Digital Catholic Social Teaching by Mark Stahlman: Session 3: Human Dignity: Faculties of the Soul

0:00:00 Introduction
0:02:48 Question #1: What is the Soul and what are its Faculties?
0:13:33 Question #2: How do Psycho-technological environments work (us over)?
0:19:10 Question #3: Which environments have we experienced?
0:29:22 Question #4: What are "containment" and "retrieval"?
0:34:44 Question #5: What is an ELECTRIC human?
0:40:57 Question #6: What is an DIGITAL human?
0:48:39 Question #7: Will we survive the shift from Fantasy to Memory?
0:53:04 Audience Questions
0:59:40 What will happen to American Exceptionalism in the Digital age?
1:09:00 What constraints do each of the 5 psycho-technological environments place on human beings?
1:15:42 What does community look like in Digital age?
1:20:03 What do you mean when you say that Form is indissoluble with matter?
1:24:19 How are physical and biological laws relate to psycho-technological ages?


In the process, the Church’s authority about the character of the
human soul (“psyche” in Greek, “anima” in Latin) was severely
undermined, as “experimental” psychology took over. Still, underneath
Freud’s hostility to religion, a remnant of a Viennese Catholic
psychic understanding lurks in the shadows of his theories. Even that
has now been discarded and replaced with Cognitive Psychology,
modeling humans on computers. Increasingly marginalized, the Church
seemed to withdraw, pressured by the rising social sciences, with many
relying on a “mystical” interpretation of God’s relationship with
humanity. We forgot Aquinas’s Aristotelean Faculty Psychology and
manipulating the soul became a social engineering imperative.

Question #1: What is the Soul and what are its Faculties?

-- The Form of a living organism
-- Potential and actual
-- Material and immaterial
-- Inner Senses and Intellect
-- Loss of Faculty Psychology

Question #2: How do Psycho-technological environments work (us over)?

-- Technological structures shape sensibility
-- Subconscious and conscious
-- Habits become behaviors
-- Society demands affiliations
-- Faculties are re-balanced

Question #3: Which environments have we experienced?

-- Oral (??? --c. 500BC) Axial Age
-- Scribal (c. 500BC --1550) Classics
-- Print (c. 1550 --1850) Modern
-- Electric (c. 1850 --2000) Systems
-- Digital (c. 2000 --???) Human

Question #4: What are "containment" and "retrieval"?

-- Earlir environment contained in new one
-- Even older sensibilities are retrieved
-- Figure and Ground
-- Laws of Media
-- The Tetrad

Question #5: What is an ELECTRIC human?

-- A Machine (from Print)
-- An Animal (Darwin)
-- A Computer (Cognitive)
-- Psychological warfare
-- "Human Rights"

Question #6: What is a DIGITAL human?

-- Based on Memory, not Fantasy
-- Remembers what it means to be human
-- Retrieval of the Classics
-- Divided not unified
-- Society reorganized at human scale

Question #7: Will we survive the shift from Fantasy to Memory?

-- Identity is challenged/War and Peace
-- Generation gaps and institutions
-- Recovery of human freedom
-- Re-discovery of causality
-- Less work; more religion

Mark Stahlman, President of Center for the Study of Digital Life Presents.
Digital Catholic Social Teaching: The Church & Technology
Sundays at 3pm ET starting Feb 27 to April 17
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