Can a Philosophical Case Be Made for Immaterial Human Intellect?

[epan]

To say that genes (and by extension, memes) are in some way immortal/nonphysical, and so avoid some purported conflict between determinism and free will, would be to equivocate as to the meaning of “nonphysical.” (This is on top of the problem that there seems to be no reason to suppose that the principles of natural selection translate neatly onto “memes,” or that memes are a coherent concept.) One might note that the content of genes, for instance, is “nonphysical” because it is “informational,” in a sense, and that it carries over across generations, multiply realized in different material substrata. That does not seem to offer, say, nonphysical causation as an available solution to the problem of free will, since genes are only “nonphysical” in an attenuated, acausal way.

That said, I don’t think that free will was Dawkins’ motivation for his meme theory. To quote Raymond Tallis, “The idea [meme theory], then, is daft, so it must have other attractions than plausibility. And the attraction is, of course, the dream of an all-encompassing theory, based on Darwinism, that would, to use Dennett’s…claim, unify ‘the realm of life, meaning and purpose with the realm of space and time, cause and effect, mechanism and physical law’. The extension of evolution from genes to memes props up the exaggerated assessment of the scope of Darwin’s great theory.”

It is a gross misunderstanding of Darwinism, and of Dawkins theories to suggest that they preclude free will. Genetic information would perhaps be seen to be as deterministic as you suggest it might in extremely simple organisms, if ever.

Professor Tallis is a philosopher who is trying to criticize I scientist on philosophical grounds. That is apples and oranges.

 

[polytropos]

You seem to be confusing thoughts with ideas. One leads to the other, but they are not the same thing.

I was responding along the lines of what you said here:

He starts from the point of view that the only immortality that we see in the natural universe is that of genetic information. Then he advances the argument to include ideas. So, by his reasoning, thoughts are indeed independent of physical reality. The physical vessel exists for the purpose of preserving and passing on the information, which is itself abstract and not tied to any particular brain.

You say “thoughts” are independent of physical reality, though in the previous sentence, you say, “ideas,” which is probably what you meant in the latter case as well.

Anyway, suppose that memes are coherent and that memes entail the nonphysicality of ideas. I don’t think that such a conclusion would bear much resemblance to “a philosophical case for the immaterial human intellect” (to quote the thread title), since the immateriality of the human intellect is of a different sense than the nonphysicality of ideas. If memes disclose nonphysical ideas, then those ideas, it seems, would just be like abstract objects which a mathematical Platonist supposes to really exist. They would not bear appreciable similarities to, say, the immaterial soul of human beings disclosed by hylemorphic dualism or the Cartesian res cogitans.

I’m aware of the criticisms of Dawkins meme theories, and I am still deciding what I think of them. I will say that in person, he is quite disarming and likable. I was rather struck by his generosity and kindness to Christians who were attacking him vehemently during the last talk I attended of his. He has later commented that he should have had the hecklers ejected.

Well, I find meme theory hard to swallow intellectually, regardless of what I think of the man, and regardless of whether he behaves differently in person than he does in text.

 

[polytropos]

It is a gross misunderstanding of Darwinism, and of Dawkins theories to suggest that they preclude free will. Genetic information would perhaps be seen to be as deterministic as you suggest it might in extremely simple organisms, if ever.

Can you respond to parts of my post more specifically? I can’t tell what you are referring to as a “gross misunderstanding of Darwinism.” I was only working out what I thought were the inconsistencies in taking meme theory to offer some sort of compatibilism.

Anyway, I wasn’t claiming that Darwinism and Dawkins’ theories “preclude free will,” ie. I was not making the argument that Darwinism entails a conflict with free will. (Most philosophers believe that free will and determinism are compatible. Also I believe in free will and I generally believe in Darwin’s theory, if not distortions like meme theory.) I’m saying that one couldn’t use meme theory very effectively to justify compatibilism (which someone might have separate grounds for believing).

In other words, I am saying meme theory does not entail compatibilism, NOT that meme theory entails incompatibilism.

(That said, I don’t think a fully materialist philosophy of mind generates genuine free will, but that’s another topic.)

Professor Tallis is a philosopher who is trying to criticize I scientist on philosophical grounds. That is apples and oranges.

Tallis is actually a neuroscientist by trade. Meme theory has dubious scientific merit. And regardless of what Dawkins claims or realizes, he makes plenty of philosophical claims, and is therefore subject to philosophical criticism.

 

[epan]

I think deploying his meme theory to argue that thoughts are not material is a misunderstanding of Dawkins.

In any case, memes have been harshly and justly criticized… because they are basically a pseudoscientific and ad hoc way to introduce the mechanism of natural selection into a realm where it doesn’t apply. The theory suffers from more problems than one can count. It lacks evidence despite purporting to be scientific. It’s vague (what is a meme? how are they transferred? how do they persist?). What qualifies as a “meme” is unclear: some suggestions have been faith, tolerance, the SALT agreement (I’m not kidding), goodness, beauty. To be like genes, memes need to be units - but as the previous examples show, this is practically incoherent: there seems to be no clear level of generality that the concept is supposed to encompass (SALT agreements and even tolerance are very specific, while beauty is incredibly broad). There seems to be no way to count them (as we can with genes) because there is no clear division between one meme and another. There also seems to be no upper limit on how many “memes” one could have. How they are physically realized is not clear either.

Of course there is a limit on the number of memes. The proof is trivial mathematically.

How can one say that it is unclear how an idea is realized?

And a functioning brain is sufficient for thought. Thought is sufficient to create ideas. The fact that thought is a physiological process in no way precludes what we call “free will”. It does preclude the notion that there is an infinite scope to free will. But that number is so large, that it can appear to be infinite for our purposes. There is no great mystery to unravel here.

 

[tonyrey]

I don’t understand why you would think that we have no control over our own thoughts. We have control over many of the physical processes in our bodies. Do you type on your keyboard involuntarily, or do you have control over the muscles in your fingers?

Anyone who meditates can tell you that they have a good deal of control over their own cognition. Some yogis can slow their heartbeat down voluntarily.

Are you referring to the brain when you use “we”? If not why should thoughts be solely events in the brain? What part does the mind play?

 

[GEddie]

Are you referring to the brain when you use “we”? If not why should thoughts be solely events in the brain? What part does the mind play?

The mind is the output of the brain, scientifically, but as a noetic (knowing) process.

Our mind can exert more control than most folks learn. But not complete control. If someone put a chokehold on your neck, there would be no mind in your head for at least five minutes.

ICXC NIKA

 

[Wyrd]

I would argue it from a different direction, namely that the brain itself is not fully reducible to a material process, but contains some level of imprecision in the measurement of its processes and ultimately because the factors which lead to consciousness are not fully understood, they could be seen as having an immaterial source, however it is more useful to ask why the distinction must be made in the first place

 

[tonyrey]

I would argue it from a different direction, namely that the brain itself is not fully reducible to a material process, but contains some level of imprecision in the measurement of its processes and ultimately because the factors which lead to consciousness are not fully understood, they could be seen as having an immaterial source, however it is more useful to ask why the distinction must be made in the first place

Welcome to the forum!

The reason is that our primary datum and sole certainty is not the existence of the material objects but our mind which infers the existence of material objects.

 

[tonyrey]

The mind is the output of the brain, scientifically, but as a noetic (knowing) process.

Our mind can exert more control than most folks learn. But not complete control. If someone put a chokehold on your neck, there would be no mind in your head for at least five minutes.

Which doesn’t mean the mind ceases to exist! We are not out of our minds; our minds are out of our bodies.

 

[GEddie]

Which doesn’t mean the mind ceases to exist! We are not out of our minds; our minds are out of our bodies.

But in that situation (chokehold) there would be no mentation at all, either in or out of the body.

Which STM that one’s mind would have gone into abeyance…

ICXC NIKA

 

[ynotzap]

Indeed. As Aristotle said, the intellect has no bodily organ. His point was not so much about biology but about the fact that intellectual activities do not essentially require matter to perform (and, by arguments like those I cited earlier, cannot be performed strictly by virtue of matter).

The intellect is the highest activity of the human soul, so the human soul is essentially immaterial (because a rational soul entails the vegetative/appetitive/perceptive powers of other, “lesser” souls, while the converse is not true). Humans do require our perceptive powers in the first place in order to think, because we obtain our conceptual knowledge by abstracting from the physical world, but this dependence is extrinsic to the soul’s operations.

Is the intellect the highest activity of the soul. I understand that the truth that the intellect strives for is perceived as the “good”. When the “good” is acquired, the desire for the good is satiated by the union of the “Will” with the good. It seems to me that the highest activity of the soul or perhaps noblest, is the satiaity of desire, which lies in the Will. What are your thoughts ?

 

[GEddie]

Is the intellect the highest activity of the soul. I understand that the truth that the intellect strives for is perceived as the “good”. When the “good” is acquired, the desire for the good is satiated by the union of the “Will” with the good. It seems to me that the highest activity of the soul or perhaps noblest, is the satiaity of desire, which lies in the Will. What are your thoughts ?

Satiety of desire encompasses the entire spectrum of human activity.

I’d say that to become “high” or “noble”, the human will must be subordinated to the intellect.

ICXC NIKA

 

[polytropos]

Is the intellect the highest activity of the soul. I understand that the truth that the intellect strives for is perceived as the “good”. When the “good” is acquired, the desire for the good is satiated by the union of the “Will” with the good. It seems to me that the highest activity of the soul or perhaps noblest, is the satiaity of desire, which lies in the Will. What are your thoughts ?

I think you are right that the intellect’s capability of recognizing and willing the good is one way in which it is “the highest activity of the soul.” But that is not exactly what I meant by the term. I simply mean that an intellectual soul entails an appetitive and vegetative soul, ie. to have an intellect entails have an appetite and growing. But the entailment does not hold both ways. (Bears do not have an intellectual capacity, but have an appetitive capacity. Trees have a vegetative capacity, but not an appetitive capacity.) This is why the intellect is the highest activity of the soul and (if intellective operations are essentially immaterial) the soul is essentially immaterial.

 

[ynotzap]

I agee St. Thomas makes a distinction between souls, the vegetative, the sentient, and the rational. Plants, animals, and humans. Humans show all three qualities. The first two are intrinsically dependent on matter (material souls) and the last one dependent on a spiritual nature, rationality. In matters of love for example, we perceive a person (a good) and there is a desire to know that person, (the intellectual), and when we know that person, we then desire to be united with that person. When we are assured of that union, we are happy because we have acquired that good. It seems that the power of the will drives the intellect to acquire what it perceives as the desired good. In this example I see the will as the highest activity of the soul. I believe the same process take place in our pursuit for happiness found in the greatest good, God, and the soul is satiated. What do you think?