Hypostatic Union explanation

[Jac3510]

Okay - it's philosophy I guess. It's not really biblical - I'm not saying it's unbiblical either, but how do you know these ideas are true? Is it just the one philosophy which makes the most sense to you?

I appreciate your granting that the issue is not "unbiblical" in categorizing it at philosophical. And you are correct that it is philosophical. But I hesitate a bit . . . maybe I'm just too sensitive . . . but something in your question suggests to me that, for you at least, this philosophy may be opposed to that one, such that we choose between this one and that one. But I wouldn't accept that approach to the whole field. Just like there aren't various biologies or various zoologies, there is just philosophy. The question is whether or not you have done philosophy correctly. And done correctly, it's not just that this "one philosophy" makes "the most sense" to me. It's rather than this "one philosophy" is, in fact, correct.

The article you linked to said the intellect (among other aspects of us) was immaterial but not the imagination - it basically said a disembodied soul would have no imagination because the imagination was dependent on matter; something along those lines.

Can you quote exactly what you are looking at?

I would offer this to highlight in the meantime (from the article):

• The imagination is a psycho-physical faculty. To think it can be reduced to the physiological functioning of the brain is an unwarranted and misleading assumption, though it is quite clear that its operations postulate a material basis. Cerebral fatigue, mental disease, and the necessarily quantitative character of its objects leave no room for doubt on this point.

So I'm certainly not suggesting that the soul "imagines" without any assistance from the body. Of course it does. We are, after all, talking about human souls, and human souls do their work through the body. The same can be said about rational thought. That's why a broken brain will often make it impossible for a soul to express it's ability to think rationally. But it doesn't follow that because, while in its natural state, the soul executes its capacity for imagination via material parts that therefore imagination itself can be reduced to material parts.

[Nicki]

'But those intellectual and volitional aspects of human nature, precisely because they are immaterial and thus do not depend on any corruptible material organ, cannot themselves perish, any more than they can in the case of an angel -- though they would be impaired given that the human intellect’s normal source of data is the sense organs, which are material, and given that its activity is normally carried out in conjunction with imagination, which is also material.'

I went 'huh?'

Yes, it's true there should always be one truth we can arrive at for any issue, but for some things that are unknown there are different theories. I nearly said philosophical theories, but I thought 'philosophies' sounded better. We don't know for sure the specifics of how the soul interacts with the body - philosophers have different theories about many things, don't they? Or does it all come down to applying logic, and whatever's most logical must be right? I often hesitate to say that something I think I've worked out must be correct.

[Jac3510]

'But those intellectual and volitional aspects of human nature, precisely because they are immaterial and thus do not depend on any corruptible material organ, cannot themselves perish, any more than they can in the case of an angel -- though they would be impaired given that the human intellect’s normal source of data is the sense organs, which are material, and given that its activity is normally carried out in conjunction with imagination, which is also material.'

I went 'huh?'

Oh, I see.

So there is an argument that we use to demonstrate that the rational soul must survive the death of the body. I won't bore you with details. (Actually there are severa arguments, some weaker, some stronger). This article offers a pretty good overview. Notice especially the argument about abstraction. The point is just that knowledge is always related to the universal (the general concept), but you've never met a universal. You've only met individuals. So the soul can abstract and know the nature of a thing, but that nature is necessarily immaterial. And so the soul's power to do this must be immaterial. And yet it is you who know this immaterial reality (this universal), not just some part of you. And so the point is that there is a part of you that is truly immaterial. But that which is immaterial is simple, and that which is simple cannot "die" (it cannot corrupt, to use the old language), and so when the matter it informs corrupts, this simple form (the soul) necessarily remains.

So much for that.

So the article's point is that the soul itself is imperishable, and we know this by, say, looking at the intellect. And in this sense, the imagination is not "immaterial" in the same way--we don't get to an immaterial, imperishable soul by looking at the imagination. Because the imagination, by nature, has to do with the way the data of the senses is presented to (the image made) the soul itself. And all that happens in the body. So animals have imagination even if they do not have rational minds (and so cannot know universals). Thus, animals souls are not imperishable (as far as we can tell).

BUT, having established that the human soul is imperishable, we still go back to the part of the article I quoted earlier. It is a psycho-phyiscal faculty, and insofar as it is the former, it necessarily is partially immaterial. In the most technical sense, it is more on the material side than the intellect in the same way that emotions are more on the material side than say the will. But at some point we have to remember that (unless we are Cartesians--very strict substance dualists) the soul operates via the body, and that a disembodied soul is a mangled soul indeed! Human persons do what they do in virtue of both material and immaterial parts, and some of those actions make heavier use of the material and others heavier use of the immaterial parts of their nature.

Yes, it's true there should always be one truth we can arrive at for any issue, but for some things that are unknown there are different theories. I nearly said philosophical theories, but I thought 'philosophies' sounded better. We don't know for sure the specifics of how the soul interacts with the body - philosophers have different theories about many things, don't they? Or does it all come down to applying logic, and whatever's most logical must be right? I often hesitate to say that something I think I've worked out must be correct.

The "how" the soul interacts with the body question is actually a category error. It's not that it is too hard to answer. It's that it isn't really a question. You may as well ask how heavy blue is and get frustrated at the range of answers from people who try to answer it.

Let me explain. When someone asks "how" something works, they are looking for a mechanism. They want this thing that causes that thing to do or be this or that. This is necessarily a material process. Everything in the material world happens through mediate causes. Nothing happens immediately. Science is forever going through the process of further understanding those mediate causes, and because those causes are mediate, they have to be potential/actual composites (which means they have to be matter).

In other words, the "how" question necessarily presupposes it to be answered in materialistic terms. But the soul doesn't interact with the body through some material mechanism. The body's actions just are the effect of the soul: immediately so. Now, the raising of my hand has a lot of (physical) mediate causes. But all of those causes--individually and collectively--are the singular action of the soul, and that because of what the soul is (the form of the body). So to ask "how" the soul interacts with the body creates an infinite regress of causes. Even if you identify a material mechanism, then the question becomes, "Well how does the soul interact with that mechanism?" and so on. Eventually, you must come to an immediate cause, and immediate causes are simple causes (not radically simple as in God, but simple all the same).

For more on this--and it is very complicated--I'd refer you to Aristotle's De Anima.