The Interaction of Noetic and Psychosomatic Operations in a Thomist Hylomorphic Anthropology

Abstract

Abstract. This article, the second of a two-part essay, outlines a solution to certain tensions in Thomist philosophical anthropology concerning the interaction of the human person's immaterial intellectual or noetic operations with the psychosomatic sensory operations that are constituted from the formal organization of the nervous system. Continuing with where the first part left off, I argue that Thomists should not be tempted by strong emergentist accounts of mental operations that act directly on the brain, but should maintain, with Aquinas, that noetic operations directly interact with psychosomatic operations. I develop a Thomist account of noetic-psychosomatic interactions that expands upon the first part's rapprochement between the new mechanist philosophy of neuroscience and psychology and hylomorphic animalism. I argue that noetic-psychosomatic interactions are best understood as analogous to the way diverse higher and lower order psychosomatic powers interact by actualizing, coordinating, and directing the operations of other psychosomatic powers. I draw on James Ross's arguments for the immateriality of intellectual operations as realizing definite pure functions in order to elucidate the way noetic operations uniquely actualize, coordinate, and direct the psychosomatic operations they interact with. I conclude with a conjectural sketch of how this presentation of Thomist philosophical anthropology understands the noetic and psychosomatic deficits brought about by damage to the nervous system.The Interaction of Noetic and Psychosomatic Operations... 6(2)/2018 DA N I E L D E H A A NKeywords: hylomorphism; new mechanist philosophy; neuroscience; psychology; philosophical anthropology; aristotelianism; intellectual and psychosomatic operations; Thomas Aquinas; thomism; James Ross; emergentism. and many are hylomorphically embodied in the nervous system. Just as the substance of the animal is constituted from the formal organization of its matter, so also the psychosomatic powers and operations of the animal are constituted from zones of organized material components, like the nervous system. Animals are fundamental entities for HMA, and it is the substance 6(2)/2018 In the first article, I introduced the well-known distinction between personal and sub-personal level attributes. In this article, I shall reserve this distinction for human persons and will employ a similar distinction between psychological and sub-psychological (or animal and sub-animal) level attributes in my treatment of topics common to humans and other animals. Abbreviations for the works of St. Thomas Aquinas DV T H E I N T E RACT I O N O F N O E T I C A N D P S YC H O S O M AT I C O P E RAT 2Elsewhere I have argued that HMA can accommodate the insights of NMP and that HMA's ontology of animal psychology can find in NMP the prospects of a complementary philosophy of biology, neuroscience, psychology. I take such claims for granted in this essay. See De Haan 2017a. 6(2)/2018 DA N I E L D E H A A N Thomist Hylomorphic PersonalismBecaus...

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