Top o’ the Stack.
Edward Feser’s Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature may well be the best compendium of Thomist philosophical anthropology presently available. I strongly recommend it. I wish I could accept its central claims. This entry discusses one of several problems I have.
The problem I discuss in this installment is whether an Aristotelian-Thomistic (A-T) hylomorphic analysis of human beings can make sense of our post-mortem existence as numerically distinct persons.
Bill,
Speaking as an amateur on matters of the human soul, which have long fascinated and puzzled me, I greatly appreciate the rigor of your argument in this Substack post. It inspired me to think about how a Thomistic philosopher might counter it, and after stumbling about on my own for a while, I turned to the Grok, to see what this AI could come up with. It produced four counter arguments. Here are two of the four:
“1. The Soul’s Individuality and Divine Creation
Key Text: Summa Theologiae, I, q. 90, a. 3 – ‘Whether souls are created equal?’ Aquinas asserts that each soul is individually created by God, emphasizing its unique act of being (esse):
‘The soul is created by God immediately… Each soul is created according to the order of nature, to be the form of a particular body’ (ST I, q. 90, a. 3).
In Summa Contra Gentiles, Book II, ch. 87, Aquinas further elaborates:
‘Each intellectual substance has its own proper act of existing, which is not dependent on matter… Hence, the multiplication of souls corresponds to the divine intention, which is to create a multiplicity of things.’
Relevance to Defense: These texts highlight that the soul’s individuality originates in God’s creative act, not merely in its union with matter. Each soul is a distinct entity with its own act of being, tailored to a specific body but not reducible to it. After separation, God’s conservation sustains this unique esse, ensuring the soul remains distinct from others….
Supporting Argument: A philosopher could argue that the objection (loss of individuality without matter) overlooks the soul’s divine origin. Since God creates each soul as a distinct entity, its individuality is metaphysically grounded in its esse, not solely in matter….
2. The Soul’s Intellectual Operations Post-Separation
Key Text: Summa Theologiae, I, q. 89, a. 1 – ‘Whether the separated soul can understand anything?’ Aquinas addresses how the separated soul knows without the body:
‘The separated soul does not understand by way of innate species, nor by species abstracted from things, but by species bestowed on it by God, which are proportionate to its condition… It understands by means of participated species, flowing from the divine essence’ (ST I, q. 89, a. 1).
Relevance to Defense: This passage counters the challenge that a separated soul, lacking sensory input from matter, cannot retain individual characteristics. Aquinas argues that God provides the soul with ‘infused species’ (divinely granted knowledge), enabling it to continue intellectual operations. These operations reflect the soul’s individual history—its acquired knowledge, virtues, and dispositions….
Supporting Argument: A philosopher could emphasize that the soul’s individuality is preserved through its intellectual and volitional habits, which are not erased by separation. The infused species allow the soul to ‘know itself’ and its unique characteristics, maintaining its identity ….”
For what it is worth, my response to these counter-arguments is that they fail because they depend on sneaking theological assumptions—the existence, nature, and creative acts of the Christian God– into what should be a philosophical proof, muddling the discussion.
Vito
Hi Vito,
Thanks for calling upon the Grok bot. Let me mull this over a bit longer.
Bill,
Along with reading some articles in the SEP, I have been fooling around further with Grok on this issue of the postmortem soul in Scholastic thought, and the AI came up with the following arguments of Duns Scotus, which I find quite impressive and in line with yours and which may be of interest to your readers:
“…I provide … English translations (based on reliable sources like the Vatican edition for Ordinatio and the Wadding-Vivès edition for Quodlibetales, cross-referenced with Allan B. Wolter’s translations). These excerpts focus on the soul’s union with the body, its potential separability, and the limitations of natural reason in proving immortality….
From Quaestiones Quodlibetales (Quodlibet 9: ‘Utrum anima intellectiva sit immortalis’)This quodlibet addresses whether the intellective soul is immortal, emphasizing that philosophical arguments (including Aquinas’s from immaterial operations) are inconclusive, and true immortality relies on faith and God’s will. Scotus critiques the idea that the soul’s form-body unity naturally entails independent subsistence.
(Quodl. 9, a. 1, n. 5):
‘To the first main argument, when it is said that the intellective soul is immaterial, therefore immortal: I say that immateriality does not sufficiently prove immortality, because although it is immaterial with respect to operation, yet it is the form of matter, and consequently depends on matter in its being, just as any other form.’
(Quodl. 9, a. 2, n. 14):
‘The intellective soul does not have immortality from its own nature, but from the divine will; for philosophers could not prove the immortality of the soul through natural reasons, but it is known only through revelation.’
From Ordinatio (Book IV, Distinction 43, Question 2: ‘Utrum anima separata a corpore possit esse in loco’). This section (from Scotus’s commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences) treats the separated soul’s state post-death, arguing its subsistence and location are not natural but due to God’s miraculous preservation. Scotus rejects strict Thomistic natural subsistence, emphasizing the soul’s intrinsic dependence on the body as its form.
(Ordinatio IV, d. 43, q. 2, n. 4):
‘The rational soul is the form of the body, and united to the body in the mode of a substantial form; however, separated from the body, it does not remain in complete being naturally, but through a divine miracle, because a form does not subsist without matter except through supernatural power.’”
(Ordinatio IV, d. 43, q. 2, n. 7):
‘If the soul were subsistent through itself by its nature, then it would not depend on the body in operations requiring phantasms; but experience teaches the contrary, therefore its separated subsistence is not natural, but depends on divine ordination.’”
Vito
A difficulty with Duns Scotus’s argument is the fate of damned souls. Once a human soul cannot be saved, why would a merciful God employ a miracle to preserve it? When all hope is gone, one would think it better to let the lost soul vanish, rather than continue to suffer.
The Scotist position implies that the hope of salvation is never completely gone, and all human souls will eventually be saved … which Christ denied.
Re: n. 7 – “phantasms”, that is mental images, depend only on operations of the animal soul, and we have reason to believe that the smarter animals can have them. So of course the human soul depends on the body when it employs them, just as much as it does when it employs the senses. Aquinas’s argument for the immortality of the human soul depends on our having faculties that do not depend on the body – the fact that most of our faculties do depend on it is irrelevant to that point.
Michael,
I am definitely over my head in these matters, but after reading your thoughtful comment, I have looked at some of Scotus’ Ordinatio, a good translation of which exists online, * to see if he thinks of phantasms differently from Aquinas. And what I find is that for Scotus the phantasm functions as a necessary partial efficient cause in the creation of intellectual knowledge. He writes:
“…[A]n object has some partial causality with respect to intellection (and this the object insofar as it is actually intelligible), and the intellect has its own partial causality with respect to the same act, according to which it concurs with the object for perfectly producing such act – so that these two, when they are in themselves perfect and united, are one integral cause with respect to intellection [1 d.3 nn.486-494]. From this I argue as follows: every partial cause that is in the perfect act proper to itself as it is such a cause can cause the effect with the causality corresponding to itself; and, when it is united to the second partial cause in its act, it can, along with it, cause perfectly….”
Grok comments on this argument, as follows: “Specifically, the phantasm, along with the external object and the agent intellect, works together concurrently to bring about the intelligible species in the possible intellect. Scotus describes this by noting that the phantasm provides an essential representational action from the sensory side, actively participating in eliciting the act of understanding, without which the abstraction could not naturally occur in embodied humans—much like a joint contributor in a shared causal effort, ensuring the transition from material images to immaterial concepts.
So, I think that his argument on the soul’s need of the body for the production of phantasms in Ordinatio IV, d. 43, q. 2, n. 7, to which you refer, cannot be refuted by simply assuming that he shares Aquinas understanding of this faculty, as a kind of material cause, providing potential content of which the intellect makes use, ** which he does not. Since phantasm/object/ and agent intellect are all required for understanding and abstraction in embodied humans, Scotus insistence on the body/soul nexus makes sense in his system.
Vito
*https://www.logicmuseum.com/wiki/Authors/Duns_Scotus/Ordinatio/Ordinatio_II/D3/P2Q1
**”Therefore we must needs say that our intellect understands material things by abstracting from the phantasms; and through material things thus considered we acquire some knowledge of immaterial things, just as, on the contrary, angels know material things through the immaterial” (ST, q.85, a.12).