Intellect and thought

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It is a part of Catholic teaching that intellect is a faculty of soul/mind. This means that we should be able to directly control/process our thoughts. We however know that thoughts pop into our soul/mind meaning that we have no control on them. So thoughts should be part of brain process otherwise we could control/process them directly using our intellect. So the question is how intellect could be a faculty of soul/mind? Another question is if intellect has no power as a faculty of soul/mind then what is the use of soul/mind?
 
I think you’re too stark a line between intellect and the brain. Our intellect is what allows us to grasp universals, and to abstract with these from our experiences. It is only a part of being conscious. Much of our awareness and conscious processes are seated in the brain itself. The brain does a lot of operation without conscious direction, and some of this underlies our intellectual thinking. If my brain is processing information triggered by something, I may find that something pop into my conscious thoughts. The elevation from animal consciousness to conscious, rational thinking requires the immaterial intellect, but our consciousness is not only an immaterial process.
 
STT said:
It is a part of Catholic teaching that intellect is a faculty of soul/mind. This means that we should be able to directly control/process our thoughts.
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Why? That doesn’t follow.
We however know that thoughts pop into our soul/mind meaning that we have no control on them.
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This is a process of our subconscious, by definition the stuff that goes on in our brain that we’re not conscious of.
So thoughts should be part of brain process otherwise we could control/process them directly using our intellect.
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Thoughts are part of our brain process. Our brain has both conscious and subconscious processes.
 
STT said:
It is a part of Catholic teaching that intellect is a faculty of soul/mind. This means that we should be able to directly control/process our thoughts. We however know that thoughts pop into our soul/mind meaning that we have no control on them. So thoughts should be part of brain process otherwise we could control/process them directly using our intellect. So the question is how intellect could be a faculty of soul/mind? Another question is if intellect has no power as a faculty of soul/mind then what is the use of soul/mind?
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Does the Church teach that intellect is a faculty of the soul?

Since the intellect can be diminished by a severe trauma or disease which causes brain damage, I think that places the intellect as a faculty of the brain. Does it not?
 
MtnDwellar said:
Does the Church teach that intellect is a faculty of the soul?

Since the intellect can be diminished by a severe trauma or disease which causes brain damage, I think that places the intellect as a faculty of the brain. Does it not?
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Thomas Aquinas did, in any case.

If we as human beings are to have a mind in the afterlife – after our heads die – and that is indeed the expectation of the Holy Church, then, at least in part, the human mind must be soul-based, although requiring the neurons of the head for expression during human life.

ICXC NIKA
 
MtnDwellar said:
Does the Church teach that intellect is a faculty of the soul?

Since the intellect can be diminished by a severe trauma or disease which causes brain damage, I think that places the intellect as a faculty of the brain. Does it not?
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Intellect in a formal, scholastic sense has a more technical meaning. In the more popular use of the word, a person’s intellect has to do with intelligence, and yes, the brain has a lot to do with intelligence. What the Thomistic generally means is the part capable of grasping universals, forms, abstracting with and from those, etc… with what makes rational thinking possible.
 
Wesrock said:
I think you’re too stark a line between intellect and the brain. Our intellect is what allows us to grasp universals, and to abstract with these from our experiences.
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Ability to grasp universal is part of our thinking activities.
Wesrock said:
It is only a part of being conscious. Much of our awareness and conscious processes are seated in the brain itself. The brain does a lot of operation without conscious direction, and some of this underlies our intellectual thinking. If my brain is processing information triggered by something, I may find that something pop into my conscious thoughts. The elevation from animal consciousness to conscious, rational thinking requires the immaterial intellect, but our consciousness is not only an immaterial process.
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I don’t understand this part of your reasoning. It is like saying that being conscious requires an immaterial entity, so for example robot cannot be conscious, and animal and human are conscious.

Moreover, I think that animal has the power of rational thinking and power to abstract. Think of a cat who move her babies from a place to another to save them from danger. She knows how many babies she has and she knows what danger means.
 
Animals are conscious beings. An immaterial process is not required for that. They can process and respond to sensory information and their needs as a unified whole. They can have urges to protect and care for their young and act according to their nature to do so. They can even imagine and conjure up mental images. That’s not an immaterial process.

An example of rational thinking? Well, consider a chiliagon (a polygon with 1,000 sides). You understand what that is, even if you’be never encountered one. You may not be able to make a mental image of one, or at least not be able to make a mental image of one that’s distinct from your mental image of a 1,001 sided figure, but you understand what each of those are. You can grasp that concept in a universal sense. The same way you can grasp triangularity, or what it is to be a dog or a human, beyond simple mental images and abstractions of those images and sensory information related to encounters with them.You keep this type of running understanding of universals going on in your thoughts. We can direct our will according to these thoughts and carry out our own ends based on this rational thinking. It’s a step beyond the experience and capabilities of other animals. Even if you are skeptical that humans are the only ones with this ability, it’s this power of rational thought that, to my understanding, the scholastic argues can’t be explained as being just a product of the brain, which can make relationships between patterns, create mental images, feel emotions, but can’t actually take on the forms of a thing in itself, that is, grasp the universal as such.

(Note: This is different that other arguments I’ve made against materialism, which doesn’t just say the mind is material, but denies things such as formal causes and final causes as being a part of a material being. That is a more extreme position.)

Edit: I hate typing from my phone. Especially since it insisted on removing the option to turn off auto correct for me.
 
seagal said:
Why? That doesn’t follow.
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Every activity that is related to soul should be conscious otherwise it is related to brain which is dead matter (unconscious).
seagal said:
This is a process of our subconscious, by definition the stuff that goes on in our brain that we’re not conscious of.
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Good so you agree that thought process is a subconscious activity and this is related to brain activity. This however leave no room for intellect.
seagal said:
Thoughts are part of our brain process. Our brain has both conscious and subconscious processes.
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You cannot process thoughts consciously because we can consciously process one thing at a time.
 
Wesrock said:
Animals are conscious beings. An immaterial process is not required for that. They can process and respond to sensory information and their needs as a unified whole. They can have urges to protect and care for their young and act according to their nature to do so. They can even imagine and conjure up mental images. That’s not an immaterial process.

An example of rational thinking? Well, consider a chiliagon (a polygon with 1,000 sides). You understand what that is, even if you’be never encountered one. You may not be able to make a mental image of one, or at least not be able to make a mental image of one that’s distinct from your mental image of a 1,001 sided figure, but you understand what each of those are. You can grasp that concept in a universal sense. The same way you can grasp triangularity, or what it is to be a dog or a human, beyond simple mental images and abstractions of those images and sensory information related to encounters with them.You keep this type of running understanding of universals going on in your thoughts. We can direct our will according to these thoughts and carry out our own ends based on this rational thinking. It’s a step beyond the experience and capabilities of other animals. Even if you are skeptical that humans are the only ones with this ability, it’s this power of rational thought that, to my understanding, the scholastic argues can’t be explained as being just a product of the brain, which can make relationships between patterns, create mental images, feel emotions, but can’t actually take on the forms of a thing in itself, that is, grasp the universal as such.

(Note: This is different that other arguments I’ve made against materialism, which doesn’t just say the mind is material, but denies things such as formal causes and final causes as being a part of a material being. That is a more extreme position.)

Edit: I hate typing from my phone. Especially since it insisted on removing the option to turn off auto correct for me.
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I think that animal cannot perform those easy tasks I mentioned without abstraction. What you think is mostly in line with what Hume thought. He believed that what we experience is all that matter and our mind has this bad habit to add causality as an abstract entity to what we experience. Kant however disagree with him. I have a thread on this topic in here.

Quoted from the another thread: Lets think of the billiard balls for simplicity. That is true that the process of moving and colliding balls is a sequence of events. That is what we experience but the ability to hit the cue ball in specific way to get a desirable result requires the knowledge of causality. So to summarize I think both Kant and Hume are right. Hume was right because from view point of an observer all thing which matter is the experience. Kant however is right because the sole experience is not enough to do the job and you need the knowledge of causality to perform a specific task. This means that animal cannot also perform any easy task without abstraction. I hope this helps.
 
STT said:
What you think is mostly in line with what Hume thought. He believed that what we experience is all that matter and our mind has this bad habit to add causality as an abstract entity to what we experience.
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How did you get this impression from what I wrote?
 
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