Thursday, May 27, 2010

The interaction problem problem...

James Chastek at Just Thomism writes:

Thomists don’t believe that the body has a substantial form that the soul is added to. The substantial character of the body is simply a certain emanation from the soul, and is lost immediately at death. “Corpse” is not the name of some one thing, but of a heap of things that have no actual relation to one another. Where is the duality? Interaction problems are between two things, but there simply are not two things here. ...

[The] soul is that by which the body (say the human body) lives, but there is no human body that is not living. The separation of the soul at death does not leave a human body- corpses are no more human than statues. Again, where is the dualism? Where are there even two things? The body of any living thing is simply an emanation of soul, not some act that the soul shines upon. Dividing the two is like trying to divide candle flames from candlelight.

3 comments:

Crude said...

By the way, just a heads up - I went ahead and made my own blog over at crudeideas.blogspot.com

As a quick question on this point - would James therefore by suggesting that thomism is a monism?

Codgitator (Cadgertator) said...

I have officially begun "following" your blog. ;) Now stay off my lawn! jk

I don't think it follows that Chastek is defining Thomism as a monism, since the non-dualist anthropology of Thomism is only a part of the larger metaphysic, which is certainly not monist. But run it by Chastek himself.

Best,

Crude said...

Well, I went and asked. Interesting response from him. I'll spare the pasting and just point you to the same thread.