Visualizing Natural Family Planning

Introduction

My wife and I use Natural Family Planning (NFP).  In fact, full disclosure, my wife teaches NFP.  For those that may not know, NFP is a way to achieve or avoid pregnancy naturally by using a woman's natural signs and observations throughout her cycle to determine the couple's fertility on any given day.  No, it's not the rhythm method.  It is actually quite effective in avoiding and achieving pregnancy, it encourages mutual support and communication about sex between the couple, and it does not require the use of hormones or devices to be effective.  Sounds pretty good, huh?  For more information, click here.

The specific brand of NFP we use is called the Creighton Model FertilityCare System.  As part of using this system, the couple charts the signs/observations for every day of the cycle on a paper chart.  When the cycle is complete, a new row on the chart is used.  This is repeated over and over for every cycle.  You get the following when you have completely filled out a chart:

At some point, I realized that my wife's many charts of her cycles formed a great dataset.  I know for every day of her cycle for the past 3 years what her fertility is and what the specific signs and observations associated with that day are.  I thought to myself, couldn't I visualize this data in a useful way to look at, say, a given day's likelihood of being fertile?  What other sorts of information could I gather from the charts?

Below are my observations and visualizations of what I uncovered about our use of NFP.  Yes, I am doing this with my wife's full knowledge, consent, editing, approval, and blessing.  Thanks for asking.  Yes, this is extremely personal, but I think it is worthwhile for our own and other's understanding of NFP and its uses.

If you are squeamish about topics related to sex, menstrual cycles, bodily fluids, and so forth, you probably should just stop here.  I'll try to be as clinical and impersonal as possible so that we can focus on the data and it's implications.

Understanding the Data

For every day, a user of the NFP system records several aspects of her fertility observations, which are recorded in the following way (for understanding more fully what this means, click here):

• Color stamp:
• Red (menstrual flow, spotting), Green (dry), Yellow (non-fertile discharge), White-baby (mucus), Green-baby (dry day within peak plus 3)
• Number:
• 0,2,4: various forms of dry observations
• 6,8,10 - indicates the length of the mucus
• Letters:
• VL (very light), L (light), M (medium), H (Heavy.  Used on red days.
• C (cloudy), K (clear), L (lubricative), P (pasty), B (brown), Y (Yellow), G (Gummy).  Used on mucus or discharge days.
• xX or AD:
• indicates number of observations.  E.g., x3 indicates 3 times observed that day.  AD means all day.
• I: whether intercourse took place that day.

So, if you saw this:

 

 

That would mean, "on 5/4 there was fertile peak type mucus that was peak type that was stretchy, cloudy, clear, and lubricative, and it was observed all day."

 

I converted this information into rows with the following columns:

• Date
• Day of cycle
• Stamp
• Number
• Flow type (VL, L, M, H)
• Type (0,4,6,8,10)
• Letters (B, C, K, L, G, Y, P)
• Duration
• Intercourse
• PeakDay
• Avoiding?
• Pregnant?
• Nursing?
• PostPartum?
• PMS?
• Headache?
• Fertile?

There were 1,114 row (days) in the dataset, consisting of 36 cycles.

 

What can we learn from this dataset?

 

Analysis and Visualization

Time for the fun.  I'll be using this opportunity to explore Microsoft's latest Power BI offerings for visualization.

 

A typical cycle lasts about 26 days (26.33 days with standard deviation of 1.66).  The longest cycle is 29 days (excluding the cycle in which a conception occurred), or 31 (if we count up to the day of confirmed pregnancy).

 

 

 

Stamps

What does a typical cycle look like in this dataset?  Look at the graph below.  The day of the cycle is along the x-axis and the percentage of stamp type is along the y-axis.

 

Note: I couldn't rearrange the stacking order of the categories in PowerBI, so I used Excel for this chart.

 

The first five days are always menstrual flow.  Then this tapers off on days 6, 7, and 8 and gives way to either dry days (green) or fertile days (white).  The fertile days peak in days 11, 12, and 13 and then give way to discharge days (yellow) or dry days.  There are occasional spotting (red) days throughout and occasional fertile days near the end of the cycle. 

 

The rising and falling of each kind of stamp is more easily seen in the below chart.

 

 

 

Menstrual Flow

The first five days are always menstrual flow.  Then it declines to day 10.  The kind of flow changes over the course of this time period.  Usually, the first day is medium or heavy.  The second day is almost always heavy.  The third is usually medium.  Then we progress to medium or light, then light or brown, then very light or brown for the rest menstrual flow.  See the below chart.

 

 

So a typical progression could be medium, heavy, medium, light, very light, brown.

 

Type

Consider the ugly and poorly designed chart below of type of mucus.  This reflects how long the mucus can stretch.

 

Note: an example of what not to do in data visualization.

 

There is a lot going on and it is not easy to see (partly deliberate).  I'll bring out the important points and show the individual graph as well.

• 0: dry days are rare except in two peaks.  The first is days 7-12, which is between the menstrual flow and the mucus buildup.  The second is after ovulation has occurred (the mucus), resulting in dry days for the rest of the cycle.

 

• 2: relatively dry days are similar to 0 in exhibiting two peaks along the same lines, but with more counts.

 

• 4: starts off at day 4 relatively high, then dips down a little during the mucus buildup.  There is a little peak after the mucus build up.  None of the peaks are very strong.

 

• 6: for cloudy/pasty discharge there are two peaks.  The first is in days 5-8 (just after the menstrual flow but before any mucus).  The second occurs in days 15-18 (immediately after the mucus) and then steadily declines (giving way to dryer days).

 

• 8: this mucus observation becomes more and more common, from nearly nothing, to peaking around days 14 and 15 (immediately after the peak in the cycle) and then suddenly dropping to very few for the rest of the cycle.

• 10: this kind of mucus builds from nothing to peaking in days 10-13 and then declines again towards the end of the cycle.

 

 

The change from 2 peaks (0,2,4) to 1 peak (6,8,10) can be seen in the follow graph:

 

The color changes from light (0) to dark (10) as the type of mucus increases in value.  This is easier to see when I group 0,2,4 as light and 6,8,10 as dark:

Peak By Day

When does the cycle reach its peak?  On average, about15 days (14.62 with 2.09 standard deviation).  Along with the average length of a cycle, this results in a post-peak phase of about 11 days (11.57 with 2.08 standard deviation).  Below is a stacked area graph representing the counts of occurrences of the peak day (P) and days following the peak day (1-15) by the day of the cycle. 

 

 

 Note: I couldn't figure out how to reorder the legend to be P-15.  It treats it as categorical instead of numerical/linear.  Ideally, the P would be on the bottom of the stack, then 1, then 2, etc. through 15.

 

Since the above graph is a little difficult to understand (although perhaps intriguing), below shows only the peak day distribution:

 

Note: perhaps this area chart isn't the best option for displaying counts over time. 

 

 

 

PMS

PMS only seems to occur following the Peak day.  It increases in likelihood as one nears the beginning of the next cycle.  This should not be surprising as PMS is "pre-menstrual" and for many women seems to signal the coming of the next cycle.

 

Note: This chart is from Excel.  Power BI can't rearrange the X-axis appropriately.

 

Intercourse

When does intercourse occur?  Consider the below chart:



 

 

 

We see a general pattern that is similar to a pattern we have seen before.  A first peak at around day 7, then dropping down in the middle about day 14, and then another peak about day 23, and then falling again.  What is going on here? 

 

The peaks in intercourse correspond to infertile days, while the drop in the middle corresponds to the fertile days of a typical cycle.  And this should be no surprise for users of the system.  A couple will, when avoiding pregnancy (which may be most of the time), use infertile days for intercourse while avoiding fertile days.  This is easier to see in the following two charts which filter on the couple's use of the method: (1) avoiding a pregnancy and (2) not avoiding a pregnancy.

 

The first chart below shows the couple avoiding a pregnancy, and hence, only using the infertile days for intercourse.  This is why we see two peaks, corresponding to the infertile days in the cycle.

 

 

 

 

In this second chart, the couple is not avoiding a pregnancy, and hence, intercourse occurs throughout the cycle.

 

 

 

For a fuller picture, consider the following table:

Avoiding Pregnancy?	Fertile?	Intercourse	No Intercourse	Sum Of Row	Intercourse/Sum Of Row
No	Yes	28	50	78	0.36
No	No	51	127	178	0.29
Yes	Yes	7	394	401	0.02
Yes	No	171	285	456	0.38
Sum Of Column		257	856	1113	0.23

 

 

The couple has intercourse 23% of the time.  But this 23% is not equally distributed amongst fertile vs. infertile days and avoiding vs. non-avoiding days.  Starting with avoiding days, when the couple is fertile, about 2% of days are used for intercourse.  Note that this 2% would be an improper use of the system.  When infertile, 38% of the days are used for intercourse.  When not avoiding, the fertile days are used 36% of the time for intercourse; the infertile days are used 29% of the time.

 

Given the foregoing, we can calculate that 35% of the time, the couple has intercourse when the fertility is in line with the avoiding vs. not avoiding intention (that is, when excluding the days in which the couple is fertile but is trying to avoid a pregnancy).

 

Various sources online citing how often a couple has sex on "average" per year give numbers like 104, 112, 118, 124, 127.  So 29% to 35% of all days in a year.  Thus, the above is in the "normal" range.

 

Letters

I broke the Letters column into a column of "Yes" or "No" values for each letter - B, C, K, L, G, Y, and P.  For example, if "CKL" was recorded, then C, K, and L columns would have a "Yes" for that row, while the other letter columns would have a "No".  Let's look at each of these:

 

B

Brown spotting occurs usually during or right after the menstrual flow.  However, it also is known to occur at ovulation.  This is likely what happened on day 14.

 

 

 

C

Cloudy mucus/discharge increases to a peak about day 17 and then declines afterwards.  This peak is right after the Peak day.  The C is associated with the yellow stamp, so it is not surprising that we see it following in much the same pattern.

 

 

 

 

K

K (clear) type mucus is associated with the buildup to and the occurrence of the peak of the cycle (e.g., ovulation).  So it is not surprising that Ks peak around days 11-13, right before and at a typical Peak day.  They fall back down again to almost nothing afterwards.

 

 

L

Lubricative days are also associated with fertility, and hence, appear most often in the buildup to and around the Peak day of the cycle.  These then decline afterwards with a few signs following after the peak.

 

 

G

Gummy type discharge doesn't really show any pattern.  While rare, it is distributed fairly evenly across the middle of the cycle, avoiding the very beginning and very ends of the cycle.

 P

Pasty discharge shows two peaks and is typically associated with the yellow stamps.  The first peak occurs right after the menstrual flow and then declines to almost nothing before the Peak.  Then it builds back up to day 18 as the mucus gives way.  It then declines again towards the end of the cycle.

Y

Yellow discharge doesn't show much of a pattern, except perhaps two groupings: right after the menstrual flow and right after the Peak day and following.  But this is also a pretty rare occurrence.

 

 Fertility

 

Finally, we can look at the fertile vs. non-fertile days.  Since red days and white days are treated as fertile, along with Peak 0,1,2 and 3 days, the fertile days follow the pattern of the red and white days put together along with the days just after the peak.

 

 

 

Summary

 In short, we can see that this woman's typical cycle lasts about 26 days, with ovulation (peak day as an estimate) occurring around day 15.  The menstrual flow lasts for 5 days before giving way to the mucus build up towards ovulation.  After the peak, discharge gives way to dry days as the cycle winds down to its end.  Then the cycle repeats.  Fertile signs occur in a single peak in the middle of the cycle, while infertile signs form two peaks on either side of the fertile peak.

 

Because the couple is using the system most of the time to avoid pregnancy, intercourse follows the pattern of infertile days: a smaller peak before ovulation and a larger peak after ovulation.  When the couple is not avoiding a pregnancy, intercourse occurs throughout the cycle.

 



Conclusion: Why It Matters

So what?  Why is this important?  Here are some data-driven/analytics reasons that one can see from the above data and charts above:

• Predictability: a couple/woman that charts the cycle can get a sense of what is normal.  They/she can predict when the woman will be fertile or infertile based on past cycles. 
• Planning: Predictability is especially useful when trying to achieve or avoid a pregnancy.  One can determine when to have intercourse so as to increase the chances of a pregnancy occurring (useful for couples struggling with infertility) or to avoid a pregnancy.  The woman can also determine when her next cycle is likely to begin, and can prepare for her menstrual flow.  Finally, other aspects associated with the cycle (e.g., PMS, headaches, cramping) can be recognized as cyclical/hormonal and prepared for/addressed appropriately.
• Disease prevention and health awareness: a woman that knows what her typical cycle looks like can recognize an abnormal cycle, which can indicate various kinds of diseases or complications.  The woman's cycle is a great indicator of health and can point to hormonal imbalances, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), abnormal bleeding, infertility, and many other health issues.
• Infertility treatment: a couple trying to achieve a pregnancy can pinpoint the most fertile days.  Furthermore, a trained health professional can use the information contained in the chart to assess the couple for various kinds of infertility issues (e.g., limited mucus) and recommend treatments to increase fertility.

In addition to the above considerations, here are some other more philosophical considerations that are not based on the above data:

• Hormone free, all natural, green, organic sex: the couple requires no birth control devices, barriers, hormones, pills, or chemicals for an effective method of achieving and avoiding a pregnancy.
• Ethical: some couples may be concerned about the ethics of the potential abortifacient mechanisms of birth control methods or in using assisted reproductive technologies, such as in vitro fertilization.  These natural methods avoid those ethical concerns for both avoiding and achieving a pregnancy.
• Communication: the system encourages and to a certain extent requires the couple to communicate about their sexual health and intentions with regards to achieving or avoiding a pregnancy.  It is a shared system in which all information is available to both the man and the woman.  Each month, the couple revisits questions related to achieving or avoiding a pregnancy to help the couple remain on the same page in regards to their sex and family life.

In short, there are both good philosophical and analytical reasons for using NFP.  If you are interested in finding out more about this, click here. 

In any case, the data generated by users of the system provides a fruitful and interesting area for exploration and discovery, not only about oneself, but also about health, fertility, and sex in general.

 



Philosophy of Analytics, Lesson Five: How (Form and Material Causes)

Introduction

In lesson one I discussed the importance of keeping in mind the purpose of analytics when you are starting and designing and running an analytics project (the why of analytics).   In lesson two, I discussed the importance of understanding the who behind analytics: who is doing it and who is it for.  In lesson three, I answered the when question: when should one use analytics? In lesson four, I addressed the where question: where is analytics important?

In this final lesson, we turn to the how question: how do you do analytics?  Since this can be answered in many ways, I am framing this question by looking at the two remaining causes from Aristotle: the material and formal causes.  That is, what constitutes the material of analytics? What constitutes the form of analytics?  These are closely related and so it makes sense to address them together.

By form, I mean the forms that "analytics" can take, independent of any specific implementation.  By material, I mean the specific implementation of a form.  For example, data can be presented in the form of a table.  However, the specific implementation can be in a database table or in a spreadsheet or an online table.  We can be even more specific by mentioning the specific software: Excel, SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, Google Sheets...

How: Form and Material Causes

Here is an overview of the various forms and materials available for doing analytics.  This is a very incomplete list, and contains only what I know about and am most familiar with.  I am on this journey of discovery with you, and I am sure many other additions could be made.  Consider this a starting point.  I will discuss the step in the analytics process, the forms available in that step, and some examples of specific materials available for those forms.

Step 1: Database pipeline/database management

First, you need to get data, and you need to get it in a regular, stable, predictable, and automated way (ideally).  And you need to be able to store it and clean it.

• Database server:
• Typically, one pulls data from various sources into a database on a server where it can be cleaned up, transformed, and queried easily.  One can automate this process scheduling jobs to pull the data regularly, and monitor the process using logs and alerts.
• Examples:
• SQL Server: Microsoft's relational SQL database solution.
• Access: Microsoft's Office relational database for small applications
• Oracle: has relational SQL and also NoSQL solutions
• MySQL: an opensource relational SQL database solution
• MongoDB: NoSQL database for big data applications
• Cloudera: Hadoop big data solution
• Spreadsheets/flat files:
• One can pull data into spreadsheets and flat files.  This is often necessary when connecting to online sources of data.  These are easy to clean and change.
• Examples:
• Excel: Excel is widely used to pull and store data.
• Google Sheets
• PowerQuery: an add-in to Excel which can make pulling data from various sources a lot quicker and easier.
• CSV: a common file format, comma separated value (CSV) files make it is easy to share one-time data requests.

Step 2: Data warehouse/data integration/metric definition

Now that you have data stored, you need to integrate it together in useful ways, relating one set of data to another set of data.  A data warehouse is a useful place to define relationships and create metrics so that your individual data sets can be treated and used as an interrelated single data set.

• Data Warehouse
• Example:
• SQL Server Analysis Services: Microsoft's data warehouse solution.  Use MDX to build cubes that can be queried in reporting.  Define metrics, KPIs, and pre-aggregate data for faster reporting refreshes.
• Other
• Example:
• PowerPivot: an Excel add on to bring a data warehouse inside an Excel file.  Use it to pull and refresh data, relate tables, and define metrics.

Step 3: Basic reporting from data warehouse/databases

Now that your data is integrated, you can use the data for reporting.  Connect to your data warehouse or databases and start reporting the data contained in tables to your users.  Reports are intended to show detailed data and status; they are generally static  and can show actuals of metrics vs. target values for those metrics with granular detail for many important fields.  What were sales like in every branch over the past three months?  Which users were using your software this past year?  You can display this information in a tabular format for your stakeholders to digest and assess the status of various metrics at a detailed level.

• Reporting Service: some software has the capability of automating pre-defined reports that can be emailed on a scheduled basis.  These pull data automatically, and display the resulting table for users to see.
• Example:
• SQL Server Reporting Services: Microsoft's reporting service
• Spreadsheet: most reports I have seen come as spreadsheets, usually with some minor charts to show trends over time.  These are generally manually refreshed on a regular basis (pull the data, copy/paste into the file) and then emailed to users on a distribution list or posted in a shared location.
• Example:
• Excel
• Google Sheets

Step 4: Dashboarding

Once you have basic reporting, make it easy for your users to interact with the data and to gain insight into that data.  Help them acquire answers to their questions: why did sales go up this past month?  In what country did sales go up the most?  Is there a particular client most responsible for the increase in sales?

The point of a dashboard is usually not to merely report detailed status but to provide insight into how a wide variety of factors may influence a metric, and to show how key metrics are changing over time at a broad level.  This can be done in several ways. 

First, a dashboard can (although not always) allow users to slice and dice across the interrelated data set.  Users can isolate different facets of the data, try different combinations of filters, etc. all to understand how different fields are related.   If the dashboard does not allow users to filter or slice, then in one sense it is a dashboard in that it can visually display key metrics, but it will not help users understand what is really going on in driving those metrics or what key factors are important.  Whether this matters comes down to the point of the dashboard: is it meant to be displayed on a TV monitor and updated regularly for status, or is it meant to be leveraged by users through slicing to gain insight?  Each kind of dashboard has its place, and you need to decide what purpose your dashboard will serve and design accordingly.

Second, the data is NOT static.  Often, it is desirable to have more regular refreshes of the data (hourly, daily) so that progress can be tracked more closely and trends can be spotted more quickly.   A dashboard is meant to keep track of ongoing metrics that are key for an organization and which can lead to action.  They are meant to provide an overview of what is going on at this point in time and as time goes on.  If the dashboard only reports static data in a visual way, then it should probably be called a visual report, not a dashboard.

Third, metrics are displayed graphically instead of tabularly, and are placed together in ways that complement each other.  For example, one might have a dashboard with sales trends month over month, transaction counts month over month, sales totals by country on a map, and transaction counts by country on map.  These are all related, and one can quickly gather insight into the relationship between sales, transaction counts, and location by scanning the dashboard.  If data is being shown tabularly, then it is definitely not a dashboard and is more like a query tool (with slicing) or a regularly updating report.

Check out this for more thoughts on the difference between a dashboard and a report.  In short, reports are detailed and tabular and focus on a specific set of data in general.  Dashboards are visual, broad, and focus on a group of key metrics that are meant to be tracked over time and are actionable.  In the end, think about what purpose your report/dashboard will serve before creating it.  It matters less whether it is a pure dashboard or pure report.  What is important is that it serves the needs of your organization in the most effective way according to its intended purpose.

• Dashboarding: these are programs specifically designed for doing dashboarding.  One can ingest data, relate the data, define metrics and KPIs, and visualize the data in dynamic charts that a user can click and slice through to gain insight.
• Example:
• PowerBI: Microsoft's latest stand alone solution for BI dashboarding.  Takes the PowerPivot, Power Query, and Power View add ins from Excel and places them in a single application.
• Tableau
• QlikView
• Spreadsheet: you can use spreadsheets to create a dashboard.  When connected to a server, regularly refreshed, and visualized, they can be a simple and effective means of dashboarding.
• Example:
• Excel
• Google Sheets

Step 5: Predictive/advanced analytics, statistical analysis, machine learning

Now that you have good data to work with an idea of what is important to look at (based on your dashboards), you can start to do deeper analysis and focus on the why of the past to give guidance about how to anticipate, influence, and take advantage of the future.  Examples of the sorts of analysis you do can include:

• Regression: Use statistical software to create a trend line model that gives a numeric value for a future/unknown data point.
• Classification: Predict a value/class/grouping for a person/company/entity based on data for other people/companies/entities.
• Clustering: Group items together based on similarities among these items.
• Dimension Reduction / Feature Selection / Factor Analysis: Determining which factors/dimensions of an entity are important in predicting a different value/dimension.
• Simulation: Coding a computer program to simulate a real life scenario.  Uses probabilities, if-then statements, etc.  After running this scenario thousands of times, the likelihood of any event can be determined.
• A/B (Hypothesis) Testing: Using statistical analysis to determine if a change/experiment has produced a significant difference in our target variable.
• Natural Language Processing: Using algorithms to analyze the words in a review, Tweet, email, or any text to determine the sentiment, subject matter, or anything else of interest we may want to find out.

These analyses can be ad hoc or operationalized into your system to provide automated analyses on the latest data available.  These can then be used in your reporting and/or added to your production data for more efficient products and services.  Examples of software to use in performing the above types of analyses include:

• R: an open source alternative to MATLAB,SAS, or SPSS.  Along with Python, the most popular programming language for doing data science.
• Python: another open source programming language for doing data science.  Along with R, it is the most popular programming language for doing data science.
• Octave: an open source version of MATLAB.  Not very widely used.
• MATLAB: a paid statistical programming language.  Still extremely popular and used in corporate and research settings.
• Excel: has basic statistical capabilities, but doesn't have more of the advanced analytics features.  Still, it is easy to use, widely available, and can do most things that most users need.
• Weka: data mining with a GUI.  Easy to use for exploring data and building classification models.  Free.
• SAS: still widely used, commercial analytics software.  Has its own statistical programming language.  Is decreasing in popularity due to R and Python.
• SPSS: IBM's commercial analytics solution.
• Azure Machine Learning: Microsoft's data science GUI based in its Cloud platform offerings. Easy to use and free to try, but must pay for more extensive use.

Step 6: Visualization

While all dashboarding involves visualization (and it may be the most common form of data visualization), not all visualization involves dashboarding.  For example, we often create one off visualizations (e.g., charts, graphs) that can be used in reports and presentations.  For most purposes, visualizations can be taken from a dashboard that have been sliced and filtered in a certain way to present a key insight.  However, sometimes more complex data visualizations will be needed that cannot be easily generated using a dashboard.  Such visualizations may require multiple layers in a graph or chart, creating infographics, generating a word cloud, and various other kinds of more complex visualizations. 

These kinds of visualizations are usually static (i.e., not regularly refreshing with a data feed) and are crafted and stylized more carefully and with more complexity.  The visualization is the end product, whereas with dashboarding, the visualization is a means to the end (which is the observation of status or discovery of key insights).

Here is a very incomplete list of some ways to visualize that are different from the above mentioned dashboarding tools:

• Programming languages:
• Examples:
• R: mentioned above, contains many packages for more complex visualizations, particularly related to statistical analysis, machine learning, and natural language processing, such as ggplot2, lattice, wordcloud.
• Python: mentioned above, also contains many packages for visualizations with matplotlib being the most well known.
• d3: a javsacript library for creating visualizations displayed in web browsers. Very popular. 
• Presentation software:
• Examples:
• PowerPoint
• Graphic Design:
• Example:
• Adobe Illustrator: along with other types of graphic design software, can be used to create visualizations that are not programmable or standardized.  Can bring together multiple visualizations into a single visualization.

Conclusion

How do you do analytics?  Like anything, it takes practice and study. If you are new to this field, dive in and start trying stuff.  Pick something in the above list that stands out to you, try it out, and read about it.  Then start to branch out into other areas as you try new things.  For the more seasoned veterans, read up on the latest updates, study up on the latest books and topics, take online courses or certificate programs to update your skills.  In other words, you do analytics by practicing and learning about it as you do it.

As I bring this series to a close, remember these things when doing analytics:

• Keep the end in mind: what is the purpose of your analytics?
• Understand who your stakeholders are and what beliefs, desires, and goals they have.
• Think about when you should and should not be doing analytics.
• Know where you should be doing analytics.
• Reflect on how you do analytics and always be open to new and better ways of doing it.

Good luck!

Philosophy of Analytics, Lesson Four: Where

Introduction

In lesson one I discussed the importance of keeping in mind the purpose of analytics when you are starting and designing and running an analytics project (the why of analytics).   In lesson two, I discussed the importance of understanding the who behind analytics: who is doing it and who is it for.  In lesson three, I answered the when question: when should one use analytics?  In this lesson, I turn to the where question: where is analytics important?

Where?

Where is analytics needed?  Referring to the purpose of analytics, it is needed anywhere that one needs to justify or change beliefs by using data to generate true beliefs so that one can make decisions to achieve one's goals.  And where is that? Places/domains where beliefs (though perhaps true) are not justified and places where beliefs are false and need to be changed in accordance with the data.

A Problem

I have a Masters in philosophy.  What academic philosophers actually do is research and write on various topics related to ethics, politics, religion, metaphysics (what is the nature of existence and reality), epistemology (how do we know things and justify our beliefs), science, language, and the mind.  The way philosophers write papers or develop theories is that they formulate arguments using logical forms of reasoning on their chosen topic, usually to counter the arguments made by others that have a different view of a topic.

The nature of most of these topics is not subject to empirical verification (i.e., data), and so arguments and reasoning must do the work of justifying a point of view and convincing others to adopt that view.  While there is often some progress in countering views and persuading others, most often, even with full understanding of the opponent's arguments and reasons, both sides remain unpersuaded by their opponents view.  Peter van Inwagen and David Lewis, perhaps the two foremost metaphysicians in the 20th century have had many exchanges with this sort of result.  Van Inwagen laments that "I have done all I can to communicate [my views] to Lewis, and he has understood perfectly everything I have said, and he has not come to share my conclusions."
This is abstract reasoning and argumentation at its best, and often it isn't enough to determine the truth of the matter. 

At its worst, argumentation devolves into a host of fallacies: insulting/verbally attacking an opponent (ad hominem), misrepresenting the opponent's view (straw man), threats to the opponent, appealing to others/authority, appealing to pity, appealing to ignorance, or slippery slopes.  These methods of argumentation often appeal to and use emotion to ground the argument's effectiveness instead of looking to reasons and evidence.  Such rhetoric is all too common in our experience of statements made by politicians and other leaders, who seek power above the truth.

Fortunately, the matters with which businesses and organizations deal with are usually not the sorts of abstract things that are impossible to gather data about.  Even intangibles like "job performance" and "friendliness" can be defined and measured in useful ways (read this book for how to do this).  Indeed, philosophers have taken to collecting data about philosophical views as a way of bolstering support for their views and to gain insight into the nature of these philosophical debates.

Does data solve all of our problems then?  Unfortunately, no.  Ever heard the phrase, "lies, damned lies, and statistics?"  Data can be cited by both sides of an issue, each cherry picking specific aspects of the data to draw support for their view.  In these instances, what may be stated as the facts is true to a certain extent, but it may misrepresent the whole picture or be used to draw false conclusions.  Each side looks for evidence to support their foregone conclusion or theory.

I have worked in situations where the data behind key metrics was so cleaned, filtered, caveated, and adjusted that I was left wondering whether the metric actually corresponded to any meaningful sense of reality or was useful in any way.  Often, it seemed that the data was transformed so as to give the appearance of meeting specific targets; it was abused to support false or misleading conclusions instead of used to reflect reality.

A Solution

What are we to do then in seeking after the truth, if reasoning and evidence is not enough to guarantee an arrival at the truth?  Here are some suggestions, that while not perfect, can help combat bias and make sure that the decisions you make are based on evidence that is a good model of reality:

• Experiment: the scientific method can help.  We start with the evidence and then test the evidence against hypotheses.  The adoption of AB testing (hypothesis testing) in the business world is a great application of this approach.  With the data you have, formulate a hypothesis, test the hypothesis, and then evaluate whether it is true or not.  Such an approach is becoming more possible in business scenarios, enabling us to rely on data and evidence to drive and support our theories, instead of shoehorning data to fit our theories and arguments.  Finally, accept the results; don't explain them away, even if they contradict your preferred theory or intuition.
• Present alternatives: when presenting the results, present also the alternative explanations and conclusions that could be drawn from the analysis.  Explain why you have chosen a particular explanation in favor of others, but do not omit the others altogether.  You want to present the whole picture to your stakeholders.
• Conservative:  not in the political sense.  Be conservative in the conclusions you draw.  Imagine alternative explanations that are different from yours, and if they are at all reasonable, limit the scope of your explanation to what is supported by the data (and run more experiments to test these other hypotheses).  Don't extrapolate beyond your data.
• Clarity and Transparency: as best as you can, be clear about how you are handling the data (e.g., cleaning, filtering, transforming), and be transparent about your processes for gathering, transforming, analyzing, and visualizing data.  Make sure that your stakeholders know how you are doing your work (to the level of detail needed) so that they understand how to use the results appropriately.
• Accountability/Socialize: be accountable and socialize your data and results.  Use internal auditing. Have other team members look at your code or perform sanity checks on the results.  Work with those holding opposing views to jointly look at and understand the data before publishing results.  Make the raw data available so that others can check the data and verify the results.
• Patience/Kindness: where analytics is needed most is probably where it will meet the most resistance.  These will be areas that are relying on argument, intuition, and perhaps some fallacies to push decisions.  Analytics will be seen as unnecessary at best or as threatening at worst.  Individuals in these areas will be more interested in their own power, prestige, and status than in seeking the truth of the matter and making effective decisions.  Instead of demonizing such individuals, practice patience and kindness with them.  Build bridges.  Work with those that are receptive to analytics so that those that aren't can see the fruits of your labor (and will want to take part).  Data wins in the end; truth wins in the end.  If you have good analytics, the results of the decisions made in accordance with your analytics will vindicate you.  Be patient and kind.
• Move on: if however your patience and kindness hasn't led anywhere, and you have no way to move forward in your analytics work and in bringing about evidence-based decisions, it may be time to move on.  Find an organization/business that does care about data and making decisions based on data.  Don't waste too much time trying to convince those whose beliefs are impervious to sound reasoning and conclusive evidence.  You won't convince them, and you will continue to be a part of an organization/business likely headed towards failure or irrelevance.  Instead, move your skills somewhere else where they will be appreciated and utilized.  Data still wins in the end, but that victory may need to take place somewhere else.
• Humility:  you are not perfect.  You have been wrong and you will be wrong again.  You will make bad decisions and mistakes in how you gather, transform, analyze, and draw conclusions from your data.  When you are called out or discover your mistake, own up to it.  Work to resolve your mistake and learn from the experience.  Listen to others, especially those that disagree with you, to learn their thoughts on the work you are doing so you make sure you are covering your bases and their concerns.  Socrates is quoted as saying that he is wise because he does not claim to know anything.  Someone famous once said something like "I can only be certain of my own views when I know the arguments of my opponents better than they do."  Be humble in your work, and you will be more successful (along with your analytics) in the long run.

Remember that you are seeking the truth.  Analytics is about representing reality correctly so that one can make successful decisions based on true beliefs.

Conclusion

Use analytics everywhere, especially where it is most lacking and needed the most.  That is, use analytics where beliefs (though perhaps true) are not justified or where beliefs are false and need to be changed in accordance with the data.  When important decisions related to goals are being made, good analytics can help make sure that good decisions are made so as to achieve those goals.

Hylomorphism and Contemporary Personal Ontology

I wrote this paper for a Philosophy of Mind class while completing my MA in Philosophy.  This was submitted on November 30, 2010 and remains as I submitted it (apart from formatting changes).

In rereading the paper, I would change many things.  In fact, I believe that some serious objections can be raised against my argument at crucial points which would defend the hylomorphist view.  Please read the paper below before these notes, which won't make any sense otherwise.

The most important change I would make is that I think the hylomorphist could say that   "your soul informs and configures immaterial substances that function similarly to material substances.  As such, you do exist in the afterlife; it is not your soul thinking your thoughts, but you."  I had charged that this was ad hoc, but I do not think so now.  Why? 

If we look at the Bible, the account of Jesus' post-resurrection body is that it had properties that were not strictly "material" as we know.  He could pass through walls or disappear completely and reappear in another location.  He also "ascends into heaven", and so his "body" is in heaven, where presumably, no merely material (as we know) entity could exist.  However, he could be touched and he could eat in his post-resurrection body, so he could interact with the material world as we know it, though he was not bound by it. Catholic Christians would also point to the doctrine of Mary's assumption into heaven, "body and soul".  Consequently, such a move is not ad hoc for a Christian that already believes these things, and it makes sense of scripture and doctrine for how Jesus' post-resurrection body could interact in the physical world while also passing into heaven and having an after-life existence.

This move also has other explanatory power.  For example, it explains how we as material beings could have an afterlife (i.e., we configure immaterial substances in heaven).  Since we are a body-soul composite on this view, you do exist in the afterlife as a soul-configuring-immaterial-substance into-a-body-composite.  You are the thing that thinks in the afterlife, which traditional theology requires and which is in accordance with the Thinker Thesis.  So I do not think that this is ad hoc anymore, and as such, it is a good move for the hylomorphist to make.

Regarding my comment about the soul coming into existence only with the emergence of psychological properties, I believe a lot of issues can be avoided by asserting that a human soul can have potential properties and powers that are not yet actualized or realized.  This allows for a human soul to come into existence at conception, which makes the most sense for the hylomorphist, since the soul is the configuration of the body (and the body begins at conception).  For example, I remain a human even though my rational powers are not always active (e.g., sleeping, unconcscious).  What is important is that I have the potential to exercise rational powers in the course of my normal development, and this is perhaps what distinguishes my human soul from the souls of other animals and plants.

The hylomorphist should also not be afraid to say that souls can have defects.  Since the hylomorphic soul is the configuration of the body, if the body is deformed or abnormal in some way, the soul is as well.  The soul can configure and be configured in an imperfect or incomplete manner while still being a soul.  A broken car engine is still a car engine and not just a hunk of metal, even if it is defective in some way.  Indeed, the Christian can easily embrace this view since he or she already takes the soul to be defective morally and rationally.  It is not a big step to also say that the defect extends to a flawed or incomplete configuration of the material body was well.

I admit I am still bothered by the issue of identity in which one's configurational state could be instantiated in multiple places, or about how to resolve Parfit division cases.  However, these are issues not unique to the hylomorphic view, so I don't think it suffers any distinct disadvantage here.  It seems nobody has a really good response to these concerns.

Below is the paper.  Enjoy :)

 _______________________________________________________________________________

          In recent years there has been a renewed interest in the question: what are we?  Such a question seeks to understand the fundamental ontology of humans.  The traditional view throughout history has been that we are a soul of some kind.  Most of us are familiar with the Cartesian conception of the soul as an essentially thinking and immaterial substance.  Such a view has close ties to the Platonic conception of souls and it remains in its many modern versions the most popular position of those who believe in a soul.  However, the term “soul” has been used in many different ways throughout history.  For instance, Aristotle used the term “soul” in his characterization of humans as completely material beings.  Thomas Aquinas adopted and Christianized this approach and it remains the official view of the Catholic Church today.  This alternative understanding of the soul as being the configuration or organization of the body is part of the view, called hylomorphism, that we are identical to a body-soul composite.  In this paper, I will show that a hylomorphic view of you as a body-soul composite in the tradition of Aquinas can be consistently held once it is modified and updated to fit into a contemporary scientific and metaphysical framework.  However, I will argue that it cannot adequately counter several decisive objections.  As such, if not implausible in and of itself, it is certainly less plausible than a modified dualist view, animal view, or psychological view of what we are.  Thus, it should be rejected in favor of one of these other positions.

           Hylomorphism, as espoused by Aristotle, claims that the soul is the form of the body.  The form of the body is the configuration and ordering of the matter composing a human.  This particular arrangement and ordering of matter is what accounts for our capacities and powers as completely material human animals.  In contemporary terms, Aristotle’s view can be characterized as a version of non-reductive physicalism.  Lower-level individuals and properties make up higher-level individuals and properties (e.g., psychological) when they are joined together in complex causal relationships. These higher-level properties are not reducible to the properties of the lower-level realizers that make them up.  Notice that on Aristotle’s view, the soul is not separable from the body, nor is the body separable from the soul.  Each essentially depends on the other for its existence, for the soul just is the way the body is configured, and the body must have a configuration (McMahan 11).  Consequently, there is no disembodied afterlife possible because there is no immaterial thing that we could survive as.  It is at this point that Aquinas departs from Aristotle.  The soul is no longer merely a description of the configuration of the body.  Instead, it is the principle that configures, orders, and enlivens the body.  It is therefore separable and distinguishable from the body and can survive the death of the body. 

          Aquinas, as a Christian, is trying to affirm the goodness and existence of both the material and immaterial worlds by claiming that we are material beings that can also survive in a disembodied state in the afterlife.  Thus, Aquinas is attempting to walk a fine line in joining the material and immaterial into one substance: a human being.  A human being is a composite of matter and soul, and out of the configuring, ordering, and enlivening of matter by the soul, a single substance emerges: you.

          What does this mean?  First, this means that you have a soul essentially.  What is the soul?  This is surprisingly difficult to answer.  Aquinas uses many different terms to describe the soul, not all of which seem compatible.  First, the soul is called the form of the body, “the form in virtue of which the matter informed by it (that is, the matter-form composite) constitutes a living human body” (Stump 508).  Thus, we might think of the soul as a sort of universal that is instantiated into different groups of matter to create human beings.  That is, there is a universal “human soul,” but each and every human being has a soul that is an abstract particular instantiation of the general “human soul.”  Second, the soul is also thought of as a configurational state of the body (Olson, What are We? 174).  But on Aquinas’s account, the soul is not a static state; it is dynamic.  It is “something that includes the functioning of and the causal interactions among the parts” (Stump 509); it makes a body alive and capable of actions and functions (Leftow 127).  Thus, we might think of the soul as the principle of life and mental activity in a body.  It is what makes a body a body, for a body is essentially living (Leftow 136).  Related to this, we might say that the soul is a bundle of causal powers, and a human soul exists in a bunch of matter when that matter has the essential causal powers characteristic of humans (Leftow 126).  Thus, we can say that the soul is the sum total of all of the different causal relations resulting from a very specific organizational state of the matter composing your body.

          Such a view of the soul is attractive.  There is no mind-body problem since there is no interaction of immaterial and material substances.  The soul and body together form a single material substance (where substances are ordered or configured groups of matter) (Leftow 123).  There is no pairing problem since the soul just is the configurational state of the body.  This view also fits well with functionalist views of the mind that rely on non-reductive making-up relations between lower-level and higher-level properties.  Finally, it affirms an “emergent” view of life in which non-biological matter can give rise to living biological matter when properly organized.

          However, such a view does not seem to allow for disembodied survival, despite Aquinas’s assertions that it does.  If the soul is a configurational state of matter, then it does not seem that a configurational state can exist without its matter (Stump 513).  Furthermore, the soul not only exists in the afterlife, but has mental capacities and volition (Eberl 339).  But how is this possible if the soul depends on the body for the exercise of its capacities?  Clearly, one’s cognitive activity depends in some way on the brain, despite Eberl’s insistence that “intellective cognition and volition… do not depend upon any bodily organ to function” (Eberl 342).

          Second, the view offers no explanatory power.  As Leftow states, “all my soul ‘does’ to me, in enlivening me, is be there” (Leftow 132).  Similarly Stump claims, “there is no efficient causal interaction between the soul and the matter it informs, and all cognitive functions can be implemented in the body” (Stump 518).  What use is there in hypothesizing a soul then, since it does not explain anything?  Furthermore, if the soul is just the sum total of all the causal relations and properties of the material making up an individual, then Aquinas can no longer say that the soul is an immaterial particular.  Rather, the soul is purely descriptive; it is not any thing.  This also concedes that there is no property of the body (e.g., psychological properties) that cannot be realized by lower-level properties, leaving us with no reason to assert, as Aquinas does, that the human soul is created directly by God.

          Third, the soul is not sufficient for identity.  It seems that another individual could have the exact same soul as you.  Indeed, identical twins have the same configurational states initially, so they have the same soul initially (apart from differing spatial locations).  Or if we think of the soul as a universal or form that is instantiated into individuals, then these twins do share the same soul, though not the same instance.  Furthermore, each twin can die, yet the form will still exist.  Thus, when we die, we cease to exist even though the form that we participated in continues to exist.  Consequently, any future instance of the form would be a numerically different individual from us, so we could never come back into existence.  We could revise Aquinas’s account to say that the soul is a particular instance of a universal that is further individuated by changes in the body (after all, identical twins are not qualitatively identical).  However, it is difficult to understand how an instance of a universal that becomes modified could exist outside of the material world as an abstract entity and not become another universal.  For example, there may be a particular configurational state in the afterlife qualitatively identical to the one you had before you died (indeed, it exists only because of you).  But God could configure two groups of matter with this same configurational state at the resurrection.  Which one would be you?  Thus, there is nothing that is essentially unique and persists through life, death, and resurrection with which we can identify you.

          Fourth, even supposing that one can make sense of this soul, what about our relation to our bodies?  Aquinas wants to affirm that this soul that exists in the afterlife is you.  However, as Olson notes, “if it is hard to understand how an organism could persist without being an organism, that is nothing compared to understanding how an organism could persist without being a material thing at all” (Olson, What are We? 175).  One cannot be wholly material at one time and wholly immaterial or abstract at another time, especially since material individuals seem to be essentially material, just as immaterial or abstract individuals seem to be essentially immaterial or abstract  (Olson, “A Compound” 84).  If we are wholly material animals, as Aquinas’s wishes to affirm, then we cannot exist as immaterial beings or as abstract entities, and so we cannot exist in a disembodied afterlife.

          Finally, virtually anyone attracted to this view will want to say that you begin to exist at conception.  However, such a position, as Aquinas himself admits, is not possible.  For the “rational” soul does not exist at conception.  The zygote does not have the sufficient configurational complexity to give rise to mental states.  The rational soul at the earliest comes into existence midway into the pregnancy when the fetus could be said to have psychological properties that distinguish it from other animals.  Thus, you come into existence only with the rational soul (Leftow 128).  Furthermore, since the rational soul is supposed to be that which individuates us from other animals, then either we must say that many humans (e.g. babies, toddlers, vegetative humans, mentally disabled humans) do not have a rational soul, or we must say that many animals (e.g. primates) do have rational souls.  Since the form’s job is “to give its bearer the power to do the acts characteristic of members of a particular natural kind,” if a human does not have these rational characteristics, then she does not have a soul and is therefore not a member of our kind (while some other animals arguably are) (Leftow 133).  As such, the rational soul does not distinguish us from plants and animals while still including non-rational or irrational human beings.

          It seems that only by conceiving of the soul as an immaterial substance can the soul do all of the work that Aquinas wishes it to do in a way that is appealing and at least slightly plausible.  The rest of the paper will assume this revision.  However, one can still maintain the essence of the hylomorphic view with this revision. You are essentially a body-soul composite; you have a soul essentially and a body essentially, but you are identical to their composition.  The soul, under this revision, is a basic immaterial substance that is simple (i.e., indivisible) and spatially located with one’s body.  However, the soul is mutable in the sense that it can acquire properties in virtue of its relationship to a particular body (more on this later).  Furthermore, the soul does not have psychological properties essentially.  In fact, it does not have psychological properties contingently either.  You, the body-soul composite, have psychological properties contingently; neither your body nor your soul has psychological properties.  Instead, your soul has the property that, when joined to a suitably complex body, the lower-level properties of both the body and the soul will make up the higher-level mental properties.  Thus, rich psychological properties are “emergent” properties that come into existence only at higher levels of organizational complexity in a composite.  These properties can be explained by the properties of the body and the soul, but are not reducible to the properties of either. 

          You also have a body essentially.  One can still think of the body as matter that is informed by a soul.  As such, your body is partially individuated by its relationship to your soul because it only exists as a living organism in virtue of having a soul.  The soul is that which governs, guides, organizes, and gives life to the matter with which it is associated.  These are all causal notions and not merely descriptive.  Thus, the soul turns matter into an organism, which is an essentially living thing.  While the body is dependent on the soul for its existence, it is not wholly individuated by the soul (at least initially).  One’s body has distinct features from all other bodies even without reference to the soul.  For example, it has a unique spatial location, it has a unique organizational structure, and it has (in most cases) a unique genome (Eberl 345).  It is because of this initial bodily individuation that your soul is individuated from other souls. 

           What is one’s existential history on this view?  Briefly, the soul is created directly by God and joined to the egg at the exact moment of fertilization.  The egg and sperm cease to be governed by the soul of the parents (or perhaps just the mother) when fertilization takes place, at which point the new human soul takes over the configurational operations of the fertilized egg.  This new human soul is an instance of a universal “human soul.”  This instance however is immediately individuated by being joined to a specific fertilized egg in a specific location with a specific genetic structure (Eberl 352).  Given the souls mutability, it bears the imprint of the body and of you - the body-soul composite.  Over the course of your life, your soul changes and acquires new contingent properties.  Your configurational structure, DNA, knowledge, and experiences come to be “imprinted” on the soul, as though it contained a copy of a code that exhaustively captures your life, history, and essential properties.  With the development of a central nervous system and brain, the soul’s properties and the body’s properties working together begin to make up rich psychological properties.   At this point, your soul has become “fixed” to the brainstem (though it spatially extends throughout your body), where it will remain fixed until you die.  The soul relates primarily to the organism as a whole, though it works in every part of the body, including the brain, which is construed as a part of the animal. 

           When the material of your body decays and the soul can no longer keep it structured and configured, the soul detaches from the body and the organism ceases to exist, as do you.  Your soul (though not you), exists in the afterlife and is continuously sustained in its mental activities by God (Stump 516).  At the proper time, God causes your soul to inform new material, at which point your soul will be reunited with your body and you will come back into existence.  The matter which constitutes your body can as a whole be properly called your body, not in virtue of having the same atoms that composed your body before you died.  Rather, the body is your body because it is informed by your soul, the unique part of you that persists through time.  Together, the body and soul create your contingent rich psychological properties (e.g., memories, beliefs), whose imprint has been retained in the soul and has been sustained by God. 

           Though this is a fairly rough sketch of the view, it is sufficient for our purposes.  Let’s briefly consider the support for the view.  First, this hylomorphic view supports the intuition that you were once a fetus.  Since your soul is created and joined to your body at conception, you begin to exist at conception.  Second, it maintains the intuition that one can survive the death of one’s body in the sense that one has an immaterial soul whose mentality will be maintained even while separated from a body.  No materialist view can readily maintain this (although one can affirm the resurrection of the body).  Third, this view provides a straightforward account of your identity over time: you essentially depend on your soul (and the body which it informs) for your existence.  Thus, your soul grounds your identity.  Materialist views have significant difficulty in accounting for identity over time in virtue of the fact that one’s material and mental properties change quite often in the span of one’s lifetime.

           Such supporting reasons could be developed, but they are not new and are not unique to hylomorphism.  The traditional dualist can make these same claims as well.  As such, I will briefly turn to reasons that support hylomorphism over traditional (Cartesian) dualism.   First, unlike dualist views that identify you with the soul, hylomorphism claims that you are identical to a composite of body and soul.  Consequently, our ordinary ascriptions of physical properties to human beings are literally true.  Second, on the hylomorphic view given, one ceases to exist at death.  I do literally die when my soul ceases to inform my body, and I shall remain dead and non-existent until my soul is rejoined to a body.  The view is thus more in keeping with the Christian hope in the resurrection of the body and in affirming the goodness of material existence.  Third, this hylomorphic view affirms that cognitive activity and properties depend on the properties of the body (e.g., a functioning brain) in addition to the properties of the soul.  It is thus more in accord with science and everyday experience.

          Hylomorphism does share a few objections with dualism.  First, it presupposes God’s existence in creating your soul and so is not as simple as other views.  Second, it posits a unique causal relationship between immaterial and material matter that is potentially at odds with conservation of energy laws and scientific views of fundamental forces.  The hylomorphist can appeal to any dualist responses to the objections.  However, the hylomorphic view also suffers some disadvantages that traditional dualism does not.  For example, like other materialist views, hylomorphism does not avoid the Paradox of Increase.  You are composed of material parts that change over time and so it is difficult to say how you maintain your identity over time (except by grounding identity in the soul).  The dualist avoids this problem.  However, the paradox rests on controversial premises about identity over time and the problem is not unique to hylomorphism so I will not elaborate further. 

          More importantly, the hylomorphic view cannot avail itself to the strongest argument for dualism:  the Unity of Consciousness.  As modified to critique the hylomorphist, the argument proceeds as follows. 

1. None of the parts of a body-soul composite has a unified conscious experience.  
2. I have a unified conscious experience.
3. I am not a part of a body-soul composite.  (1, 2)
4. Something that consists of parts cannot have different properties from those belonging to its parts.
5. If a body-soul composite has a unified conscious experience, then one of its parts must have a unified conscious experience. (4)
6. A body-soul composite does not have a unified conscious experience. (1, 5)
7. So I am not a body-soul composite. (2, 6)

Since a similar argument can be run against any material view, the dualist concludes that you must be an immaterial and simple soul.

           The hylomorphist (and any materialist) should reject premise (4).  This premise relies on a reductivist account of properties in which higher level properties are not only explicable by but also reducible to lower level properties, and this is false.  Composite objects do have properties that their parts do not have.  A knife has the property of being sharp though none of its composing atoms is sharp.  To attribute “sharpness” to an atom is to make the mistake of applying a higher-level property to a lower-level individual when only higher-level (that is, more organizationally complex) individuals can have higher-level properties.  Thus, a body-soul composite can and does have a unified conscious experience, even though none of its parts do.  Perhaps the dualist will claim that there is something unique about consciousness in which it can only be instantiated in a single basic substance.  If this is true, the hylomorphist is no worse off than any materialist view.  She can say that consciousness is instantiated in the soul (thus affirming (5)), but it is the body-soul composite, and not the soul, that thinks since the properties of the body and the soul together realize consciousness (more on this later).  In any case, the hylomorphist cannot readily use this argument in her favor.

          What of other living things on this view?  Do plants and animals have souls?  If we say that all living organisms require a soul, from plants to mammals to insects to bacteria, then the soul does almost no explanatory work except as being that which gives life to an organism.  All other properties will result from the material complexity of that organism.  If we say that only humans have souls, then it seems arbitrary to assert that higher level primates do not, for our differences seem to be of degree and not in kind (McMahan 11).  There are many moves here that the hylomorphist can make to distinguish humans from other living things.  Since none of them seems to be forced by anything that the hylomorphist is committed to, I will not elaborate further.

          However, the hylomorphist must take a stand on marginal cases of humans: newborn babies, the mentally disabled, and those in vegetative states.  While Aquinas’s conception of the human soul would have trouble with these cases, the view I have proposed does not.  By construing the soul as an immaterial substance, we can say that all human beings, including marginal cases, have a human soul without defect.  However, the matter to which the soul is joined is either immature and needs to develop in its organizational complexity, or its initial organizational complexity has a flaw that is beyond the power of the soul to correct.  Thus, marginal cases pose no problem in distinguishing human beings from other animals.  All human beings have a soul that when joined to a properly organized body, will allow that human being to instantiate rich psychological properties.  It is having this kind of soul (a “rational,” personal, or human soul) that grounds the (moral and ontological) distinction between humans and other animals.

          Nothing said so far has been largely in favor or opposed to the view.  However, the hylomorphic view so construed faces devastating objections from the Thinker Thesis and the Too Many Thinkers argument.  First, the view denies the Thinker Thesis, which asserts that you are the individual that thinks your thoughts and instantiates rich psychological properties.  The problem is that Aquinas believes that your soul thinks your thoughts in the afterlife even though you do not exist.  If this is the case, then it seems that you, a body-soul composite, only derivatively think in virtue of having a thinking part; your soul, a numerically different thing from you, is the thinker in the strictest sense (Olson, “A Compound” 76).   While one could deny that the soul does any thinking in the afterlife, such an admission gives up any attractiveness of the view over dualist, animal, or psychological views.

          In response, Eberl argues that a human being can be composed of a soul alone (Eberl 340).  Thus, when your soul departs from your body, you depart with your soul and are composed solely by it.  This possibility makes no sense.  A soul is not an organism, a body, nor a composition of soul and body.  It is simply a soul.  As such, you cannot be composed by it alone.  Another unsatisfying response is to say that after death, your soul informs and configures immaterial substances that function similarly to material substances.  As such, you do exist in the afterlife; it is not your soul thinking your thoughts, but you.  This response is extremely ad hoc, for there is no independent reason apart from the assumption that the hylomorphic view is true that would suggest that such a thing is possible, let alone plausible. 

           If one wishes to maintain the hylomorphic view, then I think the best response is to deny the Thinker Thesis.  We should revise the proposed position to say that, strictly speaking, it is your soul that thinks your thoughts; it is the substance (and not the body-soul composite) in which your thoughts are instantiated.  This move allows the view to cohere with and make use of the Unity of Consciousness argument.  You think in a derivative sense by having a thinking part (a soul) whose mental activity depends on the properties of your body.  When the body dies and the soul departs to God, then God sustains the (limited) mental activity of your soul even though you do not exist (Stump 519).  You only come back into existence at the resurrection when your soul once again is united to a body and it is at this point that you regain the full use of your cognitive and other capacities.  However, this move runs against the very strong intuition that you are the soul in this case.  As Olson notes, this “would mean that psychological continuity was not sufficient for you to persist: here would be a case in which your soul is uniquely psychologically continuous with you as you were when you existed, yet without being you” (Olson 175).  This is nearly unacceptable.

           This problem is further aggravated by the Too Many Thinkers argument.  The argument runs as follows:

1. There is a body-soul composite that has a mental property instance in the spatial region of my body.
2. There is a brain which has this same mental property instance in the same spatial region of my body.
3. The brain and the body-soul composite are not identical.
4. Therefore, there are two individuals which have the same mental property instance in the same spatial region.
5. But there is only one individual that has this mental property instance in this spatial region.
6. (4) and (5) form a contradiction.  Therefore, (1), (2), (3), or (5) is false. 

The hylomorphist should reject (2).  The brain does not have this mental property.  It is instantiated in the hylomorphic composite, although the brain (along with the soul) provides the lower-level properties necessary for such a higher-level property to be realized.  However, this response faces the objection that it is the brain-soul composite that instantiates the mental property and not the body-soul composite.  Thus, we should say that you are a brain-soul composite.  In response, the hylomorphist can say that the soul relates primarily to the body as a whole and to each part of the body derivatively.  So although it is the set of properties of the brain-soul composite that realizes the mental properties, this composition is derivative of the body-soul composition (Leftow 133).  Thus, mental properties are instantiated in the body-soul composite, even though they are realized by the properties of the brain-soul composite. 

            However, given what I said about the Thinker Thesis, this response is not available to the hylomorphist since the mental property is instantiated in the soul.  So perhaps we should say, as Stump does, that “human cognitive functions are to be attributed to the whole composite and not to the soul alone, although the composite exercises functions by means of the soul” (Stump 519).  But now the Too Many Thinkers argument can be rerun, asserting that the brain, and not the soul, instantiates mental properties.  The hylomorphist can follow the dualist in asserting that, although there is correlation of brain activity with rich psychological properties, those properties are instantiated in the soul (though the brain provides some of the properties necessary for their realization).  This response pushes hylomorphism further from the scientific mainstream.

            If the hylomorphic view was not yet dead, Parfit Division cases seem to provide the final nail in the coffin.  Suppose that your perfectly healthy and functioning cerebrum was removed from your body, split in two, and put into two other perfectly functioning bodies with brainstems but lacking cerebra.  What has happened to you?  If we do not flatly reject the nomological possibility of such a thing occurring, then under the proposed hylomorphic view, only two possibilities seem plausible.  First, your soul stays with the brainstem of your body, and so you are the composite of your soul and your body (which lacks a cerebrum).  The difficulty with this response is that we have the intuition (and some evidence to suggest) that your psychology would go along with each half of your cerebrum.  Your psychology would now be realized by the properties of two other souls (in conjunction with the properties of your previous cerebral hemispheres) and instantiated by two other body-soul composites (or two other souls).  Meanwhile, your soul would have no psychology.  Further suppose that you die while these two other body-soul composites continue to live.  Then your psychology continues to exist while you cease to exist, but it now occurs in three places: in two human beings on earth and by your soul in the afterlife.  Alternatively, suppose that the two other human beings die.  It seems that the psychology of their souls will be radically discontinuous in both the afterlife and at the resurrection.

            The hylomorphist can say that the psychology of these other human beings is qualitatively identical to your psychology, but it is not your psychology. Your psychology stays intact as imprinted onto your soul, although you have no mental activity without your cerebrum.  Your soul will continue its mental activity once you die, and this continued psychology will be instantiated by you in the resurrection.  As for the psychology of the other two human beings, it seems that there are two possibilities.  First, these human beings will instantiate psychology qualitatively identical to yours, but once they die, God will wipe away the discontinuous psychology and restore their original psychology that existed prior to the cerebrum transplant.  It will be this psychology that each soul has and that each being will have at the resurrection.  However, this would mean that any psychology gained or life experienced by these souls would be wiped away.  Suppose that each human being went on to live long, healthy, and happy lives involving many significant relationships.  Should this all be wiped away?  It seems not.

            A better response is to say that the souls of each human being would reject the brain transplant.  Similar to any other organ transplant, the body (and soul) can reject parts that do not fit with the biological functioning of the organism.  The properties of your cerebrum needed for the realization of psychological properties would not match those imprinted on the souls of the other human beings.  As such, each soul would reject your hemisphere, and consequently, no psychological properties would be realized.  However, it does seem that psychological properties would be realized if a transplant were to take place, and so this response does not seem plausible.

            The second possibility of what happens to you is that your soul goes with one of the two halves of your cerebrum, and so you are a composite of your soul and one (but not both) of the bodies now having one half of your cerebrum as a part.  This would mean that your soul is tied to your psychology and is not essential for the continuing governance of your body’s life.  Instead of being fixed to the brainstem, your soul would be attached to one of your cerebral hemispheres.  Which one?  There does not seem to be a good answer since both have parts with properties that play an important role in realizing your psychology.  Suppose, however, that your soul does go along with one hemisphere.  What about the other hemisphere and body?  There is no soul in that hemisphere or in that body, yet it still seems plausible that that body will be a functioning organism that instantiates psychological properties.  It is ad hoc to say that God will create another soul for this new organism.  In addition, your soul would now have two bodies imprinted on it.  Which body would be yours at the resurrection?  Perhaps the soul would reject the new body as in the prior possibility, and so the body including one half of your cerebrum would not have any mental life.  However, this seems doubtful.  Since none of these questions has a plausible answer, it seems best to reject this possibility as well, thus leaving us with no plausible account of what happens in these division cases.

            As shown, the hylomorphist has many bullets to bite if she wishes to hold onto the view.  The most devastating of these is that it denies the Thinker Thesis, its answer to the Too Many Thinkers argument pushes the view outside the scientific mainstream, and it offers no good response to the Parfit division cases.  Given the many difficulties it faces it seems best to reject it.  Where should one go from here?  The preceding view can be easily modified into a contemporary dualist account by saying that you are the soul in every scenario.  One can also return to Aristotle’s account as a form of animalism. However, I think that the Thomistic hylomorphist should instead embrace a constitution or psychological view of you over both dualism and animalism.  This view strikes me as the most in keeping with Aquinas’s goals and can satisfy his major commitments.  Indeed, many concepts that Aquinas employs have an almost direct translation into the contemporary psychological accounts.  The rational soul that is the configurational state of the body is very similar to the person that is constituted by an appropriately complex animal. Both the soul and the person come into existence midway into pregnancy, and both have psychological properties essentially.  Both are particulars that depend on bodies but are distinguishable from them (and can potentially survive in the afterlife with God’s help).  Both also distinguish us from other animals.  Thus, I recommend that the hylomorphist should reinterpret (and revise as necessary) Aquinas’s account into a psychological or constitution view of human beings, or simply abandon hylomorphism for other more favorable views. 

 

Works Cited and Consulted

Eberl, Jason.  “Aquinas on the Nature of Human Beings.”  The Review of Metaphysics 58.2
           (2004): 333-65. Philosopher’s Index. Web.  1 Nov. 2010.

Leftow, Brian. “Souls Dipped in Dust.” Soul, Body, and Survival: Essays on the Metaphysics of
           Human Persons. Ed. Kevin Corcoran.  Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001. 120-38.
           Print.

McMahan, Jeff. The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life. New York: Oxford
           University Press, 2002. Print.

Olson, Eric. “A Compound of Two Substances.”  Soul, Body, and Survival: Essays on the
           Metaphysics of Human Persons. Ed. Kevin Corcoran.  Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
           2001. 73-88. Print.

---.  What Are We?: A Study in Personal Ontology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. 
           Print.

Stump, Eleonore. “Non-Cartesian Substance Dualism and Materialism without Reduction.” Faith
           and Philosophy 12.4 (1995): 505-31. Print.