What’s Wrong with the World

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What’s Wrong with the World is dedicated to the defense of what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the Jihad and Liberalism...read more

First Premise

Purely physical causes can have profound psychological/behavioral effects.

Yes? No?

Just in case anybody's inclined to answer "no," I suggest that he or she drink a fifth of bourbon and then get back to me.

Admittedly, this is a mysterious phenomenon.

But I think it's a real one.

Or am I missing something?

Comments (45)

You are correct. There is, however, a difference between saying that physical causes can have psychological/behavioural effects and saying that all human thought and behaviour can be explained by purely physical causes.

Gerry (if I may) - you're such a pushover!

Surely here, if nowhere else, I can find somebody who will out & out deny that physical causes can have psychological/behavioral effects...

I feel like there is a lot of ambiguity packed in the "psychological/behavioral" amalgam. What if I expanded the sequence? Purely physical causes can have psychological effects; psychological causes can have behavioral effects.

OK, Paul, how about this: purely physical causes can have both psychological and behavioral effects. Case in point: getting drunk.

I'm really trying to be as uncontroversial as possible, here.

Well, as written I have nothing to dispute with this post, but I'm puzzled by what might be the reason for it.

Getting drunk has purely physical causal elements, like the body chemistry that is altered by the substance; but it also has non-physical causal elements, like the contemplation, resolution and execution of the act, which involve human will, a quality or power that is difficult to reduce to physical features.

For instance, the first time a man gets drunk on straight bourbon will necessitate some considerable effort of will, given that almost no human being is born with a natural taste for a drink characterized by toxic qualities.

Surely here, if nowhere else, I can find somebody who will out & out deny that physical causes can have psychological/behavioral effects...

Um...I'm not quite sure what the subtext is. From where I sit, it seems like you might be angling for one of several different things. Perhaps: a)You want to illustrate that not even religious "fundamentalists" would deny the obvious fact that some psychological and behavioral traits are causally dependent upon physical mechanisms.

or

b)You suspect that there really are some religious "fundamentalists" lurking around here who are so naive that they would deny that some psychological and behavioral traits are causally dependent upon the mechanisms, and you want to smoke them out so you can put their naivete on public display.

or

c)This post is supposed to be another shot across Auster's bow.

Am I getting warm?

I think we're ready for Second Premise now.

I'm not sure the question is well-posed. Behavioral effects are themselves physical, after all. So (if we take “you are dust, and to dust you shall return” seriously) are psychological ones.

Which is not to disagree with the point raised above both by Gerry Neal and Paul Cella, that things which are physical are not always only physical, either from the point of view of causality (Paul) or of explanation (Gerry).

Peace,
--Peter

Where I sense something odd lurking is in the juxtaposition of "psychological" with "behavioral," separated only by a slash. For example, if a person is drunk, he will be more _likely_ to be belligerent, but is it really the case that he is _deterministically forced_ to get into a fight? Consider Cassio: Iago gets him drunk (and, as Paul points out, getting drunk itself is usually an act of the will, unless someone slips you a doctored drink that you think is lemonade), but he doesn't just go off like a robot and get into a fight with someone. Iago (and IIRC, others as well) have to push and provoke him further.

Freedom of the will is a tough property. Inhibitions can be lessened and inclinations strengthened by drugs, drink, etc., but it's surprising that there usually remains some remnant of choice except in odd, extreme circumstances, some of them occurring only in sci-fi novels where someone is literally "programed" to do something. That's why we tell people, "Don't drink and drive," for example, or "Have a designated driver." We assume that even in their intoxicated state people will retain some degree of choice, so that they can say, "Oh, I'd better get someone else to drive me home."

Steve (you may if I may)

Your original post appeared to me to be leading in the direction of a refutation of the "ghost in the machine" understanding of the body and soul. I may have misread it, but it I did not then when you write:

Surely here, if nowhere else, I can find somebody who will out & out deny that physical causes can have psychological/behavioral effects...

the implication would be that Christian orthodoxy holds to a version of the "ghost in the machine" theory.

Many, Christians and non-believers alike, seem to think that way but that is not the case. Gilbert Ryle coined the phrase "ghost in the machine" to refer to Descartes' dichotomy between mind and body. Cartesian dualism has taken quite a beating since the 1960's due to research in a number of fields touching on the causes of behaviour. Cartesianism should not be equated with Christian orthodoxy, however, because it arguably bears more resemblence with the Gnostic heresy than with the Apostolic teaching of the Church fathers.

In the book of Genesis, God breathes life into Adam and he becomes a living soul. Breathe, life, and spirit are related concepts in Hebrew and apart from them there is no soul, but the soul, the identify of the individual person, is identified with the union of life and body. In the New Testament, the hope of the believer is not a disembodied state of bliss or reincarnation into a better life, but resurrection, the returning of life to the body.

It was the Gnostics, those called antichrists by St. John in his epistles, who separated the mind and the body so completely that they argued that the spiritual and material were two different worlds created by different gods (the position the Nicene fathers took a stand against by declaring that God the Father was the maker of "all things visible and invisible".

I'm a Cartesian, and I believe in the interaction of mind and body. Actually, Christian theology is committed to the possibility of a separation between mind and body (at death and before the resurrection), though not to the naturalness of this disembodied state (hence the hope of the resurrection). The individual person is still the individual person even when separated from the body, as asserted once decisively ("to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord") and implied once ("whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know") by St. Paul. If one doesn't like these possibilities and thinks them "Cartesian" in some invidious sense, one can argue it with St. Paul.

My own guess is that Steve's intent here is to ambiguate on the notion of "having profound behavioral effects" so as to endorse the notion that certain sexual acts are simply deterministically caused by a physically instantiated inclination. Since such situations are not the extreme cases of robot-ness that one gets when, rarely, a person is truly not guilty by reason of insanity because he literally does not understand the nature of his acts, etc., I take it that we should question where the premise is going with "can have profound behavioral effects."

Purely physical causes can have profound psychological/behavioral effects.

Yes? No?

The proposition is undeniable no matter how one parses "psychological/behavioral"... So?

Let's turn it around. Purely psychological causes can have profound behavioral/physical effects. (Especially if one wants them too.)

Let's turn it around. Purely psychological causes can have profound behavioral/physical effects. (Especially if one wants them too.)

Checkmate. :-)

"Can have effects belonging to category X" isn't nearly the same, metaphysically, as "can cause the existence of X category."

If one doesn't like these possibilities and thinks them "Cartesian" in some invidious sense, one can argue it with St. Paul.

That reminds me, a new movie about St. Paul is coming out. I'm sure you all will consider it heresy or worse, but that has never stopped me before.
http://www.thepaulstory.com/

Anywho, I took the challenge except with peach schnapps, watermelon vodka, and raspberry syrup, and I feel pretty good. Probably a prelude to a diabetic coma, but still very nice. So yes, purely physical causes can have a profound emotional effect. As for behavioral effects, I think alcohol has long been known to lower inhibitions and reflex speed, but that is about the extent of it. Since I'm in a sharing mood, if you really want a head trip, here is a wild bit on the philosophy of The Matrix that has some interesting swerves. (language warning for those easily offended, postmodern warning for everyone else)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q1jHx29C70

@Mr. Neal: You should read on to the part about "He suffered, died, and was buried. On the third day, He rose". If the vital union were identical to the person, there was no "He" for those three days, let alone the He Who descended into Hell according to the Apostles Creed. The bodily resurrection is not a substitute for the immortality of the soul. Both are true and taught in Scripture.

Jonathan, while that's true in general for humans, Jesus Christ was a special case: he was a "who" before he was human, and his person never was a human person anyway.

WL, JC - I agree, of course, that psychological causes can have both physical and behavioral effects. I'm not quite sure why either of you might think I would have a problem with this claim.

Steve Nicoloso: I'm not sure that the proposition is undeniable. I think that occasionalists (like Malebranche) might deny it.

Lydia, as you know, Thomists like Ed Feser regard Cartesian substance-dualism/interactionism as dangerous heresy.

"My own guess is that Steve's intent here is to ambiguate on the notion of 'having profound behavioral effects' so as to endorse the notion that certain sexual acts are simply deterministically caused by a physically instantiated inclination."

No, Lydia, this post has nothing whatsoever to do with homosexuality (assuming that's what you're talking about).

Untenured: the "subtext" here is that I'm trying to figure out just exactly where anti-Darwinists have a problem with the fundamental presuppositions of "evolutionary psychology."

L.McGrew:

I'm a Cartesian, and I believe in the interaction of mind and body. Actually, Christian theology is committed to the possibility of a separation between mind and body (at death and before the resurrection), though not to the naturalness of this disembodied state (hence the hope of the resurrection). The individual person is still the individual person even when separated from the body, as asserted once decisively ("to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord") and implied once ("whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know") by St. Paul. If one doesn't like these possibilities and thinks them "Cartesian" in some invidious sense, one can argue it with St. Paul.
Furthermore, if the resurrected person is to be the same person as lived the mortal existence, then something very like "Cartesian dualism" must be the case. And for that matter, even before the cessation of one’s biological processes and the utter disintegration of the body which had been sustained by those processes, one’s body is in constant flux; from a purely physical/material and mechanistic point of view: one is not the same entity from moment to moment, much less over a span of years … and yet one’s identity/selfhood is constant.

Well, I'm not really in a bourbon mood, however...

...Alright. No, I can't say the fifth did much, (poured from a 1.75, but a fifth no less) but I suppose that is due to further physical realities.

If your hand is wounded, do you not favor the other? Is the worldview of one born blind not different from one with perfect sight?

I fail to see what this is attempting.

P.S. Step2 - Really? That's too foo-foo even for my sisters.

@Tony: Much of Christian orthodoxy is intended to prevent the confusion of nature and person, of which your assertion is a clear example. Christ is not unique with respect to the human nature itself, which includes body and soul that can only be separated accidentally. "Person" (individual existence) is not "personality" (possession of a rational soul; the confusion of the two is essentially the Apollinarian heresy (the possession of a created body by the Word of God). The fact that the Word of God is a divine person is irrelevant to His possession of a rational human soul, which begins at the Incarnation and persists eternally thereafter. If that hypostatic union were broken by death, there would be no reason to think that Christ suffered what we suffered and, consequently, no reason to believe that we are saved.

This is all Christology 101. I'm not sure where people get these outrageous ideas about the soul not persisting after death. If that were true, the whole concept of Christ being fully God and fully man goes out the window.

Jonathan, while that's true in general for humans, Jesus Christ was a special case: he was a "who" before he was human, and his person never was a human person anyway.

Tony, surely you're not _denying_ the immortality of the ordinary human soul, are you? Nor saying that when one dies and before the resurrection one does not exist? Yet it sounded like Gerry Neal's comment above, like so many Cartesian-bashing hylemorphist (I'm assuming he's a hylemorphist) rock-n-rolling comments, would imply just that.

Lydia, as you know, Thomists like Ed Feser regard Cartesian substance-dualism/interactionism as dangerous heresy.

Well, Steve, I can't recall Ed's ever getting into an anti-Cartesian rant in which he appears to deny the immortality of the soul and give aid and comfort to the so-called "Christian physicalists" like Nancey Murphy et. al. And I'd be astonished if he ever would. Ed is too careful and too fine an analytic philosopher to slip into such a mistake, even in anti-Cartesian mode. Ed knows quite well that his hylemorphism has to do what I would call bending at the edges a bit so that it becomes possible for body and soul to be separated. St. Thomas realized that, too. Yet it is that very possibility of separation while retaining personal identity that is what people, including some triumphalist hylemorphists nowadays, love to hate in Cartesian dualism, trumpeting its _impossibility_ in their own theory as a virtue. Very careless, that, and something I tend to call people on when they do it.

Considering that Aquinas taught the self-subsistence and immortality of the soul, I don't imagine Prof. Feser would disagree:
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1075.htm

The Cartesian account of body-mind duality would presumably be more troublesome, since there would be no essential connection between body and mind on that account (as I understand it, anyway), but that is a separate issue. We should at least all be on board with the idea that there is a Heaven for souls separated from the body and that these souls will be reunited with their bodies on the Last Day.

In my previous post, I distinguished between the doctrine of the Gnostics, who isolated the material and the spiritual and argued that each was the creation of a different god, and orthodox, Apostolic, Nicene doctrine in which the material and spiritual are one world, created by the One God. It seems obvious to me that defining orthodoxy in that way requires an assertion of the real existence of the immaterial. It mystifies me therefore, that at least two people (Jonathan P. and Lydia) appear to have read a denial of such into my suggestion that Descartes' teaching was closer to Gnosticism than to Christian orthodoxy.

The only way that would make sense would be if the concept of an immaterial part of man that survives after death was a distinctly Cartesian doctrine. It is not, nor is it this concept that I identified as being similar to the Gnostic heresy. Where Cartestianism and Gnosticism are similar is that they turn a distinction (between the material and the spiritual) into a dichotomy, and undermine the fundamental unity of Creation in doing so.

That this is the case is evident in the ongoing Cartesian dilemma concerning interactionism. This problem is caused precisely because Descartes separated the mind and body to such an extent that they appeared to be part of two different worlds, rather than two parts or aspects, of an essentially unified Creation. It is this separation which has made Cartesian doctrine so vulnerable to the arguments of men like Steven Pinker and George Lakoff and the scientific findings that underly those arguments.

It is not orthodox Christian doctrine to say that our true essence, as individual persons, is contained entirely in the immaterial part of us that is separated from our body in death. That such a part exists is orthodox but God created man a living soul by uniting spirit and body. Our human essence lies in the union of our spirit and body, a union which is broken upon death, to be reestablished in resurrection.

Our human essence lies in the union of our spirit and body, a union which is broken upon death, to be reestablished in resurrection.

So are you "you" after death and before resurrection, or are you not?

Well, then, maybe it was just an overstatement for rhetorical effect, but I find it hard to believe that it is NOT the hope of Christians to go to Heaven spiritually. Is that a perfect enjoyment of God? No, because as you pointed out, the lack of a body is a deficiency. But it isn't negative on that account, only slightly less positive.

I understand the point that souls are only created with bodies and made only for those bodies, so that the whole idea that the body and soul interact should not seem foreign to Christians. But the idea that the soul is self-subsistent and can have a meaningful and even good existence apart from the body is part of Christian doctrine as well. Both are helpful toward avoiding materialistic reductionism, because they affirm the reality of the immaterial without disdaining its connection to the material.

Me:

Jesus Christ was a special case: he was a "who" before he was human, and his person never was a human person anyway.

Jonathan:

Much of Christian orthodoxy is intended to prevent the confusion of nature and person, of which your assertion is a clear example. Christ is not unique with respect to the human nature itself, which includes body and soul that can only be separated accidentally. "Person" (individual existence) is not "personality" (possession of a rational soul;

Jonathan, I think that you will find that my formulation is precisely correct according to orthodox Christian teaching. The second person of the Trinity is, eternally, a person. A person is a subsistence of a rational nature. When the Son took on human nature, he did not become a human person, because the person he always had been remained the person of the Son, a Divine person: his subsistence is ONE, and it is the subsistence of the Eternal Word. Therefore, although he took on human nature in its entirety, both human body and human soul (including human intellect and human will), he did not thus become a human person. Christ never was a human person. The Athanasian creed puts it:

"He is perfect God; and He is perfect man, with a human rational soul and human flesh. He is equal to the Father in His divinity but he is inferior to the Father in His humanity. Although He is God and man, He is not two but one Christ. And He is one, not because His divinity was changed into flesh, but because His humanity was assumed into God. He is one, not at all because of a mingling of substances, but because He is one person."

In responding to the Pharisees, he says "before Abraham ever was, I am." The "I" is the eternal person of the Son. That "I" is certainly a divine person, and therefore it is not a human person, even though he took on human nature fully.

Yes, Christ was unique in his human nature in that his human nature was not constituted as a human subsistence, but was assumed by a divine subsistence.

Whether or not the resurrection of the dead were guaranteed by God, when the Son died in his humanity he would still have remained a divine person intact. His personhood never had depended on a human soul or on the union of human soul and human body. His human soul remained united to his divine personhood during his 3 days of death, and when he descended into hell he was both God and a human soul empersoned. Thus, in Christ we have a special case, that the continued personhood was guaranteed after death regardless of the status of the more usual condition of us humans after death.

Lydia, I am certainly not denying the immortality of the soul: that soul, in apprehending non-material reality, must be non-material, and therefore is not subject to corruption. However, when the union of body and soul that constitutes a specific human being is destroyed, that _human being_ cannot be said to remain in existence simply. What can be said, clearly, is that his soul continues. What that means is a bit mysterious, but one possible reading is that the personhood, which came into being by reason of the rational subsistent soul which informed a specific body, remains because the soul remains and nothing more is needed but that the soul continue. Nevertheless, the soul cannot in its ordinary natural power, without the body, know anything or will anything in this state: it takes direct divine intervention on the soul and the person for that person to enjoy heaven or suffer hell, until the soul is reunited to the body. The manner in which one *exists* after death is, then, is an in-between state of reality, where the soul subsists but cannot be said to be "a human being" until reunited to the body. We know that the just enjoy heaven before the general resurrection, but not as complete beings, they still look for the end in which they are whole.

What that means is a bit mysterious, but one possible reading is that the personhood, which came into being by reason of the rational subsistent soul which informed a specific body, remains because the soul remains and nothing more is needed but that the soul continue. Nevertheless, the soul cannot in its ordinary natural power, without the body, know anything or will anything in this state: it takes direct divine intervention on the soul and the person for that person to enjoy heaven or suffer hell, until the soul is reunited to the body.

Which is what I meant above when I referred to bending one's hylemorphism at the edges to accommodate the clear teachings of Christianity. Which is fine. I won't give the hylemorphists nearly as hard a time about that as they try to give the Cartesians about (the non-problem of) mental-physical interaction. At least, I won't unless I'm provoked and succumb to the temptation to give tit for tat. :-) Meanwhile, however, I think it behooves hylemorphists to be careful about what is likely to be taken from statements like

"the identity of the individual person is identified with the union of life and body," which could certainly be taken to mean that individual personal identity is non-existent when the body is dead.

Lydia, I agree. I would never have come up with "the identity of the individual person is identified with the union of life and body," because it is too confused.

I would insist, though, that what we mean properly by a "human being" is a union of body and soul, and that anything else is human because it is a part of a human being or comes from a human being or is destined to be fully a human being, and that the human being in full is the defining whole from which all the rest takes its full meaning. The (separated) human soul "is" a human only when we use "is" in an imperfect sense. But as long as we spell out those details, that kind of language is ok: the soul is definitely the soul _of_ a human, and remains a human soul after death, and this "remains" is why the person persists.

I have never thought that I clearly understood what Cartesian dualism was claiming.

Jonathan P.

Well, then, maybe it was just an overstatement for rhetorical effect, but I find it hard to believe that it is NOT the hope of Christians to go to Heaven spiritually. Is that a perfect enjoyment of God? No, because as you pointed out, the lack of a body is a deficiency. But it isn't negative on that account, only slightly less positive.

When St. Paul speaks of the "blessed hope" of the believer, in Titus chapter 2, he connects it with the "glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ", which is associated with the resurrection throughout the New Testament. In Romans 8 he identifies the believer's hope with the final restoration of Creation and the "redemption of our body".

In the Book of Revelation, the disembodied souls of those martyred for the Word of God, are seen under the heavenly altar in chapter 6, where they cry out to God "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" and are told that they should rest for a little season. When we meet them again in chapter 20, they have been resurrection and are reigning with Christ. The extended description of Paradise in the final chapters of Revelation is the New Jerusalem on the New Earth. From St. John's descriptions of the disembodied state and the post-resurrection state, which sounds more like it is being presented as something to look forward to in eager anticipation?

The Nicene Creed ends by saying:

And I look for the Resurrection of the dead, And the life of the world to come. Amen.

The Creed makes no reference to the intermediate state but presents the resurrection and the life that follows after it as that which the believer is to look for. In the Apostles' Creed the intermediate state for the believer might be indirectly alluded to in the phrase "The Communion of the Saints", i.e., the unity of believers dead and alive in Christ, but it is again the resurrection and the "life everlasting" which are the believer's hope.

The flip side to all of this is that St. Paul does write about death as departing and going to be with Christ, which he says is far better than to remain. This is a huge contrast with the way Old Testament believers spoke of a shadowy afterlife. Overall, however, when the New Testament speaks of that which the believer is to look forward to in anticipation, the emphasis is upon the appearing of Christ, the resurrection, and that which follows after.

Lydia,

So are you "you" after death and before resurrection, or are you not?

You are an incomplete "you" in the disembodied state.

You are an incomplete "you" in the disembodied state.
But, is than not just another way to say that "you" are not your body? that "you" exist independently of it?

If you cut off my leg, do I cease to exist? do I become a different "me"?

"is than not just another way to say that 'you' are not your body? that 'you' exist independently of it?"

The 'you-ness' that exists between death and the Parousia is transitional and temporary. Otherwise, the resurrection is a superfluity. This is, of course, one reason why Christianity rejects the pre-existence of souls.

@Mr. Neal: That's reasonable. It sounded like you were contrasting the two, rather than distinguishing them, and I think that Lydia and I both took that statement amiss. There are clear statements (the one you mentioned, but others as well) about joy at the completion of one's earthly pilgrimage. Indeed, that end is explicitly cited as a foretaste of the ultimate hope in Hebrews 9:27-28. As you say, that is quite different from the "shadowy" OT view, so I just wanted to be clear that the idea of disembodied souls in Paradise was hardly a Cartesian innovation. The Gnostics took that idea far beyond its reasonable application, effectively defeating the hope of bodily resurrection, but that is not a necessary consequence of the Cartesian view.

What would be a more interesting question, I believe, is the question of whether suffering or passion is also an inferior state of affairs. I think there is a very good argument that this state of affairs where reason can be in some sense controlled by the effects of hunger, drunkenness, or the like is the ordinary state of affairs. I believe the Christian answer is that it is not, so the effects of genetics on personality (and the rational soul) might be a similar obstacle resulting from the Fall. That certainly seems to have support from the Church Fathers.

so the effects of genetics on personality (and the rational soul) might be a similar obstacle resulting from the Fall.

Jonathan, one of the classic thoughts, derived from the theory of the 4 temperaments, is that a fully integrated and whole person will act in such a way that you cannot tell what temperament he started with: he will overcome the defects of being overly inclined toward irascibility, or timidity, or laziness, or whatever, because virtue reins in all of the defect and makes the person wholly at one (in action) with his reason. Short of the next life, nobody attains a state here below in which he overcomes his imperfections so much that he ceases to even have tendencies and inclinations that act before his reasons discerns the good, so he still has inclinations in one direction or another that are part of his temperament.

Ilion,

But, is than not just another way to say that "you" are not your body? that "you" exist independently of it?

If you cut off my leg, do I cease to exist? do I become a different "me"?

No, you do not cease to exist when your leg is cut off. Assuming that it is not re-attached, you become an incomplete "you" however.

To state that there is an immaterial part of man, which is separated from the body at death, continues to exist, and is reunited with the body in resurrection, is not another way of saying that "you" exist independently of your body. If you assert that the immaterial part of you is to be identified as the "real you" you are saying something about your body as well as about your spirit. You are saying that your spirit is essential but that your body is merely accidental.

In the Bible, however, it is by combining spirit and body that God creates the living soul which is man: "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" (Gen. 2:7). In death that union is broken, and in resurrection it is restored.

St. Paul's remarks about departing to be with Christ suggest that our consciousness, our sense of self-awareness, memories, and personality, remain attached to our spirit (our life-force, the immaterial part of us that is separated from the body at death) after death. We are accustomed to identifying our "soul" or our "essence" with those things. The Bible, however, seems to identify our soul, our essence as persons, with the union of spirit and body we were originally created as, which is broken in death, but which will be restored in resurrection.

Mr Neal,
Do you not realize that one's body is in a constant state of flux -- one is continuously, in effect, losing one's leg -- yet one is a complete person? Do you not realize that the resurrected body will not be made of the same matter as comprised the disintegrated mortal body?

One's selfhood does not reside in or rely upon one's body.

Ilion, whatever one's selfhood rests on after death, it only comes into being at the beginning of the life of the human being, and that beginning is, as such, a union of body and soul. To that extent, the self requires a body. The person is "a subsistence of a rational nature", and that subsistence begins in the conception, when God creates a rational soul to be the form of the body. Without the body, there is no such thing as the "form of" nor the "soul of", God does not create the soul first and wait to infuse it into an eventual body. To be the soul of a rational animal means to be the soul that is the form of the body in the union.

After death, the soul persists, and therefore the person continues without the body. The person is not relying on the body at that point. But the soul is, still, the soul of a human being, which means that it is not a human being whole and entire, it still requires the body for the soul to be all that it is supposed to be. Thus, although the person of the dead human is still a human person (which personhood is not subject to being in parts), he is not a full human _being_.

One of the best arguments for the resurrection of the dead is that the continued (putatively permanent?) existence of these separated souls of humans is an affront to the fabric of reality: they must needs achieve finality, and that finality requires their bodies.

"resurrection of the dead"

If they clone the now extinct wooly mammoth (which many scientists now want to do) would this be a resurrection of a species?


To that extent, the self requires a body.
Really? The Bible appears to disagree, as witness its claim that when Saul consorted with the Witch of Endor, he spoke with (and was rebuked by) the ghost of Samuel.

At the same time, if "the self requires a body", then what in the world is one to make of the Catholics who assert that and yet are Catholics? I mean, why would one stay in a denomination which explicity teaches that one can pray to dead people -- whom one believes do not presently exist?

Ilion,

You wrote:

Do you not realize that one's body is in a constant state of flux -- one is continuously, in effect, losing one's leg -- yet one is a complete person? Do you not realize that the resurrected body will not be made of the same matter as comprised the disintegrated mortal body?

The same thing can be said about a person's soul. One's mind and personality are not fixed in stone from the moment of birth onward. We are constantly having new ideas, some of which affect more than just our actions in the moment, but change the entire way we perceive ourselves and the world. We develop new personality traits and lose old ones. Yet there is a sense in which one remains the same person through all of this.

One's selfhood does not reside in or rely upon one's body.

One's selfhood includes one's body. If that were not the case, then one's body would be an external tool, no more intimately connected to one's self than the hammer one uses to hammer in a nail, or the keyboard one uses to post a message on the internet.

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