Lucretius, The Essential Nature of the Soul, and Mortality
I would like to address a criticism I made in response to the Check-In Question for
February 8, 2019:
The Original Argument:
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, Book III, Verse 6
1. A disembodied eyeball cannot process the world. [A]
2. The mind could not be without a body, and without sensory stimuli. [A]
3. "neither without body can the nature of mind by itself alone produce the motions of life." [2]
4. "nor yet bereft of soul can body last and feel sensation." [1]
5. "the living powers of body and mind prevail by union, one with the other." [1, 2, 3, 4]
6. "when the whole protection of the body is undone and the breath of life is driven without, you must needs admit that the sensations of the mind and the soul are
dissolved." [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
In other words, the soul is not immortal because the mind and the body are dependent on one another for survival, as evidenced by the uselessness of a disembodied eyeball and a mind without a body.
Responding Check-In Question
for 02/08/2019:
Take the argument you wrote about for yesterday, and offer an objection to it. An objection criticizes the premises, or the way the conclusion is supposed to follow from the premises. See pp. 32-34 of Mogck for more about objections.
My Response:
I cannot think of any ways that the explicit premises could be false, but I have a problem with the interchangeability of mind and soul as a definitional or essential premise; in my experience with the English language, the "mind" bears a much more secular connotation, and the "soul" bears a much more spiritual/religious connotation, and this is significant because Lucretius ends up attributing traits that I would associate with the mind with the soul and vice versa, and though I acknowledge this was translated and some of these nuances could be confused, but, as the argument is presented in the class text, with mind and soul used interchangeably--that’s a poor operational definition to use in rather foundational premises, and makes for a poor argument.
My Response to That Criticism:
My criticism of this criticism is that it does not properly expound upon why it is that using “mind” and “soul” interchangeably is problematic for the ‘operational definition’ of a soul/mind; it explains that one bears a secular connotation and that one bears a spiritual connotation, but not why that is problematic for the ‘operational definition.’ Thankfully, I have no need to speculate, as it was my argument. I feel confident enough in my memories that I believe myself to indeed be the same individual who wrote that original argument, and the criticism, because I have memory of doing those things. This logical line of reasoning is a cognitive process. It is of the mind. Even the existential confidence that it grants me is, in my mind, and, according to the apparent definitions of everyone I have encountered. It is more a process of my mind than my soul. Souls are often attributed personified traits that imply some sort of connection with emotion and purity and other subjective or abstract human concepts, but ultimately, those are all things that can mostly be logically and scientifically explained with modern science, while any such questions of the nature of the soul can certainly not be scientifically explained, and likely cannot even be properly addressed with science or logic, with such a nebulous definition and one of an immaterial, theoretical object which cannot otherwise be studied.
A search for both terms in a dictionary reveals that both “mind” and “soul” have many different definitions, but there are a couple of recurring themes that certainly occur in one and not the other, making them distinct; the two terms share that they both are qualified as being separate in physical form from the body but tied to mental and emotional processes, but the soul is qualified as surviving death while the mind is not, and the mind is qualified as an entity involving much of what the soul entails but also especially having to do with reason and logic (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/soul) (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/mind) (I could do a more objective analysis of all the definitions but 32 is a lot of definitions so I’ll save that for a larger project).
February 8, 2019:
The Original Argument:
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, Book III, Verse 6
1. A disembodied eyeball cannot process the world. [A]
2. The mind could not be without a body, and without sensory stimuli. [A]
3. "neither without body can the nature of mind by itself alone produce the motions of life." [2]
4. "nor yet bereft of soul can body last and feel sensation." [1]
5. "the living powers of body and mind prevail by union, one with the other." [1, 2, 3, 4]
6. "when the whole protection of the body is undone and the breath of life is driven without, you must needs admit that the sensations of the mind and the soul are
dissolved." [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
In other words, the soul is not immortal because the mind and the body are dependent on one another for survival, as evidenced by the uselessness of a disembodied eyeball and a mind without a body.
Responding Check-In Question
for 02/08/2019:
Take the argument you wrote about for yesterday, and offer an objection to it. An objection criticizes the premises, or the way the conclusion is supposed to follow from the premises. See pp. 32-34 of Mogck for more about objections.
My Response:
I cannot think of any ways that the explicit premises could be false, but I have a problem with the interchangeability of mind and soul as a definitional or essential premise; in my experience with the English language, the "mind" bears a much more secular connotation, and the "soul" bears a much more spiritual/religious connotation, and this is significant because Lucretius ends up attributing traits that I would associate with the mind with the soul and vice versa, and though I acknowledge this was translated and some of these nuances could be confused, but, as the argument is presented in the class text, with mind and soul used interchangeably--that’s a poor operational definition to use in rather foundational premises, and makes for a poor argument.
My Response to That Criticism:
My criticism of this criticism is that it does not properly expound upon why it is that using “mind” and “soul” interchangeably is problematic for the ‘operational definition’ of a soul/mind; it explains that one bears a secular connotation and that one bears a spiritual connotation, but not why that is problematic for the ‘operational definition.’ Thankfully, I have no need to speculate, as it was my argument. I feel confident enough in my memories that I believe myself to indeed be the same individual who wrote that original argument, and the criticism, because I have memory of doing those things. This logical line of reasoning is a cognitive process. It is of the mind. Even the existential confidence that it grants me is, in my mind, and, according to the apparent definitions of everyone I have encountered. It is more a process of my mind than my soul. Souls are often attributed personified traits that imply some sort of connection with emotion and purity and other subjective or abstract human concepts, but ultimately, those are all things that can mostly be logically and scientifically explained with modern science, while any such questions of the nature of the soul can certainly not be scientifically explained, and likely cannot even be properly addressed with science or logic, with such a nebulous definition and one of an immaterial, theoretical object which cannot otherwise be studied.
A search for both terms in a dictionary reveals that both “mind” and “soul” have many different definitions, but there are a couple of recurring themes that certainly occur in one and not the other, making them distinct; the two terms share that they both are qualified as being separate in physical form from the body but tied to mental and emotional processes, but the soul is qualified as surviving death while the mind is not, and the mind is qualified as an entity involving much of what the soul entails but also especially having to do with reason and logic (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/soul) (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/mind) (I could do a more objective analysis of all the definitions but 32 is a lot of definitions so I’ll save that for a larger project).
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