Immateriality of Mind and Neuroscience

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Here are my questions: I looking particularly for hard core philosophers and those
versed in neuro-science to answer.

Background: Yes. I understand hylopormorphism of Aquinas. I don’t want an explanation
of abstraction. I believe in abstraction but need a method of proving it before those who
are adamant it is a result of biological determinism.

So here are my questions?

1.) What is the best book(s) out there arguing for the immateriality of human thought which Philosophically attacks the notion that all human thought is from a genetic, biological, or neurological cause?

2.) What is the best book that can both argue the immateriality of thought and yet address the findings of neuroscience? A book that both addresses the findings
within the field but also shows their inadaquacy to demonstrate abstraction?
 
Jerusalem said:
Here are my questions: I looking particularly for hard core philosophers and those
versed in neuro-science to answer.

Background: Yes. I understand hylopormorphism of Aquinas. I don’t want an explanation
of abstraction. I believe in abstraction but need a method of proving it before those who
are adamant it is a result of biological determinism.

So here are my questions?

1.) What is the best book(s) out there arguing for the immateriality of human thought which Philosophically attacks the notion that all human thought is from a genetic, biological, or neurological cause?

2.) What is the best book that can both argue the immateriality of thought and yet address the findings of neuroscience? A book that both addresses the findings
within the field but also shows their inadaquacy to demonstrate abstraction?
Click to expand...
Jerusalem
If you have a lot of time on your hands and the patience to plod through a very dense book (543 pages), you might try:* Incomplete Nature: How the Mind Emerged From Matter *by Terrence Deacon.

He does a thorough job of showing the inadequacy of the current “scientific” attempts to relate “abstractions” (he refers to such things as: function, information, meaning, representation, agency, purpose, sentience and value at "ententional phenomena) to a material source. He coins several neologisms.

His basic premise is that ententional phenomena are the result of “absential” features, namely that which is missing.

He never gets around to explaining how absential feaures produce the immaterial phenomena we all are immersed in.

The author is a neurobiologist and is no doubt a member of the materialistic club so he can’t bring himself to consider that which is absent and produces ententional phenomena is the spiritual component of reality and that is certainly not absent.

Yppop
 
Thanks for the recommendation. I’m completely ignorant in this field of epistemology.

Do you know if any of these are any good?

Churchland’s “Matter and Consciousness”
Daniel Dennett “Consciousness Explained”
“The Immaterial Self: A Defense of the Cartesian Dualist Conception of the Mind” by John Foster
“Cognitional Arguments for the immateriality of the mind” by Joel N. Stenimetz
“Prize Essay on the Immateriality of the mind, and the immortality of the Soul” By B. Simpson
 
Since the only workings of the mind that anyone is intimately familiar with is the workings of his or her own mind, I am dubious that the immateriality of the mind can be demonstrated through experiment.

Also, even a thoroughgoing Thomist would admit that hylomorphism requires that the human mind be not only intimately connected to matter—i.e., the nervous system and brain—but dependent upon it for (name removed by moderator)ut. (“All knowledge begins in the senses.”)

The most intimate knowledge we can have of the process of abstraction is by observing the workings of one’s own mind.

Consequently, I would have to simply note that a thoroughgoing materialist might not ‘believe in’ the existence of any spiritual component whatsoever. But to be consistent, he ought to take no credit for the originality of his PhD thesis or any writings or thoughts, since it’s all just biological determinism. No Nobel prize for you, buddy: you didn’t actually put any thought into it!
 
Jerusalem said:
Here are my questions: I looking particularly for hard core philosophers and those
versed in neuro-science to answer.

Background: Yes. I understand hylopormorphism of Aquinas. I don’t want an explanation
of abstraction. I believe in abstraction but need a method of proving it before those who
are adamant it is a result of biological determinism.

So here are my questions?

1.) What is the best book(s) out there arguing for the immateriality of human thought which Philosophically attacks the notion that all human thought is from a genetic, biological, or neurological cause?

2.) What is the best book that can both argue the immateriality of thought and yet address the findings of neuroscience? A book that both addresses the findings
within the field but also shows their inadaquacy to demonstrate abstraction?
Click to expand...
I thought Philosophical Psychology by Raymond J Anable S.J. was very good. But don’t dismiss St. Thomas so quickly. Read the Summa Theologica, Part 1, Ques 84-89 which is based largely on Aristotle’s De Anima. Linus2nd
 
Hi Jerusalem;

First of all, you won’t find any useful explanation of consciousness from Daniel Dennett. He is an atheist, and–frankly–not a very good philosopher (not just because he’s an atheist). He takes a rather simplistic monist view of consciousness that is not sustainable.

The best book I have ever read from a biological/neurscience point of view on the immateriality of human consciousness is Aping Manking by Raymond Tallis. What makes Tallis’ book significant and remarkable is that (1) he is a practicing neuroscientist and philosopher; (2) he is an agnostic. The latter point is significant because he is purely looking at the scientific evidence. He argues against what he calls ‘neuromania’, which is the insistence by the likes of Dennett et al on equating neurological activity with thought.

Tallis’ book is well researched, relatively accessible to non-specialists, and philosophically sound…until the last chapter, when even Tallis–having dismissed materialism on the basis of the scientific evidence–is not sure where to go after that conclusion.
 
Jerusalem said:
Do you know if any of these are any good?

Churchland’s “Matter and Consciousness”
Daniel Dennett “Consciousness Explained”
“The Immaterial Self: A Defense of the Cartesian Dualist Conception of the Mind” by John Foster
“Cognitional Arguments for the immateriality of the mind” by Joel N. Stenimetz
“Prize Essay on the Immateriality of the mind, and the immortality of the Soul” By B. Simpson
Click to expand...
Churchlands make some of the most outlandish and inconsistent claims I’ve heard. Ed Feser deals with them in The Last Superstition
 
Jerusalem said:
Here are my questions: I looking particularly for hard core philosophers and those
versed in neuro-science to answer.

Background: Yes. I understand hylopormorphism of Aquinas. I don’t want an explanation
of abstraction. I believe in abstraction but need a method of proving it before those who
are adamant it is a result of biological determinism.

So here are my questions?

1.) What is the best book(s) out there arguing for the immateriality of human thought which Philosophically attacks the notion that all human thought is from a genetic, biological, or neurological cause?

2.) What is the best book that can both argue the immateriality of thought and yet address the findings of neuroscience? A book that both addresses the findings
within the field but also shows their inadaquacy to demonstrate abstraction?
Click to expand...
Given your focus, I’ll assume that you have already perused everything that Stuart Hameroff has written on the subject of consciousness.

Whatever, keep tracking this man. He is an active thinker and one of the few who is seeking answers at the level of neuroscience. However, he has yet to formulate a broader theory of the sort you seem to be seeking.

For that you must read, Digital Universe, Analog Soul. It presents a theory that wraps up ideas such as soul, mind, consciousness, and even God in enough physics and general science to keep the right reader up all night, while putting most of the folks who post on blogs like this quickly to sleep.

Read it no faster than one chapter at a time. The author recommends back tracking to the previous chapter for a reread before going on to the next. Even with that you’ll need at least two reads of this book. Not because it is hard to read, but because its unique ideas will be blocked by the opinions and beliefs already filling your mind.
 
How about articles for my intended audience?

Thanks for the suggestions everyone.

How about articles on the limitations in neuroscience and arguing strongly
for immateriality of the mind?

Suggestions!
 
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