Proof We Have a Soul! (Aquinas) w/ Dr. Kevin Vost
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- čas přidán 16. 06. 2022
- Full Episode: • How to Build a Memory ...
Dr. Vost answers a Locals Patron's question by drawing from Aquinas. What does memory have to do with the existence of the soul? What does Aquinas mean by "Common Sense?"
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Ah this is awesome, I am currently reading “how to think like Aquinas” by Kevin Vost, very beautiful.
Love this video. Lots to think about but solid truth. 🙂 I just love discovering how the Saints explain about the Human Soul. It makes sense to me when I was in early 30's, when Mystical Theology came in. I was embarrased to myself and to God that I looked at my soul as a white flat piece of paper for a long time. It is a lot sophisticated, and beautiful when we dive into the wisdom of the Saints like St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Therese of Liseux, St. John Climacus, etc. I thought I learned everything when I took a four year nursing program when I was a late teen. Yeah, Freud get discussed a lot in college, defense mechanisms, etc. When reading and studying some doctors of the Church, it's like discovering the physiology and pathophysiology of human body except that it's about the higher nature of our being human. I hope that makes sense. 😄
This was amazing and it spoke to me on something which concerns me when people get dementia and other similar illnesses and seem to become unaware of their spiritual nature or their connection with the lord through their souls which has disturbed me since I became more aware of the effect that these illnesses have on people
Thank you for bringing this up! I just met someone who is struggling with the loss of memory and some other mental functions due to what appears to be a stroke. She is still engaged in our parish but needs help with everyday functioning, like reading her emails. I don't know how this has changed her personality, but what came to me is not how this will affect her soul, but mine and others' souls in our opportunity to respond and help.
Alzheimer's runs in my family, it's one of the things I worry about sometimes! I want to hold on to my faith till the end (Mathew 24:23, Revelation 2:26) I hope God considers this in our final judgement.
@@cathylynner5496 I was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and I have trouble with those same exact things.
An excellent and Informative discussion and thanks for sharing
Awesome show! Thank you 😊👍✝️
One of the things that comes up for me are those near death experiences, where people's experiences are that their soul is floating over the hospital table or adjacent rooms where family waited, and they recall details that they never technically witnessed or conservations they never technically heard with their own bodies ... It was their souls making that journey.
We don't HAVE a soul. We ARE a soul.
Not completely. The Catholic View rejects Dualism. Instead it proposes Thomistic Hylomorphism. When we die we remain incomplete as just a soul until the resurrection of the body.
@@oliverwashington8108 Yeah, I know that, but the soul is what makes me ME. Our genetic pattern produces our body and mind, but Identical twins have exactly the same body and similar minds but are different souls. conjoined twins can even share a body, but they are still two people.
It really blows one's mind when you consider that the identical twins started out as a single person and split to become two. Is one the original and the other a copy? Did the original person die? or can it simply be stated that they are both the original. It's almost as intriguing as the Holy Trinity.
Hey Matt I’m an Aussie too. I have always believed that animals do not have a soul - only humans do. And that may still be true. In recent times I have questioned whether animals exist in heaven or the afterlife to fulfill our joy. Besides the relationships we form with pets there are all sorts of animal related things that humans associate with a happy life e.g. fishing and horse riding. Therefore, I keep an open mind about this subject because I know God is capable of anything and knows each one of us thoroughly. Whether or not animals exist in heaven has no bearing on other theology. Come to think of it, I think God had horse-drawn chariots in the Old Testament!
Maybe Aquinas would say there are no animals in "Heaven" but maybe they would be on the New Earth? Whatever that means.
There will be animals in heaven if you need them to be happy.
No there are no animals in Heaven. Only gormless grinning gits sing holy holy holy all day and night and they are HAPPY.
I can’t picture heaven without animals, not all animals, but I definitely picture horses
@@AJanae. I’m not making any conclusions but a) God Himself was pleased with all of His creation and b) God also claims is the Bible that all living things are His. Hence, God loves animals too. Besides most of creation I see is too magnificent for God to leave it behind in eternity but then I am only human.
In the name of The Father, and of The Son, and of The Holy Spirit, AMEN 🙏🏻🕯🤍👑🕊✨
As an atheist at baffles me when people like you make comments like this.. what exactly does this do for you? Are you only trying to show off for your imaginary friend jesus?
Love to see that I share the same thoughts as another person who I never met
I’ve heard that when they do brain scans they can locate different parts of the brain lighting up depending on particular emotions and sensations. But they can never locate which part of the brain lights up from a particular abstract thought. This seems to confirm thomastic theory.
Rostrolateral prefrontal cortex (RLPFC) is thought to play an important role in supporting the integration of abstract, often self-generated, thoughts.
@@gordoncavanaugh8744Yeah but they can’t determine what the thoughts actually are based off brain scans. (Especially abstract conceptual thoughts that aren’t based off experience). They can, however determine what different emotions are based off how the brain lights up
@@crenshaw2186 The technology isn't developed right now, but that may be different a hundred years from now. Through brain injuries people can lose their ability to think in the abstract. Did they lose their soul then?
@@gordoncavanaugh8744 I’m not sure. There are some gray area instances where person is basically a vegetable and it’s hard to say if they are dead or alive.
@@crenshaw2186 They most definitely are alive. They have a heart beat and are breathing. But if they have no brain activity or no longer think in the abstract -do they have a soul?
How do we really know? We don't.
Famtastic!
What would be the best book to read on st Thomas Aquinas regarding Psychology?
I will the good of you Matt
RIP 🙏
I came across this in the hebrew version, I would like someone who knows hebrew to confirm it: In Génesis 2:7 it says that Adam became nephesh hayyah or living soul. Hayyah means “living” and nephesh means “soul.” It also refers to personality or desire which are aspects of the soul.
In the first creation story man and woman are created in God’s image and He decided to let humans govern all animals. But it also tells us that animals have a soul. In Genesis 1:30 it reads:
"And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so."
This describes animals having hayyah (life). However, in the Hebrew it also has the word nephesh in combination with hayyah, which is the exact same wording as the description of the soul in the creation of Adam in Genesis 2:7. In other words, though nephesh is only translated as “life” here, the Hebrew speaks of the soul. Animals thus have a nephesh hayyah just like Adam.
The same cannot be said to plants.
That being said, then why Saint Thomas Aquinas and so many other people hold such belief, that animals dont have a soul, if it is written in the hebrew bible that they do??
I thought it is: We ARE a soul and we HAVE a body.. Thoughts?
I'm a Latter-day Saint with great respect for Catholic and Orthodox theology, so I may have a unique take on this. One of our strong beliefs is that both our bodies and our spirits are essential parts of who/what we are, and in some scripture we have on the resurrection it says "the spirit and the body are the soul of man".
Casually the spirit and soul tend to be used interchangeably, but based on this I believe that the soul is properly defined as a spirit and body united together, which is part of what makes the resurrection so significant since our bodies without spirits decay back to dust and our spirits without phyisical bodies are incomplete.
In my mind that means that that the atheists are partially right: you are your body, just as you are your spirit. It may be that the spirit seperated from the body in death is akin to losing a limb or worse, as a vital part of you is being separated from the rest of you when you lose your body. The resurrection then restores that back together with a perfect immortal union of body and spirit in a way that overcomes the Fall that makes our bodies flawed and subject to death.
It sounds like like you are making a duality of soul and body, where the soul is superior or more essential than the body. This goes against what the Catholic Church teaches. We ARE our body, soul, and spirit.
St. Paul also alludes to this in scripture. "May the God of peace himself make you perfectly holy and may YOU ENTIRELY, SPIRIT, SOUL, and BODY, be preserved blameless for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" - 1 Thessalonians 5:23
It's a hypostatic union.
I don't see how this could prove the soul, it rather proves the immateriality of the world accessed through intelligence. We cannot infer the soul. I am no saying there isn't, it's just not the proof of it.
🙏
Not to try to one up Aquinas in naming conventions, but it seems like Integrating Sense or Unifying Sense would be better name options than Common Sense, at least in English where common sense has another meaning.
5:30 But animals get what is common to a group of individuals. The cat is chasing a bird because it is a bird. It doesn’t care which individual.
Sa a summa of this is, humans are intellectual, therefore, people have eternal souls. I'd agree we have more intellectual abilities than animals but why should that be the defining feature of a future-eternal soul bearer.
That is a reasonable question. I don't know the answer, but I got the impression that the universals must be eternal. I am associating this with platonism. But I think there is a leap from "abstracts are eternal" + "our soul operates on the abstract level" to "souls er eternal"..
I got lost toward the end. First of all, how can we assume animals are incapable of developing a concept? Second of all, how are imagination and memory any less immaterial/spiritual than the ability to develop concepts?
Can someone help me understand what exactly the proof was? Currently I have gathered that "nothing else on earth can think as complexly as we do, therefore we are immortal, and if you dispute this show me a dolphin library."
I'm not sure what this was but I remain unconvinced by this "proof" of the existence of souls. I feel clickbaited😔
You should put in the video description what Vost's expertise is. Why should we care about what he's saying? Is he a Doctor in English Literature?
So you think titles denote competency? Or bueracratic thresholds of status are proofs of being worthy of attention and value?
I like judging first what is actually said and then discovering the claimed qualifications.
WHEN WE DIE THE SOUL LEAVES THE BODY WHAT IS THE SOUL MADE OF GAS,LIQUID,MATERIAL INVISIBLE ATOMS ITS GOT TO BE MADE OF SOMETHING AND IS IT ABLE TO THINK I HOPE SOON THEY WILL BE ABLE TO USE COMPUTER AND BRAIN TO FIGURE IT OUT
Sometime around age 12 and continuing into adulthood, most people build on their concrete reasoning and expand into abstract thinking. This stage includes the growing ability to put themselves in other people's shoes (to use an abstract-thinking metaphor), learning how to empathize.
So according to his definition, a child under 12 does not have a soul.
Nah.
@@thewalruswasjason101 Of course, a soul is something completely different. It's not about abstract thinking. Does anyone truly believe that goat herders of 2000 years ago were thinking in abstract terms? They couldn't read or write.
The problem is defining what a soul is? That should be a big clue to what the answer is.
When you die -what happens to your soul?
That's really tricky to answer.
I could drop you into a vat of quick drying cement. How did your soul leave your body then? That's why apologists have to keep making up new twists and turns without any proof that they are right. Rather than accept the obvious.
When you turn off a light - where does the light go?
@@gordoncavanaugh8744The light went to the same place it did before you turned off the light.
@@kevinkelly2162 And where is that?
@@kevinkelly2162 I think he could have done better saying that a soul is supernatural only to humans. But then he would have to prove that only humans have souls while snakes and bugs, etc. don't have souls.
If all a soul is abstract thoughts. What good is that without memories and consciousness which forms our personality and makes us human.
Catholics: Let's empirically prove we have a soul!
Orthodox: We *know* we have a soul. Scholasticism is so lame. 🤦♂
Catholics: Let's prove Christ is in the Eucharist! (Yes, Matt did that video.)
Orthodox: We *know* the Eucharist is Christ.☦ Catholics are so funny.😄
Most dogs are better than most people. If there's a heaven, my dogs are there
The idea that animal souls are entirely physical is actually one of Thomas's theories that fall apart when we examine it from an artificial intelligence perspective where artificial intelligence is entirely limited by the laws of physics and CPU cycles where we now have computers that can run circles around an animal's brain in terms of memory and processing power yet these computers fail to do what an animal can do by its mere intelligence and it is very appearant with how well animal's handle randomness which is the Achilles heal of artificial intelligence meaning that because animals possess such abilities mean they aren't entirely physical. However, I really can't blame Thomas Aquinas for this because the field of Artificial Intelligence wouldn't exist for another 800 years where artificial intelligence would be considered witchcraft even though it's entirely in the laws of physics.
In Génesis 2:7 it says that Adam became nephesh hayyah or living soul. Hayyah means “living” and nephesh means “soul.” It also refers to personality or desire which are aspects of the soul.
In the first creation story man and woman are created in God’s image and He decided to let humans govern all animals. But it also tells us that animals have a soul. In Genesis 1:30 it reads:
"And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so."
This describes animals having hayyah (life). However, in the Hebrew it also has the word nephesh in combination with hayyah, which is the exact same wording as the description of the soul in the creation of Adam in Genesis 2:7. In other words, though nephesh is only translated as “life” here, the Hebrew speaks of the soul. Animals thus have a nephesh hayyah just like Adam.
That being said, why Saint Thomas Aquinas and so many other people hold such belief, that animals dont have a soul??
1. It's not the same as a modern "scientific theory" and there's no problem with it.
2. Modern computer scientists don't know philosophy and call this construct something that it isn't. It doesn't deserve to be called artificial intelligence.
Sorry, I was a little misleading in my previous statement. The Bible, history and modern life are full of stories about how living creatures play a part in human lives, even if it is to sustain us as food. They are also critical in how God wants us to worship Him, especially in the Old Testament. Frankly, this is a mystery of God’s creation that I am wasting my own time trying to fully understand as it is beyond a human mind.
While I agree #StThomas is right to focus on intellectual abilities to distinguish our humanity I do think there is a danger in focusing solely on linguistic or intelligence based criteria. #JeanVanier (founder of #Larche & now sadly disgraced) emphasises in his books that people with learning disabilities are also human, (as are unborn babies) so he locates the soul in its capacity for forming relationships with others rather than in intellect alone. 🤔
St Thomas would say that a disabled human is still a human. Therefore we know it has a soul based on the kind of thing it is. There may be a physical defect, but the soul still has an intellect because disabled people have human souls.
I’m not sure how locating the soul in relationship forming is a better solution. Someone who is sufficiently disabled can’t form relationships either, at least not more meaningful ones than an animal could since deep relationships are dependent on intellect.
@@bassman_0074 Are you a parent? I would respectfully suggest that #nonverbalcommunication starts almost the moment a child is born..
@@Carbivore67 Yes, Denis, Christians, Jews & Muslims understand this I think. But if you look at where leftist secular outrage is on "abortion rights" right now, I think it is important to stress: the #unborn are people, they have #souls, even if their brains have not yet developed. Brain does not equal #personhood.
This argument does not stand scrutiny. Just because other life forms do not have libraries does not mean they don't use meta cognition to evaluate their own experiences. Unfortunately this is not a falsifiable proposal so I'll ask this of anyone who would care to answer: Which of these concepts that are proposed to be independent of biological processes cannot be altered by altering the brain? I would posit that any evidence for a soul based on cognition must contain some element that is demonstrably independent of the brain and cannot be changed by altering the brain chemically or physically. In other words, given sufficient knowledge and understanding I could remove your belief in a soul by removing or altering the neurons responsible for that belief.
And just for my own satisfaction; this is hogwash no matter how elevated it's original proponents were. The early philosophers and naturalists are the foundation of our knowledge but do not even hint at its eventual extent.
czcams.com/video/NXLGcVCtT88/video.html
@@almostgravy6556 you're carrying the reasoning forward without giving up the premise that the being is entirely material. Which means you're really not carrying the reasoning forward
The concepts themselves are not independent, but the universal forms in which the concepts are based on are independent. The intellectual apprehension happens before the formation of the concept.
@@almostgravy6556 try reading what I said and responding to it instead of insulting me
Causal dependency on the brain does not, strictly speaking, prove anything about the mind's essential nature. Very few substance dualists would deny that the physical substance that is our body does not affect our minds because it obviously does. That doesn't prove that the mental realm is reducible to the physical.
Free will does not exist unless you have a soul not bound by known physics. If there isn't a god, you're an automaton.
This is an interesting concept, but I would also say that if there is a god who is definitionally omniscient, meaning it knows with absolute certainty what will occur in the future and cannot be in error, then free will is impossible in that scenario as well. if one of our free choices could alter the future, then god would be wrong and therefore not omniscient.
I remember Christopher Hitchens characterizing it as "of course I believe I have free will, I have no choice. Either that or, of course I believe I have free will, the boss commands me to." Highlighting the paradox of the issue.
@@mr.loveandkindness3014 unless God voluntarily suspended his omniscience to allow free will
And also, only if what you call future isn't composed of multiple possibilities
I think this video is poorly named. It discusses an immaterial power (intellect) of the soul, but it doesn't discuss the soul itself, which is the form of a living thing.
To me that was a boring carnal conversation . You never did mention the spiritual aspect of us humans we are Spirit , Soul and Body with a God given conscious . Some people do not have common sense nor good judgement a lot has to be learned !
The fact that you can ask that question proves you have a soul.
Do I also have a million dollars and the cure to cancer?
*waits patiently* 🙂
Hmmm🤔
Strictly speaking this isn't evidence, much less proof, of an immaterial soul.
Even if I were to grant this Thomistic characterisation of cognition (which, to be clear, I don't in the slightest); why could these rational powers be emergent from human physiology, requiring no ineffable substance at all?
On the other side, Gilbert Ryle's thoughts on the 'ghost in the machine' seems to me good reason to think that there is no mind outside of the brain.
I think you're correct that consistent hylomorphists are caught in a bind: they need to recognize the essential unity of all mental phenomena and how they are all of the same nature (immaterial).
Physicalism is a ridiculous position, however. You can't get a first-person perspective from third-person facts. You can't construct conscious experience from nonconscious material - unless you're a panpsychist or neutral monist of some stripe, but both of those views are incredibly weak as well.
This is not a very good argument. We have the ability to abstract because of evolution. At some point in our evolutionary past, competition within our own species, whether in a society or competing against another, forced us to out think each other. This pushed us to new heights.
This is simply an assertion, not proof.
Saying we have the ability to abstract because of evolution doesn't explain anything at all. If abstraction requires a grasping of universals by the intellect, we need an explanation for how our minds can make contact with universals and reason accordingly with them. Just saying "we evolved it" is literally no better than saying "God did it" or "My aunt Sally did it."
Since Plato we knew there are some ideas (minds) there are older than our bodies.
Christianity answers some questions Plato can't answer.
It's amazing how someone can say so much yet say nothing at all. To sum up, no proof we have a soul. Sufficient evidence would be great!
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Interesting claim... how about proofs? Plus, human memory is pretty much understood by human, it's not reliable & can change over time. Hence, why we store information in artifacts like books, or in tapes, or other medias outside of our minds. And memory can degrade over time, or lost abruptly if someone experience brain damage due to a disease or injury. It can also effect someone's ability to have abstract thoughts, does that mean that person lost his soul?
But all these verbosity isn't proof.
Conscious experience is not reducible to physical stuff. You can see this to be true by understanding the difference between knowledge mediated by experience versus knowledge mediated by description. You can know all the physical facts there is to know about what the color blue is like, but you'll never be able to extrapolate from that listing of facts what it's actually like to experience seeing the color blue.
@@Jimmy-iy9pl To this day, "Conscious experience" is definitely reducible to physical "stuff". No evidence to the contrary. It's easy to experience seeing the color blue, I just did today, & yesterday... and if there's no clouds tomorrow, will do so tomorrow. It is so easy, you people toss meaningless word salad to woo & claim you can't. How about providing proof for your claim I will "never experience seeing the color blue."
Elon muskty
A video that is 9 minutes and 19 seconds long that contains no evidence for the soul.
This was nothing more than babbling word salad.. this did nothing to provide empirical, testable, falsifiable proof for the existence of a soul
This is a confused question. It's literally built into the very claim of a soul that it's an immaterial substance of which the essence of is thought; it lacks spatial extension, which is the essence of physical substance.
So your question amounts to asking for physical verification of a nonphysical substance. Do you see why that's such a confused question? Not to mention, it's dubious that there's empirical proof of any proposition; empirical data is helpful for making inductive and abductive hypotheses and inferences, but not so much for proof. Proof belongs to the domains of math and logic.
Awesome show! Thank you 😊👍✝️