there are levels: intellect, reason, understanding, subconscious, then unconsious, Schop's knowledge of Will would come more from the Unconcious then from any experience of "free will". Some type of compatabilism is needed to reconcile fate and freedom. When Kant said that the thing in itself causes phenomena, he knew already that he placed causality within phenomena; so it's only by analogy that we speak of Will's action. There is no "why" to pure will. It's fated freedom. Schopenhauer called his dog Atman and so presumably Schop was the Brahmin in that context. Schop wrote a lot about body and physical things. But ultimately he wasn't an atheist, or a Hindu perhaps, but more likely Buddhist. Will is not a person or a substance. It's too free to be either. And this is very consistant with Buddhism.

That is to say, to posit that we reason is a given. To posit that there is Will is the thing to be explained. However, my question was more about to why Will has to have a multiplicity. — schopenhauer1

What multiplicity? Schop says multiplicity is one because Will is one and Representation is Will. Will is not "a being" so to speak. Will is unity indivisible, without separation. For concepts alone, it is not-Will. Concepts stop in order to let in Will, "the Beloved" as mystics call it

However, why is it that entailed in willing is this superstructure of the PSR, objects, space/time/causality as this aspect of Representation? — schopenhauer1

There is no reason for the world. It just happened says Schopenhauer. How did it happen? But what happen? There is no multiplicity because Will is all and Will is one. So nothing has happened. What you see is Maya

So Will in Schopenhauer: the point is that Will chooses everything for us and we are Will. If you have a bad life, Will choose that. Will is completely free. Do you realize Will is willing? It doesnt choose what we want or think we need. It's on its own and has no one to take it to account. Reason brings in ends and "my life should be different". The Will for Schop can do no wrong. You might as well call it random, but it is choosing. Will acts. I remember that Descartes thought God was Will

Ff

I answered your objection. If reason comes from will than reason can NOT give an account of Will as you try to do. Reason inly knows reason. What is prior to reasoning is beyond reasoning.

Religious is an ambiguous term. Schop like the religions of the East

I'm more inclined to wonder "how" reason can be Will. "Why" implies there's a teleology before mind, which Schop denies. Kant advocated for blind faith in God. Maybe understanding Will takes some faith since it's beyond reason. You don't seem to be satisfied with this line of thought nevertheless. Sorry

Kant didn't say if the thing-in-itself was an object or subject. Schop said it was Will but mind understands the Forms, not Will. So the thing in itself is unknowable for him and also how reason comes from will. I know you like to think of it like two sides of a coin, but doesnt Schop say *everything* is will? So reason is somehow will I'm guessing

Maybe Schopenhauer would regard a rational world emerging from Will as a kind of miracle. The Greek gods had trials and yet were gods. We are Will and yet have trials oriented to a purpose (on the secondary level). Isn't the problem of pain part of the PSR?

So you would regard all of neo-Platonism to be a waste of time?

We are all Will because it is everywhere and Will is beyond us because it is nowhere. Only an infinite method can grasp Will, so only no method can. The finite cognition can never understand the infinite. Science assumes will must be in a brain because science is a finite method. With regard to Schopenhauer's idea of Will's atemporality, I quote Heraclitus, "In the case of the circle's circumference, the beginning and end are common." Fire apply depicts the Will, and while Heraclitus thought the fire was also Logos, Schopenhauer was seeking to reject the PSR as ontologically basic. For him we can approximate what the Will is like by comparing different manifestations of will. Perhaps he thought Will randomly or whatever chose a rational world. So his grounded reason finds it has no ground. Nirvana?

The PSR is a concept of the mind, which has intuition and reason. Intuition is the source of our knowledge of the Will. Reason is the consequence of separartion and time. The mind and forms are all illusions. The only way we can talk about the world and noumena is through the categories however. Complete personal individuality is denied by German idealists, as it is in philosophies of India and the Islamic world, and yet freedom rather servile piety is teleogical end. But ye speaking of any teleology or forms is strange and can only be strange from the position that Will is fundamental.

What's doing the objectivication? Well i think it's Will, the primordial faculty. Reason-thinking come from Will. This is interesting because we usually think of a conceptualization and only then an act of will. But will produces thinking and it's object is the Forms. Then thinking reduces to its base, the primordial will. I assume after death for Schopenhauer we are again pure will, pure anarchy, complete freedom. No more thinking, at least as we know that

From my understanding mind (Idea) comes from Will for Schopenhauer. So instead of as for Aquinas where will is a power of the power of reason inside the soul, reason comes after will. But the escape from striving is the Forms for Schop. although Will wins over mind in the end (nirvana?).. This is all very fascinating. The subject creates the world so that the world can create it in turn. All in different respects. However pure will and reason/Idea are two dualities that must fold together into one principle. Freedom is the goal

My impression of Schopenhauer is that he was a brilliant writer with an unlucky hex over his head. He tried to split reason and will, as if they were separate things. Spinoza said all was mind with no will. Scopenhauer said all was will without mind. They both have a truth. All these idealist were talking about different aspects of the same thing. Like an elephant..

Are you questioning that Hegel is an idealist? Most scholars say he was. The world is universals and we are Idea. His lectures on the philosophy of religion is theology as well

In this model, the Father is the source of all knowledge, the thing about which all signs ultimately refer, the ground of being; the Son is the Word, the mediating symbol through which all things are known; and the Holy Spirit is the meaning, the interpretant, that which indwells the soul and interprets. T — Count Timothy von Icarus

Father= Absolute
Son= Notion
Holy Spirit= Concept

Do you read the texts differently?

Thus, the dark principle is inherent in the Being of beings; the root of self-will, and the evil that inevitably springs from it, are necessary to existence, and to the self-actualization of God. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is like Ying and Yang. If we are free than our evil is not necessary. "Causality in accordance with laws of nature is not the only causality from which the appearances of the world can one and all be derived." (Kant's thesis for the Third Antimony). Paradox is essential to Hegel's scheme; he thinks paradox is good for the mind. It takes intuition and reason, the union of which is intellect. Then you can see freedom and fate united without having to combine their content.

The world is the unfolding of the Spirit. This table is a part of the unfolding. Therefore this table is Spirit. I think Hegel is making a distinction between the empirical and the rational. What is rational is actual and vice verse. But the empirical is just the empirical and we don't have to stop seeing leaves and kittens as other than finite things. It's about dialectic, which a mechanism cannot imitate

For Hegel on religion, the most important work is Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God. I am going to reread it sometime this year. The arguments about pantheism have to be understood in line with the Phenomenology of Mind, section on "Perception", however, which ends by saying that we never encounter a particular, but always universals. The argument extends throughout that whole section. At the end of the lesser Logic's second edition's Preface, Hegel writes "(S)ince science is the self-development of the Concept , an assessment of science through the Concept is not so much a judgment upon it as an advancing towards it." That gets right to the heart of the matter. Hegel's does have his cake and eats it to because that is the only way to do dialectic in the sense that he understood that word. A Universal is the Idea, which is Concept, which is Absolute by way of Notion. That's the ordering I understand them in. Is that pantheism? I think these are matters which don't fall into a one word category

Yes the Absolute for Hegel is an evolution of Spirit. There is a tension between Fate and Freedom in Hegel, and a tension between God and empirical history. He has it both ways, with God at the top and the bottom (which approaches the top). That's all i have time to write now. I respond to all the rest above in a few hours

The question of whether there can be a mathematical infinity is a good question for mathematicians and physicists. We are back with Hegel being a pantheist in disguise. If the world is Spirit/God and God is infinite then the world is infinite. Yet reality is called the One by Hegel, because ultimately one and infinity are the same (Absolute Infinity). So it is pantheism. Parmenides wrote of non-duality, and his student Zeno tried to prove from logic that the world is both infinite and One. Hegel writes a lot about infinity because kant did

"Now it is evident by the light of nature that there must be at least as much reality in the efficient and total cause as there is in the effect of that same cause. For whence, I ask, could an effect get it's reality, if not from it's cause? And how could the cause give that reality to the effect, unless it also possessed that reality? Hence it follows that something cannot come into being out of nothing, and also that what is more perfect (that is, what contains in itself more reality) cannot come into being from what is less perfect. But this is manifestly true not merely for the effects whose reality is actual or formal, but also for ideas in which only objective reality is considered... [T]he very nature of an idea is such that of itself it needs no formal reality other than what it borrows from my thought, of which it is the mode. But that a particular idea contains this as opposed to that objective reality is surely owing to some cause in which there is at least as much formal reality as there is objective reality contained in the idea... Moreover, even though the reality that I am considering in my ideas is merely objective reality, I ought not on that account to suspect that there is no need for the same reality to be formally in the cause of these ideas, but that it suffices for it to be in them objectively. For just as the objective mode of being belongs to ideas by there very nature, so a formal mode of being belongs to the cause of ideas".

That's Descartes in the Third Meditation. I think this argument is often overlooked, which is why i mentioned it in the OP

Kant's contemporary Jacobi, in his famous Letters on Spinoza (1785), wrote: "Through faith we know we have a body, and that other bodies, and other thinking beings are present outside us." I believe he was in line with Kant except that he uses the word "faith" instead of "intuition". If they are distinct that would be too many faculties

There are many editions of the Logic. I have the one by the Hackett Publishing Company. Check out the last paragraph of the preface to Hegel's second edition. It says, "Just as it was rightly said of the true that it is 'index sui et falsi' but that the true is not known by starting from the false, so the Concept is the understanding both of itself and of the shape without Concept, but the latter does not from its own inner truth understand the Concept."

Do you find this in your edition?

He goes on: "Science [his logic/dialectic] understands feeling and faith, but science can only be assessed through the Concept (as that on which it rests."

So the end is already the beginning. Hegel critizes Kant a lot, but he was insistent that his logic takes different steps and and reflections from Kant. Does he not say here that one must know one's own mind??

When Hegel speaks of understanding it is of a lower function than the intellect (which speculates in universals). Kant's intuitions where in his understanding. So what is true for the understanding may not apply to the mind as a whole, the intellect. This is the Absolute

Confused by what your objection is. There is a difference between understanding a thing and cognating it. Ultimately cognition is to understand the infinite but it can never grasp it. It sees what they called the beatific vision but it does not turn it into something finite by which to understand