What is the soul?

[Sam Jer]

Based on my limited AI-based research it seems the modern idea of the aoul which detaches it from physical reality entirely is pretty modern, starting from Decartes. The problem with it is tgat if thinking is in the soul the brain is useless and if it is in the brain there is no soul.

Aquinas claimed it is a form in the platonic sense. Was he right?

What is the soul? How does it relate to the body? Does it have memories etc?

 

[MW]

This is the ghost in the machine problem that is created by Cartesian dualism. If the soul is a thinking substance and the body is an extended substance one must create a mysterious causal bridge to enable them to interact. The classical view avoids this because thinking is an activity of the whole human person, though it has an immaterial aspect.

There is some flexibility here in definition as there are a lot of moving parts so far as psychology goes. But in general we must reject a ghostly Cartesian "thinking thing" that floats above the body. Likewise, the idea of a Platonic substance trapped inside the body is unacceptable. In classical theology the soul is the substantial form of the living human body. It is the principle that makes a human body to be a living human body rather than a corpse. This means that thinking is an activity of the ensouled human person, not of a brain alone or a soul alone.

By "substantial form" one must not think in Platonic terms of a separate immaterial entity. It is Aristotelian in nature: the form is the organising principle that makes matter a living human being. Form is the principle of life, intellect, will, and unity. It is immaterial. Matter is the bodily stuff that is in-formed. The human person is the composite of soul and body, not the soul alone.

This general explanation preserves the unity of the human person and avoids the ghost‑in‑the‑machine problem. It also explains why resurrection is essential and fits within Scripture's emphasis on embodied life.

 

[SeanPatrickCornell]

This is the ghost in the machine problem that is created by Cartesian dualism. If the soul is a thinking substance and the body is an extended substance one must create a mysterious causal bridge to enable them to interact. The classical view avoids this because thinking is an activity of the whole human person, though it has an immaterial aspect.

There is some flexibility here in definition as there are a lot of moving parts so far as psychology goes. But in general we must reject a ghostly Cartesian "thinking thing" that floats above the body. Likewise, the idea of a Platonic substance trapped inside the body is unacceptable. In classical theology the soul is the substantial form of the living human body. It is the principle that makes a human body to be a living human body rather than a corpse. This means that thinking is an activity of the ensouled human person, not of a brain alone or a soul alone.

By "substantial form" one must not think in Platonic terms of a separate immaterial entity. It is Aristotelian in nature: the form is the organising principle that makes matter a living human being. Form is the principle of life, intellect, will, and unity. It is immaterial. Matter is the bodily stuff that is in-formed. The human person is the composite of soul and body, not the soul alone.

This general explanation preserves the unity of the human person and avoids the ghost‑in‑the‑machine problem. It also explains why resurrection is essential and fits within Scripture's emphasis on embodied life.

This is great material to chew on. Since the intermediate state consists of the soul separated from the body, is these any sense then in which those awaiting the resurrection are conscious thinking entities? What's the mode of existence like for the dead?

 

[MW]

This is great material to chew on. Since the intermediate state consists of the soul separated from the body, is these any sense then in which those awaiting the resurrection are conscious thinking entities? What's the mode of existence like for the dead?

The intermediate state is conscious, personal, and active, but it is not the full mode of human existence. The soul can subsist apart from the body by God's sustaining power. So the soul retains intellectual activity, memory in its intellectual mode, love, desire, and worship, and is aware of God and of its own state. But this is not the full human mode of knowing. It is the soul's intellectual power operating without the bodily organs through which it normally works. This is why the resurrection is not an optional addition but the restoration of human nature.

 

[Grant Van Leuven]

I thought I'd share this from my church membership class booklet on WCF 4:2:

God’s image is man and woman in their souls: knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness. Man’s body is just a house. Thomas Watson writes, “The soul of man. This is the man of man.” (Watson, Body of Divinity, 115.) Man is not made in the image of God; He IS God's image [see Gordon H. Clark]. “Reasonable” = rational. “Immortal” = will always exist somewhere ...

See also 2 Cor. 5 (body a house) and 2 Cor. 12:2ff (the "he" and "man" going to the highest heaven was the person with or without the body. (Insights also from Gordon H. Clark).

Watson also writes elsewhere, “The body is but a sheath; the soul is the princely part of man, which sways the scepter of reason …” The Ten Commandments (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1965), 19.

J. Gresham Machen, in The Christian View of Man (ch. 12, “God’s Image in Man”), writes: “It was I many years ago, and it is the same I today, and it will be the same I to all eternity. That is what the Bible means when it tells me that I have a soul … The ‘image of God’ cannot well refer to man’s body, because God is a spirit; it must therefore refer to man’s soul. It is man’s soul which is made in the image or likeness of God.”

This is not to say that man does not exist as a psycho-somatic unity in this life and at the Resurrection, nor that the body is unimportant: on the contrary, the resurrection is insisted upon in 1 Cor. 15 as fundamental to our faith not being in vain. And Christ continues to have a body as well as a human soul as our Mediator. We are not teaching Gnosticism.

Illustrating another issue, B.B. Warfield in his, “The First Question of the Shorter Catechism”, quotes numerous influential or contemporary catechisms constantly using phrases like, “Since thou art a rational creature, that is to say, a human being”, equating humanity to rationality as a given. Such an elementary understanding of humanity is so buffeted today it is deemed worth noting here. (The Westminster Assembly And Its Work, 385-388.)

 

[Sam Jer]

The intermediate state is conscious, personal, and active, but it is not the full mode of human existence. The soul can subsist apart from the body by God's sustaining power. So the soul retains intellectual activity, memory in its intellectual mode, love, desire, and worship, and is aware of God and of its own state. But this is not the full human mode of knowing. It is the soul's intellectual power operating without the bodily organs through which it normally works. This is why the resurrection is not an optional addition but the restoration of human nature.

What is this intellectual mode?
And mire broadly speaking, is there, prior to death, any part of the thinking process that does not happen in the physical realm?

 

[MW]

What is this intellectual mode?

So as not to get stuck in modernist quicksand I will give you the classical explanation. The intellectual mode is the soul’s way of knowing when it is not operating through bodily organs. In traditional anthropology, this is not a mystical addition, but the natural power of the rational soul considered in itself.

And mire broadly speaking, is there, prior to death, any part of the thinking process that does not happen in the physical realm?

Yes, the intellect knows the forms of things -- universals, essences, necessary truths. Because these objects are immaterial, the act of grasping them is itself immaterial. But in this life we never exercise that act in a purely intellectual mode. Every intellectual act is joined to bodily operations of sense and perception. Discursive reasoning depends on images as a bridge to understanding the actual world that we experience, which is why we constantly seek concrete illustrations for things.

 

[Sam Jer]

Yes, the intellect knows the forms of things -- universals, essences, necessary truths. Because these objects are immaterial, the act of grasping them is itself immaterial. But in this life we never exercise that act in a purely intellectual mode. Every intellectual act is joined to bodily operations of sense and perception. Discursive reasoning depends on images as a bridge to understanding the actual world that we experience, which is why we constantly seek concrete illustrations for things.

So does this make for a situation where some part of the mind is non-physical in this life, and affects the brain and changes it? Or does it mean that the operations of the brain are correlated by the soul and thus not lost when it is seperated from the body at death?

 

[jwright82]

So does this make for a situation where some part of the mind is non-physical in this life, and affects the brain and changes it? Or does it mean that the operations of the brain are correlated by the soul and thus not lost when it is seperated from the body at death?

This is a confusing question because I think the closest we have (unfortunately) to this question is the mind/body problem but that doesn't capture the body/soul problem. Let's take them one at a time.
The mind/body problem is about what part of us is immaterial vs material? Well let's assume we're material. Than that lead's to all kinds of logical fallacies. One of which is a false analogy between a thought or beliefs and a simple chemical brain function. The law of identity says what's true of one must be true of the other but nothing true of a belief is true of a brain function (see C.S. Lewis's argument against Materialism for this). But the law of identity says it must be so if they're logically equal.
The other view is the "ghost in the machine" argument, the philosopher Gilbert Ryle dismantled that one. For one, already pointed out reason, no acceptable theory of how the physical interacts with the non-physical has ever been worked out.
Therefore I think Mathew's right in the Thomistic view of human anthropology. It explains everything. Because statements about things must makes sense to us. If I say that I love something and you either explain it as a particular psycho chemical reaction in my brain or some mystical statement that corresponds to an immaterial part of myself (that I have no idea what it is but it makes not only physical sense but something more) than that doesn't make sense in a common way.
I love pizza because I love pizza, physical and non-physical and that makes perfect sense to anyone who loves pizza. Wittgenstein is right here.
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As far as the body vs soul thing, I think that's beyond our knowledge to be honest.

 

[Sam Jer]

This is a confusing question because I think the closest we have (unfortunately) to this question is the mind/body problem but that doesn't capture the body/soul problem. Let's take them one at a time.
The mind/body problem is about what part of us is immaterial vs material? Well let's assume we're material. Than that lead's to all kinds of logical fallacies. One of which is a false analogy between a thought or beliefs and a simple chemical brain function. The law of identity says what's true of one must be true of the other but nothing true of a belief is true of a brain function (see C.S. Lewis's argument against Materialism for this). But the law of identity says it must be so if they're logically equal.
The other view is the "ghost in the machine" argument, the philosopher Gilbert Ryle dismantled that one. For one, already pointed out reason, no acceptable theory of how the physical interacts with the non-physical has ever been worked out.
Therefore I think Mathew's right in the Thomistic view of human anthropology. It explains everything. Because statements about things must makes sense to us. If I say that I love something and you either explain it as a particular psycho chemical reaction in my brain or some mystical statement that corresponds to an immaterial part of myself (that I have no idea what it is but it makes not only physical sense but something more) than that doesn't make sense in a common way.
I love pizza because I love pizza, physical and non-physical and that makes perfect sense to anyone who loves pizza. Wittgenstein is right here.
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As far as the body vs soul thing, I think that's beyond our knowledge to be honest.

So we study the nervous system as if there was no soul, and do theology, and philosophy as if there is no nervous system? I feel like that would break apart real fast once you deal with real people with real problems

 

[jwright82]

So we study the nervous system as if there was no soul, and do theology, and philosophy as if there is no nervous system? I feel like that would break apart real fast once you deal with real people with real problems

No I meant the exact relationship but I agree with Mathew. If you're studying one aspect of creation then that doesn't necessarily involve any others. A holistic picture is preferable but I want my doctor to understand my body, how much he understands philosophy is irrelevant to me in that moment.
I don't think I get what you're asking about.

 

[MW]

So does this make for a situation where some part of the mind is non-physical in this life, and affects the brain and changes it? Or does it mean that the operations of the brain are correlated by the soul and thus not lost when it is seperated from the body at death?

Take the act of thinking about the Pythagorean theorem. I use this as an example because it is abstract. It requires sensory input, imagination, neural activity, and an immaterial intellectual act. This happens all at once, but in different modes. You look at a right triangle on a page. Then you form a mental image of the triangle. Then you grasp the universal truth that applies to all right triangles. This act is immaterial in nature because universals are not material. Now when you study the theorem neurons fire and and synapses are strengthened. But likewise your memory traces the form and you gain the ability to recall and apply the theorem at a later time. The whole human person is engaged in an act of understanding. The immaterial is always active and yet always physically conditioned.

 

[Sam Jer]

But likewise your memory traces the form and you gain the ability to recall and apply the theorem at a later time

So you are sauing that this act of the intellect itself has a physical part to it (memory stored)? Or am I misunderstanding?

 

[MW]

So you are sauing that this act of the intellect itself has a physical part to it (memory stored)? Or am I misunderstanding?

Memory in the sense of stored images and neural traces will require the hippocampus. That is sensory memory, and it is bodily. But that is not the point I'm making. The whole process of thinking in this life is physically conditioned. It uses images, imagination, and neural activity as its scaffolding. The act of understanding itself, however, is not material. It is an immaterial grasp of a universal. So thought is not material, but in this life it is always exercised in a mode that is bound up with physicality.

 

[Ryan&Amber2013]

I love how modern brain science based on materialism alone has no way of actually explaining consciousness and how the mind actually works.

On a practical level, here is what I am convinced of on a daily basis of how the soul works. My brain is always creating thoughts, impulses, and feelings, whether from internal thinking, or external realities around me. But there's another part of me, and you know this too, which judges those thoughts, which critiques them, which tries to make sense of them, rationalize them, and figure them out. So you might have a thought pop into your brain, but then you are able to then reason out that thought, which would separate you from the way an animal lives instinctively. To me this is the working of the mind/soul in connection with the brain. It is absolutely fascinating to me how it plays out in real life.

 

[tanstaafl72555]

Memory in the sense of stored images and neural traces will require the hippocampus. That is sensory memory, and it is bodily. But that is not the point I'm making. The whole process of thinking in this life is physically conditioned. It uses images, imagination, and neural activity as its scaffolding. The act of understanding itself, however, is not material. It is an immaterial grasp of a universal. So thought is not material, but in this life it is always exercised in a mode that is bound up with physicality.

that was excellent.

 

[YorbaYeoman]

So as not to get stuck in modernist quicksand I will give you the classical explanation. The intellectual mode is the soul’s way of knowing when it is not operating through bodily organs. In traditional anthropology, this is not a mystical addition, but the natural power of the rational soul considered in itself.




Yes, the intellect knows the forms of things -- universals, essences, necessary truths. Because these objects are immaterial, the act of grasping them is itself immaterial. But in this life we never exercise that act in a purely intellectual mode. Every intellectual act is joined to bodily operations of sense and perception. Discursive reasoning depends on images as a bridge to understanding the actual world that we experience, which is why we constantly seek concrete illustrations for things.

Memory in the sense of stored images and neural traces will require the hippocampus. That is sensory memory, and it is bodily. But that is not the point I'm making. The whole process of thinking in this life is physically conditioned. It uses images, imagination, and neural activity as its scaffolding. The act of understanding itself, however, is not material. It is an immaterial grasp of a universal. So thought is not material, but in this life it is always exercised in a mode that is bound up with physicality.

Reverend Winzer, could you recommend some reading on this topic for someone with little-to-no preexisting philosophical training? This is absolutely fascinating to me.

 

[MW]

Reverend Winzer, could you recommend some reading on this topic for someone with little-to-no preexisting philosophical training? This is absolutely fascinating to me.

The subject is often complicated with philosophical discussion. You could start with Reformed Systematic Theologies on the nature of man. There you have to face the philosophical issues and begin to wrestle with them, but you have the biblical structure to ground the discussion. Perhaps start with Hodge: https://ccel.org/ccel/hodge/theology2.iii.ii.i.html