Why do you think the soul doesn’t exist in time and space? The soul can do so without being material; time is the measurement of change, and the soul can change, as when it apprehends a new concept.

1) If the mind is the function of the brain, then what does it mean for the mind to be immaterial? How are mind (immaterial) and brain (material) related?
2) If the mind is the function of the brain, why cannot some kind of mind be the function of computer hardware?

I think Thomas would agree with this — on the Aristotelian view the generator of artifacts is strictly speaking the art (skill) of making them. It’s just that the art can’t exist with actually existing in somebody, so we (reasonably) take the somebody-with-the-art to be the generator, in a somewhat broader sense. With God it’s slightly more complicated because of divine simplicity; but the ‘form’ in God that corresponds to art in the artificer case is the divine goodness.

I don’t see how you can get away from God being the First Cause, or from using the word “cause” of God’s activity. It’s His world; He created it. He’s the cause of the world, ultimately.

I don’t think that follows. God is the First Cause of things but He wills to bring them about through secondary causes. So, every effect has both God and other causes bringing it about.

On my own blog I question whether the word “cause” can be used of God’s activity. If it can’t be so used we cannot conclude to a First Uncaused Cause, but on the other hand may be able to show matter is not eternal (next section of the Compendium) rather then just saying that’s what the Catholic Faith requires.

“God cannot be the form of a body or any kind of force existing in a body. For, since all bodies are found to be mobile, whatever is present in a body must be moved, at least per accidens or concomitantly, if the body itself is moved. The first mover, however, cannot be moved either per se or per accidens, for it must be absolutely immobile as has been shown. Therefore God cannot be a body or a force in a body.”

(1) Many things can be made from matter.
(2) What makes this possible is that matter always has dimension, which allows this material thing (or part) to be distinguished from that one.
(3) Therefore things without dimension cannot be material.
(4) So incorporeal and invisible substances cannot be material.
(5) Therefore they cannot be made from pre-existing matter.

And obviously the reason for getting (4) from (3) would have to be that the substances in question are incorporeal, and thus not bodies (which are material things with dimension).

You may find this comment on Boethius on the Categories interesting:
http://www.humanities.mq.edu.au/Ockham/x52t02.html

Here is the Tree of Porphyry:
http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/433/PorphyryTree.html

Keep up the good work with your blog!

Tuur

So, no infinite regress must depend on some other analysis of cause and effect.

In case you missed it when I mentioned it on James’ blog, Vincent Edward Smith’s textbook modeled very closely on Aristotle’s Physics and St. Thomas’ Commentary is available online. He goes into more detail on particular issues in other books, but this is the best complete course I know of for a beginner working through Aristotle.

The Way These Two Faculties Are United in the Same Essence of the Soul
Radication of All the Faculties in the Essence of the Soul
Unicity of the Soul
Arguments Advanced to Show a Multiplicity of Souls in Man
Refutation of the Preceding Objections

In short, all of a man’s faculties are united in the one soul, which is his and no one elses, and he’s only got the one.

No I just need to read through it all.

So in other words I think it’s a long, complex argument for a conclusion that would usually seem pretty obvious to us, but for which St. Thomas has to provide an actual argument because of the different views about how the agent intellect and potential intellect are related to each other. (Some people thought that the agent intellect was something completely separate from any particular human being, &c.)

I’m an idiot when it comes to philosophy, but I was able to understand the distinction with the way you phrased it.

Thanks!!

By the way, by sheer accident, doing something else, I came across the poem by the early modern poet Sir John Davies in his poems on the immortality of the soul, which I thought was an interesting coincidence:

She lodgeth heat, and cold, and moist, and dry,
And life, and death, and peace, and war together;
Ten thousand fighting things in her doe lye,
Yet neither troubleth, or disturbeth either.

Of course, that would seem to indicate that intellect is unchanging, which doesn’t appear to be Thomas’s intent.

I have to say, I’ve found that working through the CT, as I said I would do in this post, has been a fruitful way to begin to pick it up.

You should probably also take a look at the blog “Just Thomism” (google it).

I don’t believe Maritain was any kind of existentist; he was a Thomist.

And then, he’s simply using “comprehend” in a more general way. (I love the distinction between “apprehend”, to seize, and “comprehend”, to grasp.) In this case, he seems to mean something like “includes all of”.

“a certain whole” means they are universals; think of universals in relation to particulars as wholes are related to their parts. He uses the word ‘certain’ to show it’s not exactly the same as with material composition, but in a certain way it is like it.

“aspect” etymologically is “ad-spicere”, to look to, so it has to do with how something is perceived, as you say, as opposed to how it is in itself; aspect could be in some way opposed to feature, or quality. To say something “has this aspect” differs from saying it has this or that quality, something analogous to the difference between denotation (ontological/quality) vs connotation (perception/aspect).

Finally, regarding comprehension, it more widely means being grasped, like the German “Begriff” (translated concept) (think of prehensile tail, ie a tail that grasps). Comprehension is something that totally grasps something else; eg God comprehends us, but we cannot comprehend God, we cannot get our mental fingers around him to grasp him.