Saturday, March 29, 2025

Immortal Souls on the Classical Theism Podcast

Recently I was interviewed at some length by John DeRosa for the Classical Theism Podcast, about my book Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature. You can listen to the interview here.

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8 comments:

  1. Vini TadeoMarch 30, 2025 at 1:39 PM

    Great interview, Ed! For some reason, your examples and the way you teach get even better from time to time - it is like a fine wine! And you just confirm the fact, time and again, that the more intelligent and the more genius a philosopher is, the more easily he transforms the abstract, technical language of philosophy into the common, well-grounded language of the average person. Good work!

    Also, kudos to the interviewer for asking profound, creative, and thought-provoking questions about the book (a good example is the fact that he asked if the mechanical philosophy really did have a good argument for rejecting AT-metaphysics or if it was just a blank check).

    (Btw, when I first saw the green cover for Immortal Souls I intuitively thought about the color of life too! Even though I like a lot the covers from the Editiones Scholasticae - especially the blue one from Aristotle's Revenge - I think nothing can beat the cover from TLS on the Brazilian version!)

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  2. SinawiMarch 31, 2025 at 8:13 PM

    Any thoughts from the Thomists on this (related)?

    Thomistic substance

    https://substack.com/home/post/p-158873632

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    1. AnonymousApril 1, 2025 at 10:18 AM

      Interesting distinction. I am not a philosopher but just a Catholic reader of these topics, so I don't have much to add, but I always considered the substancialist part of AT philosophy to be somewhat convoluted and difficult tl believe in consonance with physical science (in contrast to natural law and natural theology in which I always thought they nailed it). This interpretacion of Avicenna seems more simple to understand.

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    2. Vini TadeoApril 1, 2025 at 10:49 AM

      Dear Sinawi,

      I am not the best person to speak on behalf of AT-metaphysics (so, there will be more competent people here to say what is wrong with this substack post), but as far as I understand, there is a misunderstanding of the AT position there. Let's do a short step-by-step.

      "On the basis of this, they then go on to deny that prime matter (along with substantial form – two principles of bodies) falls under the genus ‘substance’. For as a principle, though it in some sense exists, it, they say, is not a thing that exists, let alone a thing that ‘primarily exists’ (or ‘exists on its own’, ‘in itself’ etc.), so as to be reckoned as substance proper."

      Even though prime matter and substantial form are not substances by themselves, they are 'said of' and compose substances. They are principles that blend together (as Tomás Alvira would say) to compose a complete substance -- so they cannot be said to exist on themselves in any way. The only thing that primarily exists is the substance itself, and its metaphysically composed of parts such as the substantial form (the act) and the prime matter (the potency).

      "One consequence of this for them is that they are lead to admitting that there are creatures (or finite beings) that don’t fall under any of the 10 categories. Or, if (they say reluctantly) you want to take prime matter as falling under ‘substance’, then that is so only ‘reductively’, not properly (whatever that means)."

      The fallacy here is that the text implies something that the Thomists are not really forced to say—or even want to say—about the nature of these principles. I think the confusion comes primarily from taking the wrong interpretation of prime matter, since the text implicitly takes it to be something with existence in itself (and then coerces the Thomist to take a position that he is not in fact committed).

      And, most importantly, the text falsely concludes that the Thomist must be forced to admit that "there are creatures (or finite beings) that don't fall under any of the 10 categories". To see what is wrong with it lets take a silly example of an arm. An arm is not something that lives by itself, but it is only an arm if connected to the whole human person -- it does not exist by itself. The analogy of the example of the arm applies to substantial form and prime matter, they do not exist by themselves (i.e. substantial form is what actualizes, and prime matter is pure potency for taking form), just as the arm does not exist by itself.

      Conclusively, we know that the arm is part of a larger whole, which is the human being, and it only exists as the way it is in the whole. The same is said of substantial form and prime matter. To think otherwise is to think that substantial form and prime matter are primarily and independently existent, which is false since we can only get to know them through abstraction of the whole, complete substance, which they (prime matter and substantial form) are parts.

      I really hope that helps. And I'm sorry if my grammar is wrong in some way.

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    3. AnonymousApril 1, 2025 at 2:19 PM

      As far as I see, his only objection is:
      “One consequence of this for them is that they are lead to admitting that there are creatures (or finite beings) that don’t fall under any of the 10 categories.”

      I’m really not sure how strong this objection is because I’m not sure what the objection is really.

      Do you find it strong? And if so what is strong about it?

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  3. Michael CopasApril 1, 2025 at 12:11 PM

    Sinawi,

    My initial thought is that if inter-religious discourse could move to this level the world would be a much better place. Aquinas had great appreciation for Avicenna and any concord or disagreement between the two seems to me a great place to start this sort of discourse. Bravo.

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  4. AnonymousApril 2, 2025 at 4:39 AM

    Dear Prof. Feser, what do you think of Antonio Ramos Díaz's critique of your formulation of Ross's argument?

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  5. AnonymousApril 3, 2025 at 1:08 PM

    I wouldn't call myself a physicalist (I haven't seen any physical explanations of consciousness I'd consider plausible), but I'm wondering about the hylemorphic dualist argument that abstract thought is immaterial. I've read that there are concept cells, neurons in the brain that fire for concepts regardless of the sensory modality the concept is presented in (such as a picture or in speech). And these concepts can be abstract, such as "bank." There's an article about them here: https://www.quantamagazine.org/concept-cells-help-your-brain-abstract-information-and-build-memories-20250121/

    Interestingly, I first remember reading about them in this article by Michael Egnor, a neurosurgeon who defends hylemorphic dualism: https://mindmatters.ai/2025/03/looking-for-consciousness-in-all-the-wrong-places/ Here, another neuroscientist was claiming that concept cells were responsible for consciousness, and Egnor was criticizing that view. But even if concept cells aren't responsible for consciousness, if physical neurons in the brain can specifically fire for abstract concepts, then isn't that a material abstract thought?

    Also, I've read that artificial neural networks such as transformers can represent abstract features: https://transformer-circuits.pub/2024/scaling-monosemanticity/index.html Mind you, I don't think that current AI can use abstractions like humans can, and I doubt that current architectures, even if scaled up, can make it "as intelligent as" humans. However, wouldn't this be a physical system containing something abstract? I feel I might be misunderstanding something. Related to the above comment, I found a response to Diaz by Ross: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ymCCUcamkcOrADN9ag5m0tHa7fYxGMnt/view and Ross does say that even if specific locations in the brain are correlated with acquiring specific concepts, that doesn't prove materialism.

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