Philosophical Anthropology

 A Pure Principle of Thought

"A pure principle of thought, however, is not suited to inform the body… Therefore, for a rational soul to be a true form of the body, it must be the principle not only of thinking but also of the operations that are exercised by the body." - Saurez

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I. Materialism or Dualism?

1. What is Materialism?
• The view that mind reduces to, or is identical with, third-person descriptions of mindless matter.
2. Swinburne’s Brain Splitting Argument
• In the case of a patient who has his brain split, the physical description of the thought experiment is incomplete and not sufficient to determine how personal identity works. Hence, we are not merely physical.
3. Qualia Argument
• Qualia refer to the qualitative aspects of our conscious experience, and they cannot be reduced to physical or functional descriptions.
• They represent the "raw feels" or subjective components of our mental states.
4. Intentionality Argument
• The intentionality argument starts with aboutness of mental states, such as thoughts and desires.
• Physical processes alone cannot explain this "aboutness" or intentionality, since physical entities lack this directedness.
• This supports the idea of a fundamental distinction between the mental and physical realms, lending credence to dualism.
5. Descartes and Plantinga’s Modality Argument
• Descartes and Plantinga argue that the mind, as a non-physical substance, can possibly exist independently of the body, and by Leibniz’s Law, cannot be identical to it.
• Rasmussen modifies this argument in WAYR.
6. The Simplicity Argument
• Unity is required for real being. A crowd of people is not more than a collection of its parts. Yet we’re a real being (the cogito), so we must be unified. So, we cannot be a mere collection of material parts.
• Without true substantial unities, such as the self, a collection of parts would not constitute anything real or substantial, like a mechanical object or a group of individuals.
7. The Enduring Self Argument
• The self-endures over time, even though the brain undergoes changes, replacing its atoms throughout a person’s life. (Rasmussen)
8. The Construction Problem
• It seems impossible to construct mental first-person states from purely third-person mindless materials. (Rasmussen)
• This problem challenges materialism’s ability to explain the subjective nature of experience.
9. The Counting Argument
• Rasmussen argues against non-reductive physicalism by showing that there are more conceivable mental properties than physical properties, making it impossible for mental properties to be identical to or grounded in physical ones.
10. Our Sharp Existence Argument
• If materialism is true, there seem to be no sharp identity conditions for personal existence.
• But we do have sharp identity conditions and come into existence at a definite time, so materialism is false. (Pruss)

II. Animalism or Substance Dualism, or Some Other Form of Dualism?

1. Subsistent Soul?
• The soul is not a subsistent thing, contrary to Aquinas and in line with Pruss.
• The soul must exist alongside the human substance itself, rather than being separate.
2. Survivalism: The Right View
• The human survives death by being reduced to a single part: the soul.
• However, the soul is not identical to the person. Denies Weak Supplementation.
• If humans are souls then we can’t have bodies as a part of us, because souls are immaterial. It’s trivially true that an immaterial thing cannot have material parts, for that would make it a material thing. Yet humans cannot be a composite of a body and soul if these two elements are taken to be substances in their own right, for there would be no work for the human person to do above what the two substances do.  Instead, we should say that the human person is a single substance with soul and body as parts.
3. Arguments Against Property Dualism?
• WLC and Moreland on Property Dualism
• Zimmerman’s From Property Dualism to Substance Dualism
• Unclear if property dualism will be able to address many of these issues as well as dualism
4. Body as Substance and the Role of Form
• Body cannot be a substance without form because it is inherently not a unified object. (Leibniz)
• On Aristotelian grounds, a substance cannot have another substance as a proper part, so humans cannot be composed of two substances lest they just be a collection. See Patrick Toner for more on this argument.
5. Arguing for Animalism: I Am an Animal with an Immaterial Part, My Soul
• The Too Many Thinkers Argument for Animalism (Olson)
• I am descended from apes, so I am an animal.
6. Animalism with an Emphasis on the Brain
• Pruss’ Teleological Hylomorphic Animalism
• Example: The transplanted prefrontal cortex.
7. I am My Body
• Use Patrick Toner and Allyson Thornton to explore this further.
• There’s a sense in which I am a body; the body that’s a compound of body-form.
8. The Distinction Between Having a Body and Having a Body as a Part
• Having a body as a part allows me to be visible and touched.
• Merely having a body but not as a part means I can’t be seen or touched.
• Substance dualism seems to imply merely having a body but not as a part.
• Yet if I have a material part I cannot be an immaterial thing. Souls are immaterial things, so do not have any material parts. I have a material part. Ipso facto, I am not a soul.
9. Hylo(?)morphism?
• Jettisoning the "material" requirement, at least in its Aristotelian “potentiality” sense.
• Humans are substances with form (the soul) and whatever makes them count as material (not Aristotelian matter).
• Physical = at least partly describable by the sciences? Occupying a proper part in space? Extension?
• Our material parts are just accidents of a certain type.

III. What is Form?

1. Form as a Power
• Forms are a power of me, not a mere structure of my matter.
• My form is a trope of my substance.
• On Aristotelianism, the very same thing, form, grounds normativity and provides a casual explanation

2.       The Roles of Form

o    “This form or nature performs a number of roles including unifying the matter of the substance into a single thing, setting norms for the structure and activity of the substance, and guiding the actual development and activity of the object. The nature of the oak tree is not merely an arrangement of its particles, since an arrangement lacks normative force. In living things, the form of the substance is its life or soul: it makes the substance be alive.”- Pruss

3. Robert P. George and Patrick Lee’s Discussion in Body-Self Dualism
• They discuss the soul as the principium of thought, not the thinking thing itself. See: “It is important to see that if human understanding is a spiritual act, it still should not be thought of as an act “performed by the soul.” Rather, the human being performs the acts of understanding, as it is the human being that performs the acts of sensing or walking. The difference is that sensing and walking are done with bodily organs and understanding is not. See especially Peter Geach’s careful way of phrasing the question in his ‘What Do We Think with,’ in God and the Soul. The soul is the formal source or principle, enabling the agent to perform such actions; it is not itself the agent.”
• May help the too-many thinkers objection to animalism. See Pruss’ response to this objection.
• This marks a key divide between Aquinas and Descartes:
• For Descartes, mind and soul are equivalent.
• For Aquinas, the soul makes a human a human.
4. Whole is Prior to the Part (Rasmussen)
• The whole (the self, the person) is prior to its parts (the body, the brain, etc.).
5. Aristotle’s Argument for Forms
• Forms are needed to unify and make an animal alive.
• Pruss suggests that form does a lot of work in this regard.
• Leibniz’s point: Only unities are real; heaps or collections are not.
6. Forms as Tropes
• Nature = form = soul.
• The soul, or form, unifies the body and gives it its life.
7. Pruss’ Paper: Form as a Lawmaker
• Form functions like a lawmaker, setting norms and guiding the processes of the body.
8. Inwagen Inspired
• The cogito argument means that I exist, and I would apply that to other living things as well. A cat is similar enough to us, so we should extend substancehood to it.
• Only real unities exist. If an animal exists, it must be a real unity.
• The soul or form is that which does the unifying, making a thing into what it is. This is a functional definition.
• The form sets norms through its teleology.

9.       Small Beginnings Thesis

• Pruss argues that the theory of relativity with the thesis that we begin to exist at some point in time implies that we must begin to exist subatomically.
• This would refute light-weight Hylomorphist who hold that form is the structure of an organism, because at a subatomic level there isn’t enough structure.
• Also has ramifications for the abortion debate.
• Also has ramifications for the immortality of the soul, because the more reality the form has, the more plausible it is that the form can exist without the matter.
• What does this do to the proper disposition of matter commonly held by Aristotelians? And why do we die when our bodies are crushed if the form is so independent of matter? Pruss responds by relocating the proper disposition of matter to the ‘environment the matter finds itself in,’ so he places it in the relational features of the matter in question.

10.   Useful Resources

o    Scaltsas’ Substantial Holism.  Forms reidentify the different elements that compose a substance.

o    Skrzypek’s Editors Intro and Hyloenergism

o    Michael Rea Hylomporhism Reconditioned

o    Koons’ Staunch vs Fainted-Hearted Hylomorphism

IV. What is the Soul-Mind Relationship?

1. What is a Mind?
• The mind is what results when the form acts upon the brain.
• In death, we are either largely or wholly mindless.
2. Aquinas on Soul and Mind
• For Aquinas, the terms "soul" and "mind" are mostly interchangeable.
• The soul is ultimately responsible for us having a mind, but it also does more than that, such as animating the body.
• The use of the term "mind" is not distinct from Aquinas’ use of the "soul" if by "mind" contemporary philosophers mean the faculty responsible for rational or mental activity.
• For this reason, "soul" and "mind" can be used interchangeably to designate Aquinas’ "anima."
3. Mind as the Immediate Capacity, Soul as the Latent
• Maybe "mind" is the more immediate capacity for consciousness, while "soul" contains this capacity in a more latent, distant way.
4. What’s My Relationship to My Self-Awareness?
• Self-awareness does not constitute my essence, as I pre-existed my self-awareness as a fetus and I continue to exist while I sleep.

V. Identity Across Time

1. Pruss’ View on the Wittgenstein Quote
• It’s nonsense to speak of two things as one thing.
2. Pruss’ Modified Version of Perdurantism
• I am, fundamentally, a four-dimensional object, with various temporal existences as tropes of me.
• Me, the four-dimensional object, grounds these tropes.
3. Preserving the Aristotelian Insight
• This move better preserves the Aristotelian insight that wholes ground their parts, rather than parts grounding the wholes.
4. Rasmussen’s Point on Diachronic Identity
• The puzzle of diachronic identity only arises on a material picture of the human person. If we flip the script, the problem disappears.

VI. Natural Immorality?

1. Aquinas’s Proper Operation Argument
• Lee/Roberts and Pruss discuss Aquinas’s arguments about the proper operation of the soul and its relation to immortality.
2. Animalism and the Immortality of the Soul (Thornton)
• The relationship between animalism and the soul’s immortality.
• An animal is a thing that ought to be embodied.
3. What is Death?
• Death is the separation of the form (soul) from the body.
• The form no longer performs the function of configuring its material accidents.
4. Leibniz’s Simple Argument
• Leibniz's argument for the soul's persistence after the body’s death.
5. J.P. Moreland’s Modified-Simple Argument
• Moreland’s variation on Leibniz’s argument, suggesting the soul’s immortality.
6. Empirical Evidence? Near-Death Experiences (NDEs)
• Investigating the role of near-death experiences as empirical evidence for life after death.
7. Theological Evidence? Resurrection
• Theological evidence from the doctrine of resurrection, where God could sustain a person’s mind/soul apart from the body through a miraculous act.
8. Rasmussen’s Destruction Argument
• Rasmussen’s argument about the destruction of the soul and body.
9. Objections: Brain-Mind Correlation
• Brain damage, alcohol, caffeine, Alzheimer’s:
• If damage to parts of the brain can make you lose your ability to see, think, or feel, how can all these abilities remain intact when your whole brain is kaput?
10. Response to Brain-Mind Correlation
• (1) Eye-glasses analogy: The body’s tools (like glasses) can be fixed without affecting the soul's capacities.
• (2) Decrease in brain activity yet an increase in consciousness via drugs or other means.
• (3) Brain plasticity: The brain can reorganize after damage.
• (4) Rickabaugh’s response: There is no particular brain that I depend on; my sense of being "me" persists even without a particular arrangement of atoms.

VII. Ethical Issues and Questions

1. Brain Death as the Criterion of Death (Patrick Lee)
• Brain death as the criterion for determining when someone is truly dead.
2. Fetuses and Brain Development
• Don’t fetuses lack a brain early on? Yet, they are worthy of protection.
• Yes, due to the teleological nature of animalism: the fetus is striving toward the formation of a brain, but the brain-dead adult is not. (See Pruss' comment.)
3. Difference Between Embryonic State and Brain Death
• The key difference is that the fetus has a developmental striving for the formation of a brain, while the brain-dead adult has no such striving.
• The fetus is like a group selecting a leader, whereas the brain-dead individual is like a group whose leader has died, with no obligation to select another.
4. Pruss’ In-Depth Discussion of Prefrontal Cortex Removal
• The adult who has had their prefrontal cortex removed may either be:
• A non-animal heap.
• Gained a non-human form.
• Pruss also discusses how the situation depends on the prefrontal cortex and teleological hylomorphic animalism.
5. Persistent Vegetative State (PVS) vs Brain Death
• In a typical persistent vegetative state, there is still significant lower brain function. The upper brain may not be fully functional, but some data may still be accessible.
6. Abortion and Animalism
• I am my animal. An animal began to exist at fertilization (Pruss and Miller paper) and has not died since. Therefore, I was present at fertilization.

7.       Mere Dualism and Organ Theft

o    A Hylomorphic Animalism seems required to properly explain the deep ethical wrongness in crimes such as stealing a person’s kidney. On the proposed theory, the person’s kidney is a part of them, so it is a crime against the person. A similar story about the wrongness of rape could be provided.  But if the body isn’t a part of the person, then organ theft would be more akin to property theft than a crime against the person.

VI. Purpose of the Brain?

1. Rasmussen Interface
• The brain serves as an interface for the soul/mind to interact with the body. It’s a medium through which the soul or mind manifests.
2. The Glasses Analogy
• The glasses analogy illustrates how the brain may influence aspects of the person’s experiences (such as memories, personality, and emotion) but does not alter the fundamental substance of the person.
• The brain may play a role in these aspects, but the essence or substance of the person remains unaffected.
3. Memories, Personality, and Emotion as Accidents
• Memories, personality, and emotion are accidents of the person and are influenced by the brain.
• These properties may change without altering the person’s substance, much like glasses can correct vision without changing the essence of the person.
4. The Pairing Problem
• Response: The soul, mind, or form manifests through the body. The body is the instrument or vessel for the soul.
• The mind is the result of the soul operating through the brain but is not equivalent to the soul or self itself.
• Brain damage can affect the mind's functioning, but it does not destroy the form.
5. Cognition and Bodily Processes
• It’s agreed that at least some forms of cognition are bodily processes.
• For Descartes, memory, imagining, and perceiving depend on the brain’s function, and changes in the brain can impact these faculties.
• Evidence: Brain plasticity and increased consciousness despite decreased brain activity suggest that while cognition is bodily, it may also transcend strict dependence on the brain.

VII. Deeper Metaphysics

1. Is the Soul Local to the Body?
• Descartes thought the soul was local to the body but non-extended.
• I think the Hylomorphist may something similar.  Forms are local but are not material in the sense of austere matter, understood as extension.
2. The Pairing Problem and Hylomorphism
• The pairing problem involves questions about how the soul and body are connected.
• Hylomorphists may have a distinct response, suggesting that the soul and body are deeply integrated given that the body is just a material accident of the form.
3. Rickabaugh/Moreland Discussion on Hylomorphism
• Hylomorphism might be considered a form of vitalism, asserting that living things have an intrinsic, animating principle (the soul).
• William Simpson adequately answers this in his book Hylomorphism: I argued that, in order for composite macroscopic entities to have irreducible powers that make a causal difference to how nature unfolds, they must have substantial forms which transform their matter such that the powers of their microscopic parts are made to depend on the composite entity as a whole.

4.       The Soul as Material?

o    The soul cannot be material in the sense of austere matter but perhaps it could be material in a broader sense. It carries causal powers and is spatially located in a proper part of space. But I’m uncommitted on this.

5. The Origin of Form; Dator Formarum
• Suggestion I: Forms are built into the initial structure of things, with laws of nature providing generation points.
• Suggestion II: The miraculous action of God may play a role in the instantiation of forms in individual beings.
• Suggestion III: Global entity carries the power to produce forms.
6. Why Hold to These Weird Metaphysical Claims?
• Collections of substances cannot give rise to a substance. A substance must be unified, as only real unities truly exist in a deep sense. From the cogito, we get that I exist.  So, I must be a real unity, a substance. Yet I have material parts, I have feet and a face, I am a mammalian ape, so we also need an account of that.
7. The Reason for Positing Forms in Animals and Physical Entities
• For fundamental physical entities, there was a time when no animals existed, yet for the Aristotelian all physical matter is built up out of material substances.
• For animals, forms account for the existence of the soul (the cogito), the connection to the body, and our persistence over time. Forms also explain why animals can develop into complex organisms, providing a framework for ethical concerns as well as persistence conditions.

8.       Tying it Together

o    Inman's view of substance as wholly prior that grounds the parts. The parts cannot be substantial per Toner and Pruss arguments. Humans are animals with material and spiritual parts. Parts can be reduced to powers. Powers are possessed by substances.  Material parts are just geometric or extended or local or something like that.  The soul is a trope of the human substance. The human is not identical to the soul. The human survives the loss of his material parts reduced to a single part, his soul, but is not identical to this part. The role of the soul is to be the grounder or enforcer of the laws of nature on the material accidents of the human form - as well as the principle of the intellect - our soul doesn't think.   Humans are animals and come into existence when their animal does, which is at conception. The form begins to inform the material accidents of the substance at this point. Our bodies are not separate substances - for we can see ourselves in the mirror and have a certain weight. This is also why certain types of crime are so bad, like rape or stealing a kidney, because they're crimes against the person. Otherwise they'd be crimes like property theft.

VIII. Strong Artificial Intelligence (AI)

1. Pruss’ Arguments Against Strong AI
• Vagueness: It’s unclear how many "people" an AI system might be.
• The Turning Off Dilemma: When a computer is turned off, does the "person" die or not? This introduces vagueness about the persistence of the AI.
• Substances and Ends: Only substances pursue their own ends. The Sun, a car, or a Roomba do not pursue ends because they are not substances. Only substances possess intrinsic purpose or direction.
• Argument: Thinking is an end-directed activity (aimed at action/truth). Computers, being mere collections of parts, cannot think because they lack the teleology necessary to pursue ends. (Unless God imbues them with a form and transforms them into a substance, that is.)
2. Robots as Persons?
• If a robot were a person, it would both continue to exist when turned off and not continue to exist when turned off. Therefore, a robot cannot be a person. (Pruss)
3. Functionalism and Strong AI
• Functionalism suggests that mental states could be realized in different physical substrates, such as digital computers. This seems to open the door for the possibility of Strong AI in a digital format.
• Koons and Pruss Paper on Functionalism; strong teleology is needed, and hence form, for functionalism to work, and hence a computer cannot be a person.

IX. Corpses

1. What is a corpse?
• The remains of a living creature. But the living creature was a substance, and substances cannot have substances as parts lest they be an aggregate. Yet the corpse is a collection of disjointed substances: atoms, carbon, and water molecules. Where did these come from? In the living creature prior to death, these substances had lost their substancehood due to the form of the creature.
2. Why does the corpse resemble the prior substance?
• Because the accidents of the prior substance have the power to cause similar accidents in the subsequent collection of substances.
3. Does the creature have the power to generate new substances when it dies?
• That seems weird and magical. Yet the gecko excretes its tail and thereby generates a new substance.
• Or, the gecko transfers accidental qualities of its tail to a global entity, not generating a new substance but modifying a pre-existing one, the universe.

4.       Excretion and Field Metaphysics

o   A field ontology eases the weirdness of substantial generation when a substance excretes its body.  For if particles are like waves, and a wave can move seamlessly between two ropes without too much of a puzzle, then perhaps when we excrete ‘particles’ it’s just a wave transitioning between two substances.  (Pruss)