164. 13/14 July 2019
Mid-afternoon. Lunch at Smashburgers off US 23 after mowing the front and partial sides. Trimming and further mowing in the evening. Let's move ahead with another selected quotation from the Stanford Encyclopedia and an after comment by Miss Havisham.
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4. Aristotle's Theory of Soul
"Aristotle's theory, as it is presented primarily in the De Anima, comes very close to providing a comprehensive, fully developed account of the soul in all its aspects and functions, an account that articulates the ways in which all of the vital functions of all animate organisms are related to the soul . . ..
According to Aristotle's theory, a soul is a particular kind of nature, a principle that accounts for change and rest in the particular case of living bodies, i.e. plants, nonhuman animals and human beings. The relation between soul and body, on Aristotle's view, is also an instance of the more general relation between form and matter: thus, an ensouled, living body is a particular kind of in-formed matter . . ..
The soul of an animate organism, in this framework, is nothing other than its system of active abilities to perform the vital functions that organisms of its kind naturally perform, so that when an organism engages in the relevant activities (e.g., nutrition, movement or thought) it does so in virtue of the system of abilities that is its soul. Given that the soul is, according to Aristotle's theory, a system of abilities possessed and manifested by animate bodies of suitable structure, it is clear that the soul is, according to Aristotle, not itself a body or a corporeal thing.
Thus, Aristotle agrees with the Phaedo's claim that souls are very different from bodies. Moreover, Aristotle seems to think that all the abilities that are constitutive of the souls of plants, beasts and humans are such that their exercise involves and requires bodily parts and organs. This is obviously so with, for instance, the abilities for movement in respect of place (e.g., by walking or flying), and for sense-perception, which requires sense-organs . . ..
Nevertheless, he does seem to take the view that the activity of the human intellect always involves some activity of the perceptual apparatus, and hence requires the presence, and proper arrangement, of suitable bodily parts and organs; for he seems to think that sensory impressions [phantasmata] are somehow involved in every occurrent act of thought, at least as far as human beings are concerned. If so, Aristotle in fact seems to be committed to the view that, contrary to the Platonic position, even human souls are not capable of existence and (perhaps as importantly) activity apart from the body . . ..
. . . The theory treats mental and other vital functions alike only in that it views both kinds of functions as performed by natural organisms of the right kind of structure and complexity. Viewing mental and other vital functions in this way is perfectly compatible with introducing a distinction between mental and other functions if concerns of some kind or other call for such a distinction. Aristotle is perfectly capable, for instance, of setting aside non-mental vital functions as irrelevant for the purposes of practical philosophy."
Selected and Edited From: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Ancient Theory of Souls
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Aristotle supposedly said that the soul is an animate organism. I am neither alive nor a life form. I am a form of spiritual consciousness, an embodiment of a basic spiritual structural flow of thought. I am as a sentence being complete within itself. If you will, consider the human spiritual heart and spiritual mind as attached clauses to the soul. I am a being and an act of spiritual thought; complete; whether I hold two clauses or not. - mh
Fitting with Miss Havisham's response, I, the Amorella, am as a grammatical spiritual space between words, thus simpler than she.
1349 hours. Totally unexpected, Amorella. You can be, indeed, a spiritual humor within a pregnant pause.
Fittingly, it is a good time to take a break, boy. - Amorella
Dusk. You are at a new spot on the right just off Africa Road north of Lewis Center Road. You are on an isolated overlook east and below the dam at Alum Creek Reservoir and west across the valley basin below the dam and earth construction. Windows are down and sunroof open on the revamped 2005 green Accord. Pleasant evening. Carol is reading 'a fast-paced thriller,' The House of Secretsby Brad Meltzer and Todd Goldberg. You are a bit apprehensive because the decent looking fellow parked in the black truck behind you put on a back pack and you noticed he was carrying a black leathered holstered gun on his right side. You cannot write under these conditions. Later, Dude. - Amorella
2040 hours. We are home and waiting for a renewed PBS series, Grantchester, at nine. It has been a very pleasant evening out and about, plus we talked to Craig and Alta who are heading East in Missouri. You will see them on the twenty-third. You called as today is Alta's birthday. She is now a few weeks older than you, and she will be even at your own birthday, the sixth of August. - Amorella
After the show if you wish so at that time, we can finish up with Miss Havisham's commentary on this next subtitle from Stanford's "Ancient Theory of Souls".
2055 hours. I just noticed Miss Havisham's poetic line in her last commentary: I am a being and an act of spiritual thought; complete; whether I hold two clauses or not. Most cool.
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". . . A number of Stoic arguments for the claim that the soul is a body have come down to us. The best one of these is that the soul is a body because (roughly) only bodies affect one another, and soul and body do affect one another, for instance in cases of bodily damage and emotion . . ..
. . . Both Epicurus and the Stoics hold that the soul is a particularly fine kind of body, diffused all the way through the perceptible (flesh-and-blood) body of the animate organism . . ..
Epicurus thinks that the soul is dispersed at death along with its constituent atoms, losing the powers that it has while it is contained by the body of the organism that it ensouls.
The Stoics agree that the human soul is mortal, but they also take it that it can and does survive the person's death — that is, its separation from the perceptible body.
Chrysippus apparently thought that the souls of wise persons persist (as fine, imperceptible corporeal structures) all the way to the next conflagration in the cosmic cycle, whereas the souls of other people last for some time, and then get dispersed.
Selected and Edited From: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Ancient Theory of Souls
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Epicurus thought the soul was dispersed in death, losing the powers within the body that it ensouled. Chrysippus thought the soul persisted if it held a wise human heartanmind, and that when the soul was eventually dispersed it carried another wise person's heartanmind. How is it a soul would understand what human wisdom is by its own cognition? Can a human heartanmind understand what it is to be immortal and alone? Can a human understand what it is to carry an alien-like heartanmind? What does the soul gain by this? And, by the same token, what does a soul lose by carrying a mortal human heartanmind? Is the soul morally bound or is it duty bound to carry a mortal heartansoul? A soul has no word for 'wisdom' or 'good' or 'evil' within its own self. Why would it? The soul comes to understand the theatre of such human dilemma, but once the soul eventually loses a human heartanmind the soul's memory is put away of such is put away out of the honor and dignity a spiritual human heartansoul is due. It is put away elsewhere, a cemetery for visitation when the soul is alone and privately needs the company of its past human memories, warts and all, as the human saying goes. We are educated in the material world, but like old books, the memories of human thought and activity are each bound and separate for souls alone to contemplate. Such contemplation is as knowledge to be absorbed spiritually. Souls are the library a repository of what human life was. - mh
2345 hours. Miss Havisham, it sounds like we human spirits are used by souls; we are bound up as a kind of spiritual nourishment, and that you, as a soul, do not really care about the human heartanmind other than for spiritual self-education and knowledge, that the human heartanmind is put away so that another might be carried. That in a sense the immortal soul provides a taxi service of protection and comfort for the mortal human heartanmind; carrying it basically from one spiritual point to another.
This is indeed a human perspective you present, Mr. Orndorff. An immortal soul expects nothing more and nothing less. - mh
Post. - Amorella
2355 hours. But what if I have a rebuttal Amorella?
Do you? - Amorella
2356 hours. No, not at this time.
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