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    Carmelics

    A reasoning platform. Break down any belief into clear reasons, explore both sides, and weigh the evidence honestly.

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Matter is not merely animated by an evil world soul but simply is the evil world soul, possessing life of its own.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Soul, even a disordered one, remains ontologically distinct from matter in Platonic metaphysics, as Plato himself distinguishes them in the Timaeus.
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    • 2.Identifying matter with soul collapses the distinction between substrate and mover, eliminating the explanatory role matter plays as the passive recipient of form.
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    • 3.Numenius's conflation therefore produces an incoherent monism that undermines the very dualism required to explain how evil enters the generated world.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Plotinus argues in Enneads I.8 that matter is evil not because it possesses life but because it is the absolute privation of form, the Good, and being.
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    • 2.A privation cannot coherently be identified with a soul, since soul for Neoplatonists is always a positive ontological principle possessing some degree of intelligible content.
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    • 3.Therefore the claim that matter simply is the evil world soul commits a category error by attributing agency and life to what is defined precisely by their absence.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.A soul that animates anything cannot be truly evil in doing so, because soul is the principle of life.
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    • 2.Life is a kind of order and therefore good.
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    • 3.Therefore matter cannot be animated by an evil soul; instead matter itself must be identified with the evil soul.
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