Deprived of Bodies?

A post on Just Thomism (link) reminded me, again, of the problematical nature of substance as understood by Aristotle and Aquinas (hylomorphism). An earlier post on that subject is here. If we assume that reality is a created structure and, as it were, complete in all important details from the beginning, this translates, in Aquinas’ thought, into the assertion that humans belong to an order in which the human being is a body-soul composite. If you separate soul from the body, the immortal soul, which Aquinas acknowledges, is in a deprived state where it is incapable of thought—which requires both intellect and sensory inputs. Therefore the brain is necessary. James Chastek, in the post referenced above, provides a very subtle argument of how you can escape this dilemma—while still retaining the problematical hylomorphic view.

What strikes me, however, is that we have what might be called empirical evidence—and here I refer to Near Death Experience reports—that disembodied souls continue to see, to sense, to think, and to perceive, even in situations in which they are comatose. And, yes. They do reach the edges of what here I call the Borderzone.

There is, of course, a difference between philosophy and faith. Christian belief does not demand assent to hylomorphism as such; that concept, after all, isn’t really revelation. It is something that must have seemed a happy schematic structure for a super-bright Greek pagan philosopher: matter and form, potential and act. God’s creation of man, taken from Genesis, requires an excessively literal belief to be interpreted as God making man from the dust of the ground. A more poetic interpretation leaves us lots of room for imagining vastly more complex answers. What experience and NDE reports suggest is that the soul is the real agency. The body is something we need in what may very well be a fallen dimension. And Aquinas’ own view that the intellect can only perceive universals, not particulars, and that it needs sensory organs even to see this apple, is more an accommodation to his principal teacher’s, Aristotle’s, scheme. Reality suggests something more simple: souls can perceive just fine, in or out of bodies. But while in these bodies, alas, we’ve got to have brains to think.