Thank you.
You helped me with question 1, I just didn’t understand the first line (“The mere fact that these are states does not mean they are mental”). By “states,” do you mean properties, like liquidity?

Regarding question 2, I’d like to expand the discussion a bit:
A. The characterization (partly negative) of something spiritual is that it is not located in space, in the sense that it has no location. I can’t give latitude and longitude for the Form of the Good, or for my thought. Do you agree with such a description of a spiritual object? And also, what about spiritual properties? If my anger, my sadness, and my thought are spiritual, then in what sense do they exist if they are not objects? In short, my question is: how do you characterize something spiritual, as opposed to something material? What is written in Berakhot definitely makes sense, and I didn’t know that.
B. What does it mean to be outside space? Is there a point I can indicate and it will be there? If so, then I’ll ask again: what distinguishes it (the soul), or any other spiritual thing, from a material object?

C. The identification of the substance with the properties follows from the fact that if there is no characterization of the soul other than its being in time, that means that if there were no activity in it (the mental properties were not expressed), then in what sense would it exist? It is not in space (unless there is some explanation of its existence in space in some sense), and if the properties do not operate, then it is also not in time, so it is left with no characterization at all. I think a good way out would be, again, to say that there is a mental substance and perhaps to say that it is a basic concept about which we cannot say anything—but that sounds a bit forced to me.
D. I completely accept that. Properties are properties of something. The previous sections are trying to examine of what.

Thanks again 🙏

1. Indeed, properties or states of substances (speed is a state and not exactly a property).
2. I’ll repeat. When you speak about something that is outside space, what this means is that its existence does not take up a place in our space (or that it is present throughout all of it, as above). So in what sense does it exist? Presumably this is existence without occupying a place in space. Like the Holy One, blessed be He, for example (and the soul, which the Talmud in Berakhot there compares to Him). Does that mean that the Holy One, blessed be He, is a property of the material world? No. It means that His existence is not in space but in some other sense. He has a “location” that is not spatial. Like a photon, for example. But that does not mean that He exists only in time. You are assuming that there is only space and time, and that whatever is not spatial exists only in time. But no—there are contexts other than space and time. Existence is not dependent on space.
   As for your final question, ask yourself: what distinguishes the Holy One, blessed be He, from any material substance? And also ask yourself: if He is not acting, does He not exist?
   From this it follows that there indeed are spiritual substances. The soul is like the Holy One, blessed be He. Mental states are properties of the soul, which is a spiritual substance.
   My feeling is that you are trying to describe spiritual substances in terms of material substances, and then of course you fail, and from that you conclude that there are no spiritual substances. But if from the outset you understand that there is no way to describe them in material terms (for that is the starting point of one who believes in dualism), you will not run into this difficulty and will not draw your conclusion from it.

Excellent, I completely understand now!

Correct me if I’m wrong, but very often philosophical discussions about things we know best from within (the Form of the Good, God, soul, or free choice), but which are not familiar to us in concepts accessible to us (concepts like space and time, matter, motion, and the senses in general), end in a kind of explanation that assumes in the background (perhaps subconsciously) the impossibility of explaining these things in the concepts accessible to us, yet we still want to preserve our intuitions about the existence of these things, and so we simply say that this does not belong to our world, and thus we have “solved” the problem. Philosophical discussions (especially in academia) almost never work like that, but always try to bring assumptions closer to our world in order to strengthen arguments (and do not rely only on intuition). Sometimes this “escape” into intuition alone feels too easy to me, and even ad hoc, since whatever has no solution we simply say must exist, or must be spiritual, because we have no other option—which is basically a proof by negation. My question is whether you think there is a positive argument for strengthening our intuitions? And also—what do you think about the academic approach as I presented it here?

And unrelatedly—I’d be happy to have a lecture series on philosophy of mind (dualism versus materialism in its various forms versus idealism), if something like that is planned 🙂

I don’t think that is always true. When there is no adequate explanation in terms of existing knowledge, one looks for something else. And then one posits its existence even if one does not know how to explain it. Moreover, the explanation cannot be in terms of existing knowledge, because otherwise we would not have needed something new. If you look for an explanation of spirit in terms of matter, you will not find one. But that is not a defect in the assumption that there is spirit, because by definition it cannot be reduced to matter.