Aquinas writes in his Contra Gentiles book one ch. 23 that "bodily things receive their accidents through the nature of their matter and cause them from their substance"

So matter can be in any form but each discrete thing has a form that makes it itself. Yet how is the form to be understood? — Gregory

Bodily things, according to Aquinas (he gets this from Aristotle) are composites of matter and form. These composites are substances. The form gives the bodily substance its nature and determines the kind of substance it is. If a substance is a tree or a dog or a stone, this is due to its form. The form is in the matter, not vice versa. So, to answer your question, each discrete bodily thing does not have its own, unique form that makes it itself. All dogs, for instance, have the same canine form. Matter individuates form. So many bodily substances can exist, each with the same canine form, but with different material substrata. This is, I think, why he says bodily things receive their accidents through their matter. If one dog is brown and another is white, this is not because they have different substantial forms, but because, as individuals, they receive different accidents, namely browness and whiteness respectively. And it is matter, not form, that makes them individuals and thus allows them to receive these diverse accidents.

He writes in ch. 55: "Our intellect cannot understand in act many things together. The reason is that, since intellect in act is its object in act, if intellect did understand many things together, it would follow that the intellect would at one and the same time many things.."

Why? Because the world is in us and we are in the world in the same respect. Aquinas is far more Kantian than you would expect him to be. — Gregory

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you, I think you may be misinterpreting Aquinas here. In saying that objects are in the intellect, he is not saying that the known world of objects is existentially dependent upon and structured by the mind, like Kant does. Aquinas is not an idealist of any variety. He believes in a mind-independent external world that we can know through our senses. Rather, I think that what Aquinas means by 'the object in act' is the intelligible object in act. Each object is potentially intelligible, but it only becomes actually intelligible when it is understood by an intellectual being. Thus, the intelligible object in act is the object considered in the intellect. Objects subsists outside the intellect and in the world, but their intelligibility is only actualized when an intellect apprehends and considers them. Now the intellect becomes the things it considers. So if I am considering a tree, the act of my intellect in considering the tree is the act of the tree as an intelligible object.

I agree with your distinctions. Kant said however that we can know phenomena as it presents or appears to us. The noumena is what is unknowable and Aquinas says somewhere that we can't fully understand things without thinking with the mind of God. So maybe they agree. Kant holds that senses are more known by intellect than intelligible objects are know by us. This leads him to discount all Aquinas's arguments for God and I agree with that. The form\matter distinction I think is important for understanding the ressurection of the body, although these are matters of faith in Kant's view, and in mine

The form\matter distinction I think is important for understanding the resurrection of the body, although these are matters of faith in Kant's view, and in mine — Gregory

Angels on pins. If the subject matter of faith were susceptible of understanding, so as to be understood, then it wouldn't be faith anymore, would it. Which insight I think informed the genius of the Christian founders and thinkers in framing theirs in, "We believe."

"Understanding the resurrection of the body." Do you mean understanding or meaning? What, exactly, does resurrection of the body mean?

Philosophy for me is fun when it deals with things that are hard to grasp and impossible to know. I am my body but it changes matter all the time yet it's hard to posit an essence to it. Resurrection is being your body in heaven. I don't believe we can exist without our body

As in DSM, or with criteria for a crime, if so many of a number of criteria are met....

Fun is good. Play is good. Trouble comes when people bring too much fun and play to the workplace and try to make it real in ways that it is not.

I've found that I've needed some spirituality in my life even though I've always talked about it a lot.

Kant said however that we can know phenomena as it presents or appears to us. The noumena is what is unknowable and Aquinas says somewhere that we can't fully understand things without thinking with the mind of God. So maybe they agree. — Gregory

I think Aquinas holds that we can't know the essence of a substances directly, but we can only know it by means of its accidents. So, for instances, bodily substances have magnitude in three dimensions, and they can be moved from one place to another, and they can be divided into parts. From these accidents, I form a notion of bodily substance. Now for Aquinas, we have direct knowledge of the accidents that impact our senses, and these accidents really reveal the essences of the substance in which they inhere. Accidents only have essence insofar as they inhere in a substance, and thus the essence of a sensible accident is just a particular manifestation of the essence of the substance in which it inheres. Moreover, accidents are caused by the substances in which they inhere, and in this case, the effect points directly to its cause. So, for Aquinas, we do know the essences of bodily substances, but in an indirect and incomplete way, since we only know them through the accidents that impact our senses. Only God (and perhaps the angels to an extent) can have full and comprehensive knowledge of the essences of things.

For Kant, the distinction between substance an accident is a mental construction. All the things that Aquinas considers sensible accidents really inhering in bodily substances, Kant considers mental representations with no necessary correspondence to things in themselves. For instance, Aquinas believes that bodily substances actually have spatial dimensions, like length and width, but Kant believes that spatial dimensions are just forms we impose on our intuitions. Aquinas believes that substances actually have causal powers, like fire's power to heat, but Kant believes causality is just a mental construct whereby we organize our perceptions.

I think Kant borrows many of his categories from Aquinas and Aristotle, but he conceives them in a fundamentally different way. Aquinas is a realist, Kant is an idealist.

Kant holds that senses are more known by intellect than intelligible objects are know by us. This leads him to discount all Aquinas's arguments for God and I agree with that. — Gregory

I think Kant's argument against the Thomistic proofs of God is that the categories we use to understand the world like subtance/accident, cause/effect, one/many, are just mental constructs whose purpose is to organize sensory information. They don't actually represent the natures of things as they exist in themselves. So these categories can be used to describe objects of possible experience, like stars or molecules. Because these things are sensible, at least in principle. But since God is not sensible even in principle, the categories of thought do not apply to Him. Kant acknowledges that our category of causation points toward a First Mover who wisely creates and orders the cosmos. But since this First Mover cannot be a sensible being, His existence cannot be affirmed, for existence itself is just a category whose legitimate employment is restricted to the sensible realm.

Now I think Russel's critique of Kant is basically right. He says, roughly, that Kant's theory relies on the assumption that the mind really exists and orders its sensible intuitions according to the forms of sensibility and the categories of the understanding. But if the mind exists and employs these artificial categories, nothing prevents the categories from being changed, so that 2+2 might equal 5. Also, if the structure of the mind exists, it either exists as a noumenom or phenomenom. If it exists as a noumenon, then Kant has contradicted himself and affirmed things about noumena. If it is a phenomenon, then the the structure of the mind for which Kant argues in the First Critique is a mere appearance, in which case the mind may not actually work the way it appears to work. And if we don't know how the mind actually works, we cannot legitimately refer to its structure to justify our beliefs. For the categories that appear to us may not be the actual categories, and the principles of logic our thought appears to obey may not be the actual principles it obeys.

I don't think we can know anything for sure and on this Kant's position seems most accurate. But Hegel started with Kant but added Aristotle's and Aquinas's ideas as phenomenologically relevant to understanding Kant's. We can't stay in a world where we know nothing and Aquinas is a good start in believing again in knowledge

I don't think we can know anything for sure and on this Kant's position seems most accurate. But Hegel started with Kant but added Aristotle's and Aquinas's ideas as phenomenologically relevant to understanding Kant's. We can't stay in a world where we know nothing and Aquinas is a good start in believing again in knowledge — Gregory

It seems like you are both saying that we can't know anything for sure and that we can't not believe in knowledge. So we can't know anything, but we must believe that we can know things? Are you making a distinction between different kinds of knowledge?

So for Aquinas substance comes out of matter by form and the appearance of substance is accidents? Then wouldn't essence, nature, and quiddity be just another word for the matter\form composition? There is another old Greek word used in this question to but I forget it

Yes. Ideas are always in flux but we go with the best probabilities as they present themselves to our souls

So for Aquinas substance comes out of matter by form and the appearance of substance is accidents? Then wouldn't essence, nature, and quiddity be just another word for the matter\form composition? There is another old Greek word used in this question to but I forget it — Gregory

Yes, in the case or bodily substances, essence, nature and quiddity all refer to matter/form composition. But Aquinas also believes in immaterial substances like angels and God. Angels are pure forms, and God is pure actuality, or infinite existence. I don't know the Greek word. Is it it ousia or hypostasis?

Aquinas says in Contra Gentile that stars, the moon, and the sun are unquantitative. He had very esoteric opinions on "heavenly bodies" as if they were Platonic Ideas instead of real matter. That's one of the reasons Galileo got in trouble when he used his telescope. People claim the telescopes were faulty, had dirt in them, or were instruments possessed by the devil

Yes. Ideas are always in flux but we go with the best probabilities as they present themselves to our souls — Gregory

It seems to me that knowledge of probability presupposes knowledge of certainty. For instance, if I have probabilistic knowledge that I probably won't roll snake eyes in dice, this is because I have certain knowledge regarding the nature of dice rolling. To illustrate this in a more technical way. Suppose I can only know something with at most 90% certainty. Then, if I know something with 90% certainty, I can be at most 90% certain that I know it with 90% certainty. So I only know it with 81% certainty. But in that case, I can only be 90% certain that I know it with 81% certainty. Do you see that pattern? The probability of any item of knowledge will just be repeatedly multiplied by 90% at most and approach 0. So it seems that if I know something with 90% certainty, I must be certain about something that guarantees my ability to reliably estimate probabilities.

Aquinas says in Contra Gentile that stars, the moon, and the sun are unquantitative. He had very esoteric opinions on "heavenly bodies" as if they were Platonic Ideas instead of real matter. That's one of the reasons Galileo got in trouble when he used his telescope. People claim the telescopes were faulty, had dirt in them, or were instruments possessed by the devil — Gregory

Aquinas' ideas about the heavenly bodies came from Aristotle mostly. Ptolemy used Aristotle's theories to create a very reliable geo-centric system for measuring time. His ideas were used to develop the Gregorian calendar, and Medieval Christendom relied upon the Gregorian calendar for many things, both religious and secular. So it makes sense that people believed this stuff, since it worked well for their practical purposes. Although I admit that they might have been excessively harsh towards Galileo.

I don't totally agree with you. I see no complete certainty in intellectual matters for us on earth. At the back of my mind I suspect it is all just matter that we know and think with. If I could prove spirituality it would be based on faith no more, right?

This is why I don't think relativism refutes itself. Someone can think everything is relative and hold that belief on probable grounds, and that on probable grounds, to infinity and we don't understand infinity. Our bodies and everything is flux and we can't understand it. We are born to have faith, give mercy, and hope

I don't totally agree with you. I see no complete certainty in intellectual matters for us on earth. At the back of my mind I suspect it is all just matter that we know and think with. If I could prove spirituality it would be based on faith no more, right? — Gregory

That depends on what you mean by certainty. If by certainty you mean the impossibility of self-doubt, then I agree that that is impossible for a human to have. But doubt can sometimes be more of a psychological than an epistemological state. I have no epistemic reason to doubt that my plane will almost certainly arrive safely at its destination, for instance, but I still might experience fearful doubt psychologically. But if by certainty you mean adequate justification to constitute a genuine item of knowledge, then I disagree. For instance, I believe we have adequate justification to know that 1+1=2. And while we might doubt this in psychological way, or come up with a wild thought experiment that causes us to question this knowledge, I don't think either of these are sufficient to undermine our knowledge that 1+1=2.

I also don't think you need faith to believe in spiritual realities. I think the hard problem of consciousness provides adequate reason to believe that sentient beings are not purely material. Perhaps you can argue that I'm wrong about this, but I think it's at least theoretically plausible that sufficient evidence exists to justify belief in spiritual realities.

This is why I don't think relativism refutes itself. Someone can think everything is relative and hold that belief on probable grounds, and that on probable grounds, to infinity and we don't understand infinity. Our bodies and everything is flux and we can't understand it. We are born to have faith, give mercy, and hope — Gregory

Maybe I agree with you in the sense that, in order to believe that natural human reason can lead us to truth, we need to take a kind of leap of faith. If we deny that human reason can lead to truth, then we won't respond to reason based arguments to the contrary. So radical skepticism is an unfalsifiable position that requires a kind of faith in reason to overcome. And maybe this faith in reason is also tied up, in a complex way, with hope and mercy and the other virtues that perfect human nature.

I can't think of anything I can hold on to, consider, and judge to be certain. Life moves too fast, at least for me. But Aquinas's methods are ingenuous for giving one a mental feeling of truth and this helps people act morally and with kindness. A constant feeling of mental doubt is not good for the doubter or for anyone else I think, and too much philosophy likes to break down instead of building up. The Catholic Church has defined that judgment comes right after death and that you don't wait to go to heaven. In my understanding though, the general judgment and the private judgment are the same and the soul never is nor can be without the body. So there is no afterlife like atheists say OR there is no death (the dead body being a shadow of your new body in paradise)

I think Jacobi referred to a "summersault of faith", which I thought was a poignant way to phrase it (did I spell that right lol)

I can't think of anything I can hold on to, consider, and judge to be certain. — Gregory

In his metaphysics, Aristotle includes a chapter showing how, if you deny the principle of non-contradiction, you are lead into absurdities. His arguments are somewhat complex, but I think the overall point is fairly self-evident. If a thing can both be and not be in the same respect, then this sentence might be both true and false in the same respect, in which case it both means nothing, or it means both something and nothing at the same time. Or, consider a married bachelor. A bachelor is an unmarried man. So if a bachelor is married, he is not a bachelor. So when you say, 'unmarried bachelors exist', you are just speaking nonsense.

Life moves too fast, at least for me. — Gregory

I suppose you're right that even the thought process necessary to arrive at the principle of non-contradiction takes time. And it's conceivable that in the time required to demonstrate the absurdity of contradictions, I was deceived by a Cartesian demon, or something. I think one can respond to the notion of a Cartesian by becoming a radical skeptic. But that's not really reasonable, since a Cartesian demon may not be possible, and the only way to determine whether or not it's possible is to use reason. Even if I can't prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that no demon exists, this isn't reason to become radically skeptical. Because if radical skepticism is true, then there's no reason to be a skeptic. But if radical skepticism is false, there are probably good reasons to deny Cartesian demons, even if I haven't totally figured them out yet. And without the demon, it becomes possible to believe in self-evident things, like non-contradiction and the reality of perception. And from these self-evident things, it is at least plausible that one might be able to construct a well reasoned philosophy.

too much philosophy likes to break down instead of building up. — Gregory

It is true that philosophers often prefer to break down reality than build it up. But these are the successors of the sophists, whom Plato and Socrates opposed. Plato's notion of a true philosopher, a lover of wisdom, is opposed to the notion of a sophist, a person who uses clever thought experiments to sow seeds of doubt. Sophists are useful to motivate philosophers to develop better arguments, but the quest of the philosopher, to build up knowledge and understand reality, is fundamentally opposed to the quest of the sophist, to tear down knowledge and distort reality.

The Catholic Church has defined that judgment comes right after death and that you don't wait to go to heaven. In my understanding though, the general judgment and the private judgment are the same and the soul never is nor can be without the body. So there is no afterlife like atheists say OR there is no death (the dead body being a shadow of your new body in paradise) — Gregory

I think that was the opinion of Pope John XXII, but the Church later condemned it. According to Aquinas, the soul is the form of the body. So a plant has a soul, but the only function of its soul is to animate it, causing it to grow, self-sustain, and reproduce. So the plant soul disappears with its death. An animal soul has an immaterial effect, in that it gives rise to consciousness. But irrational animals are only conscious of their sensations, and once their bodies die and cease to supply sensations, their consciousness vanishes and along with it, their souls.

Now unlike irrational animals, humans can understand abstract concepts. Abstract concepts cannot be understood using material organs. This is evident 1) because abstract concepts are universal, whereas all material inputs are particular. An abstract concept can represent infinite entities, such as 'all triangles', whereas sensations only represent single entities. 2) abstract concepts supply knowledge of the forms of things. Thus, to know something is to possess its form. But if a material thing possesses a form, it becomes a material instance of it. For instance, if a body possesses the form of a tree, it is a tree. But the intellect can know the essence of a tree without turning into a physical tree. Thus, the intellect is an immaterial reality that can contain the forms of material things. 3) Abstract concepts are the objects of reason. But if abstract concepts were understood using a material organ, then our reasoning regarding them could be made to contradict itself by a material change. To illustrate, something sweet can be made to taste sour by a material change in the tongue. But if reason depended on a material structure and would be different with a different material structure, then reason does not reflect reality but only the structure of our brains. But this notion leads directly to radical skepticism which, I and others (like Aristotle) have argued, is self-refuting. 4) if the mind is purely material, then my decisions are determined by material inputs, and this seems to run contrary to my extremely fundamental intuition that I am a rational agent who is free to choose from multiple options, not determined by mechanistic or random material processes.

Now granted that abstract concepts are not understood using a material organ, they must be understood by an immaterial faculty, namely, the intellect. And based on our immaterial, intellectual knowledge of things, we have the power to make decisions which are not determined by material forces. So along with our immaterial intellects, we have immaterial wills. These two powers constitute our immaterial souls. Now the human soul is partly material, since it is the form of the body, but it is also partly immaterial, since it gives us the power of intellect and will.

Since the things we know with our intellect come from sensation, our knowledge from birth until death is confined to sensible realities. But once the body dies, and the immaterial soul is separated from it, it will retain its existence even without sensation. For, as Plato argues in the Republic, an immaterial thing has no principle of corruption. Whereas a body, which is composed of parts, can be taken apart and thereby destroyed, the soul, which is a simple, immaterial form, cannot be taken apart in this way, so it cannot destroyed, at least not by natural causes.

And just as the immaterial soul has no natural principle of corruption, neither does the knowledge it contains. So we will retain our abstract concepts and our judgments regarding them after death. However, the human intellect is designed to understand abstract concepts with the help of the material imagination. When we consider the concept of a triangle, for instance, our understanding is aided by mental pictures derived from sensation. So the soul separated from the body is incomplete. Its knowledge is vague without images, and has no source of new knowledge.

Without its body, the separated soul is impotent and unhappy. However, God can supply the separated soul with a vision of the divine essence. If the separated soul loves God, this vision of God will make it supremely happy, since it will be united to an infinite and perfect reality that it loves. But if the separated soul does not love God, the vision of God will only cause it to experience suffering. For to suffer is to have your will denied. And if you do not love God, you will things that are contrary to God's will. And a vision of God is a vision of Gods all powerful and irresistible will. So if you will what is contrary to God's will, and you have a vision of God, one will see with perfect clarity that your will is denied, and that you can never possibly have any hope of ever having your will satisfied. Thus, for those who love God, the vision of God is supremely joyful. But for those who do not love God, the vision of God is supremely painful.

Obviously, this is a lot of material, and I haven't adequately justified any of it. But I hope it sheds some light regarding how one, like Aquinas, can believe in life after death separated from the body.

Thanks for the thoughts. I'll just say someone who's mind is in constant flux cannot communicate his experience to someone who believes in absolute Truth

Thanks for the thoughts. I'll just say someone who's mind is in constant flux cannot communicate his experience to someone who believes in absolute Truth — Gregory

I suppose I can't argue with your private experiences. But I doubt your experience is that much different than mine. We are both humans, after all. Our DNA is what, like 99.6% the same?

I only experience my own experiences and I can't find a way to understand how others think so I go about trying to "wing it" with life and philosophy.

I saw your thread btw. Interesting discussion