Moreover, both analogies seem to have this advantage over social trinitarianism: both seem to present real-life cases in which a single rational substance is nonetheless "divided" into multiple personalities or centers of consciousness.
Superstition, belief, half-belief, or practice for which there appears to be no rational substance.
Descartes calls the distinction between attributes of the same substance, and between a given attribute and its substance a "rational distinction," (Principles, I, §62, CSM, I, p. 214, AT 30) and so, insofar as Thought and Extension belong to the same substance for Spinoza, they would be, in Descartes' terminology, rationally distinct.[8] Spinoza however, says that they are "really distinct".
To do better, we need to have a rational discussion about which substances should be legal and which should not, based on science rather than historical accident and prejudice.
Thomas accepts from Boethius the definition of a person as an individual substance of a rational nature.
Mr Swinney told Jo Coburn: "We need to get past the bluffing and get on to the substance of a rational debate about the arguments".
And the human animal is not adequately described except as a rational animal, rational providing not another substance or expression of a fissure between soul or mind and body, but the fully adequate description of the human substance.
Yet another way of denying the gap is to claim, along with Descartes, that the distinction between an attribute and the substance is only a rational distinction.
(Some absolute terms have no definitions at all.[25]) As an example of a real definition, consider: 'Man is a rational animal' or 'Man is a substance composed of a body and an intellective soul'.
The second element of the definition naturae rationalis qualifies the notion of individual substance: the person is an individual possessing a rational nature.
