Category: Death and Immortality

The Mark of a Weakling

Plato puts the following words into the mouth of Simmias in The Phaedo:

It seems to me, Socrates . . . that to know anything certain about such things [as the immortality of the soul]  in this life is either impossible or exceedingly difficult, but to give up without completely testing the views on the subject and before you’re totally exhausted from examining them on every side is the mark of a weakling.

For we must accomplish one of the following: either learn the truth about this from someone else or find it out for ourselves, or if that’s impossible, at least catch the best most irrefutable human argument we can find and ride on it like a raft, sailing through life taking our chances on it, unless we can get safer, less dangerous passage on a securer vessel in the form of some divine explanation. (85c-85e, tr. Raymond Larson)

Does the ‘Fixity of Death’ Extend to Thinking?

I cannot repent after death, or make moral progress; can I make intellectual progress post-mortem?  Maybe Ed Feser can answer this question along Thomistic lines, assuming the question has a sense clear enough to answer. Aquinas takes no position on it, at least not in the sections of Summa Contra Gentiles where he discusses the will‘s fixity after death. See SCG, Book Four, sections 92-95.

Aquinas and Hylomorphism Again

Over lunch on Sunday, Brian B asked me to explain my disagreement with Ed Feser and others over Aquinas’ hylomorphism.  Here is a pithier statement than the ones I’ve already posted.

I will assume with Aquinas that human beings after death continue to exist as disembodied souls until the general resurrection. The question I and others have posed is how the persistence of individual  souls after death is conceivable on the Aristotelian hylomorphic principles to which Thomas subscribes.  Why should this be a problem?  The problem is that the following propositions, each of which is a doctrinal commitment of Thomas, are collectively logically inconsistent: they cannot all be true.

a) Designated matter in material substances both individuates their forms and accounts for the substances’ numerical difference. Thus Peter and Paul are two and not one because of the difference in their designated matter.  And their forms are individuated by designated matter as well.  This implies that (i) Peter’s substantial form is numerically different from Paul’s, and that (ii) neither form is an individual form without the matter that individuates it.

b) The souls of living things are substantial forms of their bodies: anima forma corporis. Peter and Paul are living things; hence their souls are individual substantial forms of their bodies. To put it more precisely, Peter and Paul are  form-matter composites.  The psychic or soulic component in each is the individual substantial form, and the material component in each is the parcel of designated matter.  Each component needs the other to be what it is: the psychic-formal component needs the material component for its individuation, and the material component needs the psychic component for its animation.  And neither component can exist without the other: each exists only together with the other. Thus the whole of which they are proper parts is not a whole compounded of parts that can exist on their own,  as substances in their own right, but a whole the parts of which are mere ‘principles’ in scholastic jargon and thus not substances in their own right. This implies that the hylomorphic whole, which is a substance in its own right,  is ontologically prior to the morphic and hyletic parts which are not substances in their own right.  Bear in mind that a primary substance, by definition, is a basic entity that is metaphysically capable of independent existence.

c) The souls of humans, unlike those of non-human animals, are subsistent: they are metaphysically capable of independent existence. So the souls of Peter and Paul will continue to exist after their bodily death in a disembodied intermediate state  prior to their re-embodiment in the general resurrection.

The triad is inconsistent because (a) and (b) taken together entail the negation of (c). Indeed any two of the propositions, taken together, entails the negation of the remaining one.

In a nutshell: it cannot be the case that souls depend on material bodies for their existence and individuation but continue to exist as individual souls after bodily death in a bodiless state.

What Thomists want to say is that SOMEHOW a substantial form that achieves individuation ‘here below’ pre-mortem by marriage with a hunk of matter, thereby animating said hunk of matter, continues to exist as a disembodied individual soul  ‘up yonder’ post-mortem AFTER the individuating factor has been removed. That makes no sense. What would make sense is that the individual soul cease to exist after the death of the body. Bear in mind that the soul on an Aristotelian hylomorphic mereological analysis is a mere ‘principle’ of the hylomorphic composite entity and not itself a substance.

The conclusion to be drawn from this is that despite the Angelic Doctor’s  noble attempt to stay as close as possible to The Philosopher (philosophus), he is in the end a substance dualist of sorts, though not quite along Platonic, Augustinian, or Cartesian lines.

There was a time when I thought that, with respect to the soul, Thomas was an Aristotelian ‘on earth,’ but a Platonist ‘in heaven.’ (I may have picked up that line from Anthony Kenny.) But then the problem of the SOMEHOW,  the problem of how a human soul can go from a mere non-subsistent ‘principle’ to a  subsistent upon the removal of the soul’s individuating factor, becomes insoluble.  I now think that it would be better to say that, with respect to the soul, the doctor angelicus was a Platonist in both the sublunary and superlunary spheres, both ‘on earth’ and ‘in heaven,’ and this in consequence of his Christian theological commitments which exercise ‘veto power’ over his philosophical assertions.

Klima on Intellective Soul and Living Body in Aquinas and the Immortality of the Human Soul

Gyula Klima:

The composition from intellective soul and living body, and the natural immortality of the human soul (a section of a long paper)
. . . given the immateriality of the intellect, which I will not attempt to prove now, but let us just assume for the sake of the argument, the activity of the intellect cannot have as its subject the composite of body and soul, or as Aquinas would put it, this activity does not communicate with matter. What this means is that its acts are not acts of any parts of the body, in the way in which, say, my acts of sight are obviously the acts of my visual apparatus enformed [informed] by my sensitive soul.
BV:  The first sentence above strikes me as obviously true. For example, when I contemplate the theorem of Pythagoras, what in me thinks that thought?  No part of my living body, not even my brain or any part of my brain.  Nor is it the soul-body composite that thinks the thought. In the schema ego-cogito-cogitatum, where the cogitatum is the theorem in question, the ego cannot be any material thing, and thus no proper or improper part of my material body.  As for the act of thinking, the cogitatio, it cannot be any state of, or process in, any part of my material body.  In particular, it cannot be a brain state or process. So far, I agree with Klima and Thomas.  But suppose  I am having a coherent, ongoing, visual experience as of a tree. Is it obvious that this act of visual experiencing requires eyes, optic nerves, visual cortex, etc. , which is what I take Klima to be referring to with “visual apparatus”? No, it is not obvious, but to explain why would take us too far afield.
The point of agreement so far is that intellective acts do not “communicate with matter.” But if sensory acts do so communicate, then are there two souls involved in my cognitive life, an intellective soul and a sensitive soul?  Or is there only one soul? Only one according to Klima.
But the same sensitive soul also has intellective acts, which Aquinas argues cannot be the acts of any bodily organ, or to put it simply, I am not thinking with my brain (or any other organ for that matter): my brain merely provides, so to speak, “food for my thought”, in the form of phantasms, the singular representations of sensible singulars, which then my intellect further processes in its own acts of abstraction, concept formation, judgment formation and reasoning, all of which are acts of the intellect alone, which therefore cannot have the body and soul composite as their subject, but the soul alone.
BV: Right, we don’t think with our brains.  But we live in a world of concrete material particulars or singulars many of which are also sensible, i.e., able to be sensed.   My knowledge that the tree is green is sensory not intellective.  Phantasms are singular representations of singular sensibles. But it is quite unclear to me how the brain can “provide” or  “serve up” these representations for the intellect to “feast on” and intellectively process.  Are  the phantasms  located in the brain where the intellect gets hold of them for “processing”?  A representation is a representation of something (genitivus obiectivus) and it is is difficult to understand how any part of a hunk of meat can represent anything.  What gives bits of brain matter representational power?  But I won’t pursue this question further here. I pursue it elsewhere. We now come to the gravamen of my complaint against the hylomorphic attempt to explain personal survival of bodily death.
We are told that the soul-body composite cannot be the subject of sensory knowledge any more than it can be the subject of intellective knowledge. This, however, has the consequence that the intellective soul is not only a form, enforming [informing] the body, but is also a subject of its own power, the intellect, and its acts. But then, it exists not only as that by which the living body is, but also as that which is the underlying subject of its own acts which it does not communicate with the body. Therefore, upon the death of a human person, when the soul gets separated from the body, the soul ceases to be the form of the body, but that does not mean that it also has to cease to be. Since its own operations are not acts of the body, they can continue without its union with the body. But to operate, it must exist; so, it can naturally go on existing, as the underlying subject of its own intellectual operations. So, when a person dies, the person ceases to exist, but the person’s soul merely ceases to be a form of their body, which can persist in its being, naturally continuing the life that used to be the life of the person, as a separate soul, until the same person will be miraculously restituted in the resurrection, resuming the same life, now as a whole person again.
I agree with the first three sentences up to ‘therefore’ the bolding of which I have added.  Klima appreciates that the human soul for Aquinas has a dual function. It not only animates the body of which it is the soul, thereby making it a living body, but it is also that which thinks when a human being engages in intellective acts. The human soul is not only that by which the living body is alive; it is also “the underlying subject of its own [intellective] acts,” acts which do not “communicate with matter” and are therefore not the acts of the soul-body composite, the unitary psychophysical complex. So it is not Socrates qua soul-body composite who ponders whether virtue is teachable or whether there is more to knowledge than true belief; it is the intellect alone in Socrates that is the subject of these acts. That sounds right to me.
But we are then told, in the sentences  after therefore, that this individual (not universal) intellective soul will survive the death of its body.  But this is very hard to make sense of for several reasons.  Indeed, it smacks of a blatant non sequitur.  I will present only one reason in this entry. “Brevity is the soul of blog,” as some wit once observed.
 It is in virtue of forms that things are intelligible. If what thinks in a human being post-mortem is a form, however, then that form is not only intelligible but also intelligent.  It is not only intelligible, but intelligible to itself, which is to say that it is at once both intelligible and intelligent.  I find it hard to understand how a pure immaterial form, a form that does not inform anything, a form that is not a form of anything, can be both intelligible and intelligent. I find it hard to understand how  the subject and the object of acts of intellection could be one and the same.  I don’t intend this as a merely autobiographical comment. I am suggesting that anyone ought to find it hard to understand, indeed impossible to understand, and therefore intrinsically  unintelligible.  But in philosophy we are not allowed to make bare or gratuitous assertions. Quod gratis asseritur gratis negatur. So I need to argue this out. I will begin by giving two examples of intrinsically unintelligible notions.
a) The first example of intrinsic unintelligibility is the notion of a thing that causes its own existence. Since nothing can exercise causality unless it exists, nothing can cause its own existence. Not even God in his omnipotence could cause his own existence. For there cannot be an exercise of (efficient) causality unless there exists something or someone that/who exercises it. Necessarily, no action without an agent. But more than that: no action without an agent the being of which is not exhausted in its acting on a given occasion. What that means is that the agent cannot be identical to his action.  If Guido makes a meatball, there has to be more to Guido than that particular act of making that particular meatball, which is to say: no agent is identical to any of its actions, or the sum of them.   Suppose, as a matter of metaphysical necessity, that agent S performs action A. Even in a case like this the agent is not identical to any of his actions or the sum of them.
b) A second example of intrinsic unintelligibility is the notion of an open sentence that has a truth value. ‘___ is wise’ is an example of an open sentence. It can also be depicted using the free variable ‘x’ thusly: ‘x is wise.’ This open sentence, which picks out what Russell calls a propositional function, is neither true nor false: it lacks a truth value. A (closed) sentence results if we either substitute a name for the variable ‘x’ or bind the variable with a quantifier. Both ‘Socrates is wise’ and ‘For all x, x is wise’ are closed sentences which attract a truth value. That is a philosopher’s way of saying that they can be evaluated as either true or false. The first is true, the second false. The claim that ‘x is wise’ has a truth value, however, is intrinsically unintelligible: it makes no sense and cannot be understood, by me or anyone.
A pure immaterial form that is both intelligible and intelligent is like an open sentence that has a truth value.  Why? Well, consider the sentences ‘Socrates is wise’ and ‘Socrates is human.’  The first predicates an accidental form of a substance, the second a substantial form of a substance. Those sentences are both meaningful and true. What makes them meaningful is that they express complete thoughts or propositions: each has a subject-term, a copula, and a predicate-term. What makes them true is the inherence of the forms picked out by the predicates in what the subject-terms name,  something that is not a form.   Socrates is not a form.  He is a composite entity, a hylomorphic compound.  Just as it is unintelligible to suppose that there could be an action that was not the action of an agent distinct from the action, it is unintelligible to suppose that there could be a form that was not the form of something (genitivus subiectivus) that was not itself a form.
More  tomorrow.

Aquinas on Angels and Human Souls: Examination of a Passage in De Ente et Essentia

I found a passage in De Ente et Essentia that is relevant to my claim that Thomas is not a hylomorphist with respect to  the human soul but a substance-dualist. Here is the passage in the Armand Maurer translation. The numbers in brackets are my interpolation. My commentary follows.

[1] This is why among these substances [created intellectual substances] we do not find a multitude of individuals in the same species . . . except in the case of the human soul because of the body to which it is united. [2] And even though the individuation of the soul depends on the body as for the occasion of its beginning, because it acquires its individuated  being only in the body of which it is the actuality, it is not necessary that the individuation cease when the body is removed.  [3] Because the soul has a separate being, once the soul has acquired its individuated being by having been made the form of a particular body, that being always remains individuated. [4]  That is why Avicenna says that the individuation and multiplication of souls depends on the body as regards its beginning but not as regards its end. (On Being and Essence, 2nd rev. ed, 1968, The Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, pp. 62-63.)

Commentary

Ad [1].  Created intellectual substances are either angels or human souls. Angels, of which there are many, are wholly immaterial. They are nonetheless composite beings in that they do not exist in virtue of their  essence (quiddity) but receive their existence from God.  Since there is no matter-form (hylomorphic) composition in them, what makes them many cannot be matter.  And so each is a species unto itself. Their numerical difference is a difference in species.

Human beings, by contrast, all belong to the same species where the genus is animal, the species is human, and the specific difference is rationality. “Man is a rational animal.” The numerical difference of human beings among themselves is therefore not a difference grounded in a difference of species but a difference grounded in a difference in designated matter (materia signata).

Ad [2]. We are then told that a human soul first begins to exist when it acquires a body.  Human souls do not pre-exist their embodiment. This is because the human soul is individuated — made to be an individual soul — by its acquisition of a body.  Before Socrates acquired a body, there was no individual Socrates. Socrates cannot exist in reality except as an individual human being  and he cannot exist as an individual human being without a material body. It is embodiment that brings about his individuation. So far, so good.

Now comes the crucial inference:  because the human soul acquires its individuated being (existence) in the material body of which the soul is the actuality, it is not necessary  that the individuation cease when the body is removed. Why not?

Ad [3]. The reason is because the soul’s individuation brings it about that the soul is  a separate being. Unfortunately, Aquinas appears to be equivocating on ‘separate.’ No doubt the individuation of  the soul of Socrates bring it about that his soul is separate from Plato’s soul in the sense of numerically different from Plato’s soul.  But that is not to say that the soul of either is separate in the sense of  existing without a body either before or after death.

I now explain the two senses of ‘separate.’

The cat is on the mat. The cat is separate from the mat, and the mat from the cat.  That is equivalent to saying that cat and mat are numerically different.  But neither is separate from designated matter. So ‘separate’ has these two different senses. Separation in the first sense is a symmetrical dyadic relation. It is existence-entailing on both ends: if x is separate from y, then x, y both exist.  Separation in the second sense is not a relation at all. A separate substance such as an angel is not separated from anything.  There is no parcel of designated matter that the angel Gabriel has to be separate from to be a separate substance.

So it looks as if Thomas is equivocating on ‘separate.’ One hesitates to tax such a great thinker with the fallacy of equivocation.  But even if  Thomas is not equivocating on ‘separate,’ his argument remains puzzling.  Angels are separate substances: although not self-subsistent like God, they subsist without matter.  They are individual in themselves, as forms.  They need no individuation ab extra. They are already, logically speaking, individuals.  Socrates does need individuation ab extra, and it comes from matter.  Before he began to exist, he was nothing in reality: he was not a subsistent individual form that acquired a body.  He became an individual only when a certain soul-body/ form-matter composite came to be. How then can the soul or form of that composite continue to exist when the composite is no more? This is impossible on Aristotelian hylomorphism, according to which the ‘principles’ of a hylomorphic compound substance are not themselves substances but non-independent ontological ‘parts’ or constituents of the substance of which they are the constituents.

Is Aquinas telling us that when Socrates died he became an angel? I reckon  not. (That would be quite the metabasis eis allo genos!) Not even the doctor angelicus became an angel at death. He is however telling us that when the philosopher  died he became a separate intellectual substance, and thus like an angel in that respect.   Bear in mind that for Thomas, an incomplete substance is a substance. An incomplete substance is logically capable of independent existence: it is not an accident of a substance nor a ‘principle’ of a substance.

So, while Socrates post-mortem is no angel, sensu stricto, he is a separate intellectual substance, a substance that exists in reality on its own without matter. How exactly, given that for humans, as opposed to angels, (designated) matter is the principium individuationis?

The Aquinate line seems to be that the individuation that human souls acquire from matter before death remains with those souls after death. But what is the argument for this surprising thesis?  The only argument I discern  in the above text is this:

a) Designated matter individuates human souls;
b) Such individuation by designated matter makes of the soul a separate substance;
c) A separate substance does not depend on matter for its subsistence; ergo,
d) A human soul once individuated is forever after a separate substance.

But what reason do we have to accept (b)?   No reason at all on a strictly hylomorphic approach.  In fact, such an approach rules out (b). The form or soul of a living substance such as Socrates is merely a ‘principle’ of this compound sublunary substance — as I have stated many times already.  These principles are not themselves substances. So they cannot exist on their own. Hence they cannot exist without matter. On strict hylomorphism, the soul of Socrates cannot continue to exist upon the dissolution of his body.

Everything falls into place, however, once you see that Aquinas is not a hylomorphic monist, but a substance-dualist.  He simply presupposes the truth of (b).  This presupposition is logical ‘fallout’ from  Christianity as he understands it.

More on Hylomorphic Dualism and the Distinctness of Souls Post Mortem

Edward Feser writes,

Hey Bill, many thanks for your Substack post on Immortal Souls.  I’ve written up a reply   As you’ll see, at the end I give a shout out to your book Life’s Path: Some Trail Notes which I have enjoyed and profited from.  You are the rare contemporary philosopher who has both technical chops and the virtue of wisdom in the broad sense that includes understanding of concrete human life.  It’s amazing and depressing how many academics are utterly devoid of the latter.

Thanks for the kind words, Ed.  Now on to your criticisms.

You say that on the A-T theory, “while each individual physical substance has its own substantial form, with physical substances of the same species their substantial forms are of the same kind.” You suggest that this is something I haven’t understood, but I don’t disagree with you.  Your point is that each physical substance has its own substantial form.  That’s right;  we all understand that Aristotelian forms are not Platonic Forms.  Unlike Platonic Forms, which enjoy a transcendent existence in a topos ouranios whether or not they are instantiated here below, Aristotelian forms  can exist only in concrete particulars.  Platonic Forms  are transcendent, Aristotelian forms  immanent. As I see it, Platonic Forms are transcendent in two senses: (i) they exist whether or not any concrete particulars participate in them; (ii) they do not enter into concrete particulars as constituents of them.  Aristotelian (substantial) forms, by contrast, are not transcendent but immanent, and in a two fold-sense: (iii) they cannot exist on their own but only  in concrete particulars; (iv) they exist in concrete particulars as their constituents.  Thus Platonic participation (methexis, μέθεξις) is very different from the relation that obtains between a complete Aristotelian primary substance and its ontological constituents or ‘principles’ which are not themselves substances. Plato and Aristotle thus offer two very different theoretical explications of the pre-analytic or pre-theoretical notion of instantiation.

As you say, and I agree, an Aristotelian substantial form “is a concrete principle intrinsic to a substance that grounds its characteristic properties and powers.”  You also say, and I agree, that on the A-T theory, “the soul is a substantial form of the kind that gives a physical substance the distinctive properties and powers of a living thing.” It follows from these two points that each living physical substance has its own soul or psyche, where the soul of a living thing is its life-principle.   This holds for both human animals such as Socrates and Plato and for non-human animals. We also agree that humans, unlike other living things, have both corporeal and noncorporeal properties and powers. So far, I believe we are ‘on the same page’ at least with respect to what the A-T theory says. I take it we agree on the content of the theory; our dispute concerns its coherence.

But let’s dig a little deeper. It seems to me that the A-T conception further implies that matter (materia signata) plays a dual role: it both individuates and differentiates.  These are different ‘ontological jobs’ even though on the A-T scheme  signate matter does both of them.  Two questions.

(Q1)  Why do Socrates and Plato each have their own individual substantial forms and thus — given that souls are substantial  forms — their own individual souls? Answer: because forms, which cannot exist Platonically, but only in concrete particulars,  are individuated or particularized  by  the  parcels of matter which they inform or in which they inhere.

(Q2) Why do Socrates and Plato differ numerically? Why are they two and not one? Because each is a numerically different hunk of matter.  So matter (designated matter) is the ground both of the individuation of forms — that which makes them individuals and not universals — and that which grounds the  numerical difference of the two complete physical substances.

So much for the pre-mortem situation of Socrates and Plato.  With respect to the pre-mortem  situation, Aristotle and Thomas pretty much agree about human beings (rational animals). Post-mortem, however, important differences surface due to Thomas’s Christian commitments which, needless to say, are not shared by Aristotle.  And so we need to ask how well these Christian commitments comport with the Aristotelian scheme.

For Thomas, human souls after death are (1) subsistent, (2) separable, (3) multiple, (4) incomplete,  (5) personal, and (6) such that the soul no longer functions as a life-principle but  only as a ‘seat’ of noncorporeal intellectual operations. I’ll explain these points seriatim.

Ad (1).  The souls of rational animals, unlike the souls of nonrational animals,  continue to exist after death.

Ad (2). The souls of rational animals can and do exist after death in a disembodied state, i.e., apart from  matter. So they don’t merely subsist; they subsist in an immaterial way.

Ad (3). Just as there are many human beings ‘on earth,’ i.e., in the physical realm, there are many disembodied human souls after death. Whatever the number is, it is neither one nor zero.  Moreover, for each human being that existed ‘on earth,’ there is exactly one soul after death (whether in heaven, hell, purgatory, or limbo) and this soul after death is numerically identical to the soul of the human before death. Thus the soul of Socrates after death is numerically the same as the soul he had before death.

Ad (4). Human souls after death, but before resurrection, are substances all right, but  incomplete substances in that they lack a body when it is their nature to exist in an embodied state.

Ad (5). Human souls after death are persons in that they are conscious and self-conscious, albeit in non-sensory ways. In Summa Contra Gentiles, Book IV, chs. 92-95, Aquinas elaborates on the will’s fixity after death: “souls immediately after their separation from the body become unchangeable in will with the result that the will of [a] man cannot further be changed, neither from good to evil, nor from evil to good.” (Ch. 92, top.)  Suppose you go straight to heaven after death.  Your will will be eternally fixed upon the good. This fixity of will is a modality of consciousness and also of self-consciousness inasmuch as the soul will be aware of its fixity of will.  That is, the soul is aware that it wills, and what it wills. What’s more, the souls in heaven presumably can ‘hear’ petitionary prayers from souls ‘on earth’ and ask God to grant those petitions.  This non-sensory ‘hearing’ is a modality of consciousness. The souls in heaven are aware of the petitions and formulate the intention to intercede with God for the benefit of the earthly petitioners.

Ad (6). Dead humans are no longer alive.   So the soul of a human after death and before resurrection does not function as a life-principle.  It can so function only if it is joined to an animal body that it enlivens or animates. But the soul of a human after death does function as the subject of conscious states such as the volitional state of willing only the good.  The soul of a human before death, however, functions in both ways, as an animating principle, and as that in a human which is aware when it is aware of this or that.  The difference is between the soul as life-principle and the soul as subject or ego or I.

I hope I have made clear that I really do understand what the A-T theory maintains.  My disagreements with Ed Feser are not about the content of the theory, but about its coherence and thus its tenability.

The point I was making in the Substack piece could be put like this.  After the death of a mortal man such as Socrates, and the dissolution of his material body, the soul he had can no longer be his soul. The reason for this is that the individuating or particularizing  factor, signate matter, which made the soul he had his soul, is no longer present after death. To appreciate this point you must not forget that the form of a  (primary) substance is not itself a (primary) substance, but a ‘principle’ — Ed uses this very word — or constituent of a substance which together with the material  constituent constitutes a (primary) substance. Thus the constituents or ‘principles’ of a substance are not themselves substances and therefore not themselves metaphysically capable of independent existence.  Bear in mind that for Aristotle, primary substances are basic entities in the sense that they do not depend on anything else for their existence in the way a smile depends on  face.  But what I have just argued — that the soul of Socrates after death cannot be his own soul — contradicts (3) which is a non-negotiable doctrinal commitment of Thomism.  The lesson to be learned from this is that Aristotelian hylomorphism is not consistent with the characteristic commitments of Thomism.  Note that I am not denying the doctrinal commitments listed above.  My point is that they cannot be rendered intelligible by the use of Aristotelian conceptuality, in particular, hylomorphism.

My point can also be made from the side of differentiation.  Thomas is committed to saying that Socrates and Plato are as soulically  or psychically distinct  in the afterlife as they are in this life.  But in the afterlife before resurrection they lack material bodies.  Lacking bodies, they lack that which could ground their numerical difference. So if the two men after death are two numerically different souls, then souls are not mere Aristotelian forms. They are substances in their own right.  This is why Richard Swinburne, no slouch of a philosopher, speaks plausibly and indeed correctly of “Thomist substance dualism.” (Are We Bodies or Souls? Oxford UP, 2019, p. 82)

Aristotle is not a substance dualist, but Thomas is.  This is not to say that Thomas is a substance dualist in the very same sense that Descartes is. But he is a substance dualist nonetheless.

I expect Ed to balk at this and reiterate the bit about ‘incomplete’ substances formulated above in point (4).  Let’s think this through as sympathetically as possible.  If a life-principle is actually functioning as such, then there must be a physical body it enlivens or animates. It therefore makes perfect sense for Thomas to say to say  that it is the nature of  a  life-principle to be joined to a body.  For a life-principle to be a life-principle of a material thing, there must be a material thing whose life-principle it is. So if human souls are life-principles, then it is the nature of the human soul to have a body. But post-mortem souls before resurrection are not functioning as life-principles. And yet Thomas insists that after death and before resurrection human souls continue to exist and are numerically the same as the souls that existed before death.   One survives one’s bodily death as a person, as a self, as a subject of conscious states. So is it not obvious that human souls before death and after death (but before the re-embodiment consequent upon resurrection) are not mere substantial forms but substances in their own right?  I say it is obvious and it puzzles me that what is obvious to me is not obvious to Ed.  Try this syllogistic chain on for size.

  1. No forms for Aristotle are substances.
  2. All souls for Aristotle are forms. Therefore:
  3. No souls for Aristotle are substances. (1, 2)
  4. All and only substances for Aristotle are capable of independent existence. Therefore:
  5. No souls for Aristotle are capable of independent existence. (3, 4)
  6. Some souls for Aquinas are capable of independent existence. Therefore:
  7. Some souls for Aquinas are not souls in Aristotle’s sense of ‘soul.’ (5,6)

I conclude that Aquinas’s conception of the soul is not hylomorphic sensu stricto but substance-dualist. Hylomorphism does not render the angelic doctor’s doctrinal commitments intelligible.  And that was my point.

I have heard it said that Thomas is an Aristotelian on earth, but a Platonist in heaven.  That is an approximation to the truth, but it just now occurred to me that it is not quite right, and may be more clever than truthful.   For Aquinas is committed to the diachronic numerical identity of the person or self both in this life and on into the after life. So even in this life there has to be more to the soul than a life-principle. I conclude that even in this life Thomas is not wholly Aristotelian.  If Thomas is a substance-dualist in heaven, he must also be one on earth as well .A follow-up post will make this more clear.

Addendum (10/29).  This morning I found a section  on Aquinas in John W. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting, Eerdmans 1989, p. 11-13.   Cooper makes points that support what I argue above. He states that Thomas “combined important features of the Aristotelian body-soul relation with a basically Augustinian dualistic framework.” Although “Thomas uses Aristotle to emphasize the unity of human nature,” he “remains with Augustine in affirming that the soul is a distinct substance which can survive biological death.” Cooper appreciates that a Christian cannot take an Aristotelian  approach to the soul. “For Aristotle’s soul is only the form of the body and not a substance as such. Therefore it cannot survive death as an individual entity.” (13) Thomas abandons Aristotle by holding that “the soul is both the form of the body and an intellectual substance in its own right.” 

Swinburne, Cooper, and I are saying the same thing.

A Problem for Hylomorphic Dualism in the Philosophy of Mind

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.

On the Death of a Neighbor

My neighbor Ted across the street, 85 years old, died the other day. Last I spoke with him, two weeks ago, he seemed as hale and hearty as ever. Ted and I enjoyed 26 trouble-free years of neighborly, if superficial, acquaintanceship.  In this world of surfaces, relationships kept conventional and superficial are often best. Not one harsh word passed between us.  Nothing was ever said in seriousness or in jest to sully the serenity that made the living easy. I will remember him fondly, with nary a negative thought.

There is a lot to be said for mere acquaintanceship and for cleaving to the conventional.  Go deep with people and you may see things you would like to forget. In a world of seemings, surfaces are safe.  You say conventional usages are phony? They mainly are, but what did you expect in a world fleeting and phenomenal? Grow up, Holden!

Don't look for depth where it cannot be found. But look for depth. Where? First within, and then in a kindred spirit or two.

Jeffrey Long, M. D. on Near-Death Experiences (NDEs)

Here (under 5 minutes).

'Coded' as used by Dr. Long in this video clip is medical jargon. For a patient to 'code' is for the patient to suffer cardiac arrest. 

It is a mistake to think that if an episode of experiencing is real, then  the intentional object of that episode of experiencing is also real. The question I want to pose is whether Dr. Long is making that mistake. But first I must explain the mistake and why it really is a mistake.

Consider a perceptual illusion.  I am returning from a long hike at twilight. I am tired and the light is bad. Suddenly I 'see' a rattlesnake.  I shout out to my partner and I stop marching forward. But it turns out that what I saw was a twisted tree root. This is a typical case of a visual perceptual illusion.  (There are also auditory, olfactory, tactile, and gustatory illusions.)

What I initially 'saw' is what I am calling the intentional object. The intentional object, the object intended, is distinct from the act  (occurrent episode) of consciousness directed upon the intentional object. Act and intentional object are obviously distinct; but that is not to say that the one can exist without the other: they are, necessarily, correlates of one another.  No act without an intentional object, no intentional object without an act. 

Now not all episodes of consciousness are object-directed, or consciousnesses of something (the 'of' to be read as an objective genitive). But some conscious states of a person are object-directed. These mental states exhibit what philosophers call 'intentionality.'  (Bear in mind that 'intentionality' as here used  is a term of art, a terminus technicus, not to be confused with more specific ordinary-language uses of 'intend' and 'intentionality.') Intentionality, then,  is object-directedness.  One must not assume, however, that every object of an intentional mental state  exists. Some intentional objects exist and some do not. 

Philosophers before and after Franz Brentano have repeatedly pointed out that the intentional object of  (subjective genitive) an object-directed state of consciousness  may or may not exist.  Intentionality, we may say, has the 'non-inference property.'  From 'S is conscious of  an F,' one cannot validly infer, 'there exists an x such that x is an F.' For example, if I am imagining, or hallucinating, or dreaming, or simply thinking about a centaur, it does not follow that there exists a centaur that I am imagining, or hallucinating, or dreaming, or simply thinking about.

In my hiking example, the snake I 'saw' did not exist. But there is no denying that (i) something  appeared to me, something that caused me to shout out and stop hiking, and that (ii) what  appeared to me did not have the properties of a tree root — else I would not have shouted out and stopped moving.  I have no fear of tree roots. The intentional object had, or rather appeared to have, the properties of a rattlesnake. So in this case, the correlate of the act, the intentional object, did not exist. And this without prejudice to the reality of the act. 

If we agree that to be real = to exist extra-mentally ('outside' the mind), then in my example, the visual experience was real but its intentional object was not.

Suppose now that a person 'codes.' He suffers cardiac arrest. Oxygenated blood does not reach his brain,  and in consequence his EEG flatlines, which indicates that brain activity has ceased  and that the patient is 'brain dead.'  Suppose that at that very moment he has an NDE. An NDE is an occurrent episode of experiencing which is, moreover, intentional or object-directed.  The typical intentional object or objects of NDEs include such items as a tunnel, lights, angels, dead ancestors, and the the heavenly realm as described in Long's video, and as described in innumerable similar accounts of NDEs.  But from the occurrence and thus the reality of the near-death experiencing it does not follow that the heavenly realm and its contents are also real.  Their status might be merely intentional, and thus not real,  and this despite their being extremely vivid. 

Yes or no? This is the question I am raising.

Is it logically consistent with the patient's having of that near-death experience that he not survive his bodily death as an individual person who 'goes to heaven'?  Yes it is.   That he had a real experience is not in question. The patient was near death, but he was alive when he had the experience.  He is here to answer our questions. The patient is honest, and if anyone knows  whether he had an NDE, he does. He is the authority; he enjoys 'privileged access' to his mental states. 

But unless one confuses intentio and intentum, act and object, experiencing and the experienced-qua-experienced, one has to admit that the reality of the experiencing does not guarantee the reality of heaven or of angels or of dead/disembodied souls or one's  survival of  one's bodily death.

For it could be — it is epistemically possible that — it is like this. When a patient's EEG flatlines, and he does not recover, but actually dies, then his NDE, if he had one, is his last  experience, even if  it turns out to be an experience as of  heaven. Perhaps at the moment of dying, but while still alive, he 'sees' his beloved dead wife approach him, and he 'sees' her reach out to him, and he 'sees' himself reach out to her, but he does not see her or himself, where 'see' is being used as a 'verb of success.'  ('See' is being used as a verb of success if and only if 'S sees x' is so used as to entail 'X exists.' When 'S sees x' is used without this entailment, what we have is a phenomenological use of 'see.'  Note that both uses are literal. The phenomenological use is not figurative. Admittedly, the point being made in this parenthesis needs defense in  a separate post.)

If this epistemic possibility cannot  be ruled out, then there is no proof of an afterlife from NDEs. In that case we cannot be objectively certain that our man 'went to heaven'; we must countenance the possibility that he simply ceased to exist as an individual person.

Finally, can Dr. Long be taxed with having committed the mistake of confusing the reality of the experiencing with the reality of the experienced-qua-experienced? I think he can. The video shows that he is  certain that there is a heaven to which we go after death, and that the existence of this heaven  is proven by the very large number of NDEs that have been reported by honest people. But he is not entitled to this certainty, and he hasn't proven anything.

Am I denying that we survive our bodily deaths as individual persons? No! My point is merely that we cannot prove that we do on the basis of NDEs.  There is no rationally coercive argument from the reality of NDEs to the reality of an afterlife in which we continue to exist as individual persons.  

A Problem for Hylomorphic Dualism in the Philosophy of Mind

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 want to 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 distinct persons. Thomas Aquinas maintains that after death the souls of rational animals, but not the souls of non-rational animals, continue to exist as disembodied forms, numerically distinct among themselves. What the following argument seems to show is that the survival of distinct souls is impossible on hylomorphic dualism.  I will not be questioning whether in fact we survive our bodily deaths. In question is whether A-T style hylomorphism renders it intelligible.

1) A primary substance (a substance hereafter) is a concrete individual.  A man, a horse, a tree, a statue are stock examples of substances.  A substance in this technical sense is not to be confused with stuff or material. Substances are individuals in that they have properties but are not themselves properties.  Properties are predicable; substances are not. Substances are concrete in that they are causally active/passive. 

2) Material substances are analyzable into matter (ὕλη, hyle/hule) and form (μορφή, morphe). A-T ontological analysis is thus hylomorphic analysis.  

3) The soul of an animal, whether rational or non-rational, is not a complete substance in its own right, but the (substantial) form of its body. Anima forma corporis. Hylomorphic dualism is not a Cartesian dualism of complete substances, but a dualism of ontological constituents of one and the same complete substance.  

4) Substances of the same kind have the same substantial form, where the substantial form of a substance is the conjunction of the essential (as opposed to accidental) properties that make the substance the kind of substance it is. Unlike Platonic Forms, Aristotelian forms cannot exist except as instantiated in matter.

5) There are many numerically different human beings (human substances).  I assume that the reader is familiar with the distinction between numerical and qualitative identity and difference. (Comments are enabled  if you have questions.) 

6) Since these substances of the human kind have the same form, it is not their form that makes them numerically different. (4, 5) What then grounds their numerical difference?

7) It is the matter of their respective bodies that makes numerically different human beings numerically different. (2,6) Matter, then, is the principium individuationis, the principle of individuation, the ontological ground of the numerical difference of material substances, including human beings.  It is matter that makes Socrates and Plato numerically different substances, not the substantial form they share.

8) A human being is a person.

9) A person is an individual substance of a rational nature. (Thomas, following Boethius)

10) There are many numerically different persons. (5, 8)

11) Only embodied, 'enmattered,' persons are numerically different from one another: embodiment is thus a necessary condition of difference of persons. (7) It is matter that makes a person the particular person that he is. The matter in question is not materia prima, but what Thomas refers to as materia signata (designated matter, signate matter) in his De Ente et Essentia. As Feser puts it in his Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (2014, p. 199):  "The matter that is the principle of individuation is, in Aquinas's view, matter as made distinct by quantity or dimension — designated matter . . . .

12) At death a person suffers the loss of embodiment, which implies that after death, a person survives, if at all, as a disembodied form (until the general resurrection, at which time the disembodied soul/form acquires a resurrection body).

Therefore

13) After death a human person ceases to exist as the particular person that it is. But that is to say that the particular person, Socrates say, ceases to exist, full stop.  What survives is at best a form which is common to all persons. That form, however, cannot be me or you.  Thus the particularity, individuality, haecceity, ipseity of persons, which is essential to persons, is lost. (11, 12)