Gambit
Well-Known Member
What is the soul?
"The soul is the form of the body." St. Thomas Aquinas (In DA II.1.234)
One of the leading theories for the nature of consciousness is the "integrated information theory (IIT)" (which would be compatible with Aristotle's and Aquinas' notion of the soul as the form of activity of the body. There are also a variety of "quantum mind" hypothesis which augments this view.
"The soul is the form of the body." St. Thomas Aquinas (In DA II.1.234)
"Aquinas (following Aristotle) defined the soul to be "the form of activity of the body." In Aristotelian language, the formal cause of an action is the abstract cause, as opposed to the material and efficient cause. For a computer, the program is the formal cause, while the material cause is the properties of the matter out of which the computer is made, and the efficient cause is the opening and closing of electric circuits. For Aquinas, a human soul needed a body to think and feel, just as a computer program needs a physical computer to run. (source: pg. 127, "The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead" by Frank J. Tipler)
"The word "information" comes from the Aristotle-Aquinas' notion of "form": we are "informed" if new forms are added to the receptive intellect. Even semantically, the information theory of the soul is the same as the Aristotle-Aquinas theory." pp. 127-128 "The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead" by Frank J. Tipler)
One of the leading theories for the nature of consciousness is the "integrated information theory (IIT)" (which would be compatible with Aristotle's and Aquinas' notion of the soul as the form of activity of the body. There are also a variety of "quantum mind" hypothesis which augments this view.
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