The argument from souls to God

2015 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-305
Author(s):  
RICHARD SWINBURNE
Keyword(s):  
Mental Life ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Good Argument ◽  
Causal Connections ◽  
Universal Properties ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
Mental Events ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Enormous Number

AbstractHumans are pure mental substances, that is essentially souls, who have a rich mental life of sensations, thoughts, intentions, and other pure mental events, largely caused by and sometimes causing events in their brains and so in their bodies. God has reason to create humans because humans have a kind of goodness, the ability to choose between good and evil, which God himself does not have. The existence of these causal connections between mental events and brain events requires an enormous number of separate psychophysical laws. It is most improbable that there would be such laws if God had not made them. Each soul has a thisness; it is the particular soul it is quite independently of its mental properties and bodily connections. So no scientific law, concerned only with relations between substances in virtue of their universal properties, could explain why God created this soul rather than that possible soul, and connected it to this body. Yet a rational person often has to choose between equally good alternatives on non-rational grounds; and so there is nothing puzzling about God choosing to create this soul rather than that possible soul. Hence the existence of souls provides a good argument for the existence of God.

Soul, nature and immortality of the

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Swinburne
Keyword(s):  
Special Kind ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
The Body ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Visual Sensation ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Life After Death ◽  
Bodily States ◽  
In Virtue Of

For the Greeks, the soul is what gives life to the body. Plato thought of it as a thing separate from the body. A human living on earth consists of two parts, soul and body. The soul is the essential part of the human – what makes me me. It is the part to which the mental life of humans pertains – it is the soul which thinks and feels and chooses. Soul and body interact. Bodily states often cause soul states, and soul states often cause bodily states. This view is known as substance dualism. It normally includes the view that the soul is simple, that it does not have parts. If an object has parts, then one of those parts can have properties which another part does not. But for any experience that I have, an auditory or visual sensation or thought, it happens to the whole me. Plato also held that at death, soul and body are separated; the body decays while the soul departs to live another life. Aristotle, by contrast, thought of the soul simply as a ‘form’, that is, as a way of behaving and thinking; a human having a soul just is the human behaving (by moving parts of the body) and thinking in certain characteristic human ways. And just as there cannot be a dance without people dancing, so there cannot be ways of behaving without embodied humans to behave in those ways. Hence, for Aristotle, the soul does not exist without the body. Christian theology, believing in life after death, found it natural to take over Plato’s conception of the soul. But in the thirteenth century, St Thomas Aquinas sought to develop an Aristotelian conception modified to accommodate Christian doctrine. The soul, Aquinas taught, was indeed a form, but a special kind of form, one which could temporarily exist without the body to which it was naturally fitted. It has always been difficult to articulate this view in a coherent way which makes it distinct from Plato’s. Descartes restated Plato’s view. In more modern times, the view that humans have souls has always been understood as the view that humans have an essential part, separable from the body, as depicted by Plato and Aquinas. The pure Aristotelian view has more normally been expressed as the view that humans do not have souls; humans consist of matter alone, though it may be organized in a very complicated way and have properties that inanimate things do not have. In other words, Aristotelianism is a kind of materialism. If, however, one thinks of the soul as a thing separable from the body, it could still cease to exist at death, when the body ceases to function. Plato had a number of arguments designed to show that the soul is naturally immortal; in virtue of its own nature, because of what it is, it will continue to exist forever. Later philosophers have developed some of these arguments and produced others. Even if these arguments do not show it (and most philosophers think that they do not), the soul may still be naturally immortal; or it may be immortal because God or some other force keeps it in being forever, either by itself or joined to a new body. If there is an omnipotent God, he could keep it in existence forever; and he might have revealed to us that he is going to do so.

Mental causation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Loewer
Keyword(s):  
Physical Properties ◽  
Mental Causation ◽  
Causal Relevance ◽  
Scientific Psychology ◽  
Causal Relations ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
Mental Events ◽  
Physical Phenomena ◽  
Completeness Of Physics

Both folk and scientific psychology assume that mental events and properties participate in causal relations. However, considerations involving the causal completeness of physics and the apparent non-reducibility of mental phenomena to physical phenomena have challenged these assumptions. In the case of mental events (such as someone’s thinking about Vienna), one proposal has been simply to identify not ‘types’ (or classes) of mental events with types of physical events, but merely individual ‘token’ mental events with token physical ones, one by one (your and my thinking about Vienna may be ‘realized’ by different type physical states). The role of mental properties (such as ‘being about Vienna’) in causation is more problematic. Properties are widely thought to have three features that seem to render them causally irrelevant: (1) they are ‘multiply-realizable’ (they can be realized in an indefinite variety of substances); (2) many of them seem not to supervene on neurophysiological properties (differences in mental properties do not always depend merely on differences in neurophysiological ones, but upon relations people bear to things outside their skin); and (3) many of them (for example, ‘being painful’) seem inherently ‘subjective’ in a way that no objective physical properties seem to be. All of these issues are complicated by the fact that there is no consensus concerning the nature of causal relevance for properties in general.

Determinables, Determinates, and Causal Relevance

2007 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sven Walter
Keyword(s):  
Physical Properties ◽  
Mental Causation ◽  
Causal Exclusion ◽  
Causal Relevance ◽  
Exclusion Argument ◽  
The World ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
Mental Events ◽  
Manifest Image

Mental causation, our mind's ability to causally affect the course of the world, is part and parcel of our ‘manifest image’ of the world. That there is mental causation is denied by virtually no one. How there can be such a thing as mental causation, however, is far from obvious. In recent years, discussions about the problem of mental causation have focused on Jaegwon Kim's so-called Causal Exclusion Argument, according to which mental events are ‘screened off’ or ‘preempted’ by physical events unless mental causation is a genuine case of overdetermination or mental properties are straightforwardly reducible to physical properties.

scholarly journals Dennett’s Account of Mind versus Kim’s Supervenience Argument

1970 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Zbigniew Marczuk
Keyword(s):  
Causal Powers ◽  
Reductive Physicalism ◽  
Mind And Brain ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
Mental Events

This paper challenges Daniel Dennett’s attempt to reconcile the performance of mind and brain within a physicalist framework with Jaegwon Kim’s argument that a coherent physicalist framework entails the epiphenomenalism of mental events. Dennett offers a materialist explanation of consciousness and argues that his model of mind does not imply reductive physicalism. I argue that Dennett’s explanation of mind clashes with Jaegwon Kim’s mind-body supervenience argument. Kim contends that non-reductive physicalism either voids the causal powers of mental properties, or it violates physicalist framework. I conclude that Dennett’s account of mind does not escape or overcome Kim’s mind/body supervenience problem. If Kim’s argument does not prove Dennett’s explanation of mind to be either a form of reductive materialism, or a logically inconsistent view, it is due to the ambiguity of concepts involved in Dennett’s theory.

scholarly journals Theodicy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (29) ◽  
pp. 10
Author(s):  
Claudio Tugnoli
Keyword(s):  
Human Action ◽  
The State ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Moral Good ◽  
National Community ◽  
Christian Religion ◽  
Universal Principles ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The Will ◽  
Good And Evil

Throughout all of Rousseau’s works there is tension between argumentation and feeling, speculation and intuition, reason and conscience. Reason binds men when they think correctly, but divides them and opposes one to the other when they place it at the service of self-interest, of ambition and of the will to prevail. Conversely, the universality of conscience is immediate and transparent: it transmits the truth of the existence of God, of the freedom of men, of the distinction between good and evil, as well as of the universal principles that are at the roots of human action and of the virtues honoured by all human societies, despite the differences of particular legislations. Mankind possesses an innate and intuitive conscience of the fundamental principles by which its conduct must be inspired. Were we to consider human actions only according to the criterion of physical need, of causality and of movement, vices and virtues would disappear and terms like morality and honesty would have no meaning. But each one of us perceives from within that this is not the case. We feel that moral good and evil are more real than anything else, without any need whatsoever to prove it. To obey the conscience one has of good and of evil without human mediation means to reject the dogmatic formalism of religions as well as the vanity of philosophical disputes. Every human being, however, is inserted into a national community. What should the state’s attitude be vis-à-vis religion? Rousseau indicates two paths. The first consists in establishing a purely civil religion that admits only those dogmas that are truly useful to society. Rousseau highlights the contradiction of a Christian religion that, although it is the religion of peace par excellence, fuels continuing bloody clashes among men due to a dogmatic theology that is totally alien to the essence of the Gospel and extremely hazardous for the life of the State. The second path consists in allowing Christianity to retain its authentic spirit, its freedom from any material constraint, without any obligations other than those of individual conscience. The Christian religion has such a pure and noble moral that it cannot but benefit the State, as long as one does not expect to make it part of the constitution.

scholarly journals Watershed or Cul-de-Sac? Disputes in the Theological Reception of Kant’s Philosophy

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 121-155
Author(s):  
Maureen Junker-Kenny
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Medieval Theology ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Human Subjectivity ◽  
The Subject ◽  
God's Grace ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
The Trinity

Kant’s turn to the subject has changed the epistemological conditions for theology. Four intellectual backgrounds of objections are examined: an Aristotelian and Thomistic teleological order of nature (1); Augustinianism based on original sin in which human agency is completely attributed to God’s grace (2); a Hegelian critique of the deontological conception of an “unconditional ought” which also puts Kant’s postulate of the existence of God into question (3); the combination in Radical Orthodoxy of a postmodern critique of the subject, an Augustinian view of human nature, and a monistic understanding of the Trinity (4). Their different diagnoses why Kant’s work constitutes a cul-de-sac are contrasted with theological positions that welcome it as a watershed: its move from ontology to human subjectivity; from a biologically transmitted inescapable sin to a freedom for good and evil; from a strict reciprocity to an unlimited scope of ethics that is faced with the question of meaning; and from condemning the secular as “heretical” to defining it as the genuine space of the free human counterparts created by God, according to Duns Scotus’s late medieval theology which anticipates Kant’s concept of autonomy. The standard by which theologies are judged is how they do justice to the New Testament’s message of salvation by Jesus Christ. The Conclusion argues that Kant’s turn to freedom in its unconditionality and finitude has opened up a thought form in which the truth of the Gospel finds more adequate categories of understanding than in those of earlier eras.

Dualism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Rosenthal
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Physical Reality ◽  
Natural Order ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Property Dualism ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Mental Events

Dualism is the view that mental phenomena are, in some respect, nonphysical. The best-known version is due to Descartes (1641), and holds that the mind is a nonphysical substance. Descartes argued that, because minds have no spatial properties and physical reality is essentially extended in space, minds are wholly nonphysical. Every human being is accordingly a composite of two objects: a physical body, and a nonphysical object that is that human being’s mind. On a weaker version of dualism, which contemporary thinkers find more acceptable, human beings are physical substances but have mental properties, and those properties are not physical. This view is known as property dualism, or the dual-aspect theory. Several considerations appear to support dualism. Mental phenomena are strikingly different from all others, and the idea that they are nonphysical may explain just how they are distinctive. Moreover, physical reality conforms to laws formulated in strictly mathematical terms. But, because mental phenomena such as thinking, desiring and sensing seem intractable to being described in mathematical terms, it is tempting to conclude that these phenomena are not physical. In addition, many mental states are conscious states – states that we are aware of in a way that seems to be wholly unmediated. And many would argue that, whatever the nature of mental phenomena that are not conscious, consciousness cannot be physical. There are also, however, reasons to resist dualism. People, and other creatures with mental endowments, presumably exist wholly within the natural order, and it is generally held that all natural phenomena are built up from basic physical constituents. Dualism, however, represents the mind as uniquely standing outside this unified physical picture. There is also a difficulty about causal relations between mind and body. Mental events often cause bodily events, as when a desire causes an action, and bodily events often cause mental events, for example in perceiving. But the causal interactions into which physical events enter are governed by laws that connect physical events. So if the mental is not physical, it would be hard to understand how mental events can interact causally with bodily events. For these reasons and others, dualism is, despite various reasons advanced in its support, a theoretically uncomfortable position.

“Inflation” of Human Rights. John Paul II and human rights

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 32-44
Author(s):  
Adrian J. Reimers
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
John Locke ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Pope John Paul Ii ◽  
John Paul Ii ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Individual Human

One of the central principles of modern political philosophy, dating from the time of John Locke, is that of human rights. Locke characterized a right as something pertaining to the individual human being as free and equal to every other human being. To this notion of inherent rights, John Stuart Mill added that a right must be something in virtue of which a person can make a claim on another or on the state. Third, the modern notion of right presupposes the concept of dignity. In contemporary societies, we are witnessing an inflation of rights, which raises two questions: 1) are new rights truly being discovered, and 2) how can we discern the legitimacy of these rights? J. S. Mill’s utilitarianism holds the touchstone of good and evil to be individual happiness, and that over his own self the individual is sovereign. From this it follows that only the individual can know what is his own true good. Therefore, he ought to expect that society will support or at least not interfere with his own attainment of his good as he conceives it. Therefore “my” rights must encompass that “I” recognize to be my own needs. Others are responsible to grant to the sovereign individual those rights that he claims. From such a principle follows the rights to personal sexual satisfaction, suicide, and to marry another of one’s own sex without public disapproval. Paradoxically, this inflation of rights is supported also by the quasi-Marxist notion that different classes of persons are inevitably opposed to each other and that for their protection the prerogatives of different groups must be recognized as rights.To avoid and correct this inflation it is necessary to develop a richer anthropology to found the concept of human dignity and, consequently, rights. Following the example and thinking of Pope John Paul II, we propose a reexamination of Mill’s claim that a right necessarily entails some well-defined claim on another personor entity, and that a right is not so much a legal claim as a claim upon conscience.

The Argument from Collections

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Menzel
Keyword(s):  
Weak Sense ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Good Argument

Very broadly, an argument from collections is an argument that purports to show that our beliefs about sets imply—in some sense—the existence of God. Plantinga (2007) first sketched such an argument in “Two Dozen” and filled it out somewhat in his 2011 monograph Where the Conflict Really Lies: Religion, Science, and Naturalism. This chapter reconstructs what strikes the author as the most plausible version of Plantinga’s argument. While it is a good argument in at least a fairly weak sense, it doesn’t initially appear to have any explanatory advantages over a non-theistic understanding of sets—what the author calls set theoretic realism. However, the author goes on to argue that the theist can avoid an important dilemma faced by the realist and, hence, that Plantinga’s argument from collections has explanatory advantages that realism does not have.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document