Intellect is faculty of brain

[ColdComfort]

The problem with this line of reasoning is how far the soul gets “pushed back” into irrelevance. It’d be like saying “well I don’t see how modern physics disproves the existence of the angels that move the stars and planets around. Clearly the planets move, so the angels must be pushing them.” Now this is strictly speaking true; we could argue that the angels just happen to always push the planets in accordance with the laws of physics. The problem is that this is proving in the wrong direction. If we have some physical account of planetary motion that explains all the motion of the planets, we have no reason to tack on “oh and also there are angels” at the end. There would need to be something better about the “angels” account for us to prefer it, since it requires a whole additional class of beings to exist.

So it is with the intellect. We have a great many physical puzzle pieces each suggesting that the intellect has the same kind of physical explanation as the motion of the planets. But unlike the planets, we haven’t put all the pieces together yet, and there are still a few missing. So the physical account is inadequate and we should prefer the soul account of intellect, right? Of course not, the soul account has a bunch of missing and jumbled pieces too, AND it needs to be compatible with whatever physical reality we discover as we study the brain.

The danger, of course, is that the physical reality we discover can, like the planets, completely explain the intellect, and the soul account will have no actual job left.

I don’t accept the analogy. Planets and such are solely material objects. There is nothing I’ve ever seen that intelligence, or any other facet of our mind or soul has a purely physical explanation. In fact, as I understand it, outside of people like Daniel Dennett, you’d be hard pressed to find any philosopher or scientist who took such a view.

Whether there is something called the soul, in the traditional Catholic sense, is another argument. But that I, and using common sense, others are conscious beings exercising various conscious abilities including intelligence is obvious. Both my body and consciousness interact.

 

[STT]

A major issue in this discussion is that we’re meaning different things when we speak of intellect, intelligence, mind, consciousness, etc… A Thomist would not deny the role of the brain in cognition, consciousness, intelligence

Intellect and intelligence are related. Intellect is the faculty of reasoning and understanding objectively and intelligence is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills. Intellect wouldn’t be possible without intelligence and vice versa.

… but would assert that a solely material explanation is insufficient to explain a rational mind. Perhaps the biggest issue to a Thomist would be the inability of a materialist worldview in explaining intentionality, that is, the “aboutness” of thoughts, neural processes, etc… and explaining how thoughts can be determinate.

We know that the is strong correlation between neural activity in certain areas of brain and thoughts. This is discussed in details in section “A distributed brain network for human intelligence”.

 

[STT]

Actually, intellect comes from the Greek notion of the ‘nous’. In a philosophical sense, it deals with the mind.

Intelligence tends to be used psychologists (and others); it tends to be used to discuss mental faculties. In other words, it tends to be used in discussions of the brain.

I used dictionary for translation of intellect and intelligence.

Do animals have intelligence? Do they have an intellect? (I would answer ‘yes’ and ‘no’, respectively.) They’re not the same notion (although they’re related, to a certain extent, in humans); and they can’t be conflated without falling into error.

Animal have both intellect and intelligence given my definition. Animal can solve problems and reason is a base for solving problem.

 

[EnosJadon]

Depending upon how one defines “intellect” it’s questionable as to whether humans actually possess it. Judging by their behavior they don’t appear to. Rational, intelligent, intellectually discerning beings should be able to examine a given set of data and come to a fairly uniform conclusion. What’s reasonable to one rational being, should be reasonable to another rational being. Intellectual beings should be able to agree on the most likely conclusion to a given problem, so long as each of the members is approaching the problem logically. But humans don’t appear to be able to do that. Instead, humans embrace a broad spectrum of beliefs on almost any subject. This inability to agree is more reminiscent of an evolutionarily driven biological system, which survives by trying every possible permutation and then mindlessly preserving those permutations which are best able to survive. Now although such a system may appear intelligent and rational…by adapting to its environment…it actually isn’t. And although on an individual level the behavior may appear “reasoned”, the behavior of the system as a whole betrays the fact that what is actually occurring isn’t reasoned at all. It’s simply a case of evolution giving the appearance of intellect by adapting and surviving.

The behavior of humans would seem to suggest that they’re not intellectual beings at all, but that their behavior is simply an example of an evolutionary system giving the appearance of intelligent design, when all that’s really at work is survival of the fittest.

But as always, people will see what they want to see, and so you’ll no doubt disagree. Which is evolutionarily exactly what you should do. But if you really are an intellectual being then you should consider what I’ve said very carefully, because it might be right. And you should be able to discern that it might be right.

 

[setarcos]

How about knots, permutations, words, and even the individual letters of an alphabet?
March used to be the first month of the year. If in future people use the sequence beginning with Z, A, B and ending with W, X, Y as alphabetical order, then they’re unlikely to revise the spelling of words so that “CAT” retains its property of consisting of third, first, and then twentieth letters: BZS. The consonant-vowel-consonant structure is more important than the coincidence that it happens to be letter #3, letter #1, letter #20.

Not sure what your applicable argument is here? All the things you listed are quantifiable items. Your statement itself, though somewhat digressive, is a quantified statement.

 

[Gorgias]

I used dictionary for translation of intellect and intelligence.

Fair enough. Yet, this is a ‘philosophy’ forum, and you’re using the terms in the general context of philosophy (as well as philosophy of the mind), so don’t you think that you should use the applicable definitions, and not just generic dictionary definitions?

Animal have both intellect and intelligence given my definition.

Again – it’s a problem of agreement on definitions.

Moreover, if your definitions don’t do a good job of distinguishing, then they’re not really useful as definitions, now, are they?

Animal can solve problems and reason is a base for solving problem.

Not all do.

 

[PseuTonym]

Not sure what your applicable argument is here? All the things you listed are quantifiable items.

It seems that there’s something incompatible about our different ways of using the English language, specifically what we mean by the word “quantifiable.”

By “quantify”, I mean “express as a quantity”, so I understand the word “quantifiable” to mean “can be expressed as a quantity.”

Can you express the meaning of each of the following words as a quantity?

1. big
2. causation
3. intention
4. uncomputable (as in the sentence: "The halting problem in theoretical computer science demonstrates the existence of mathematical functions that are uncomputable.)

In ordinary communication, a number isn’t in itself big. It depends upon what the number represents. Twelve would be big if it were the number of wives a man has. Twelve wouldn’t be big if it were the number of bytes of storage on a flash drive or memory stick.

 

[STT]

Fair enough. Yet, this is a ‘philosophy’ forum, and you’re using the terms in the general context of philosophy (as well as philosophy of the mind), so don’t you think that you should use the applicable definitions, and not just generic dictionary definitions?

Again – it’s a problem of agreement on definitions.

Moreover, if your definitions don’t do a good job of distinguishing, then they’re not really useful as definitions, now, are they?

So you define intellect as mind?

Not all do.

They all do. That is the advantage of having a nerve system, solving problem.

 

[Gorgias]

So you define intellect as mind?

I’m not asserting that the ‘intellect’ is the ‘mind’, per se, but that the notion of the intellect has to do with the mind.

They all do. That is the advantage of having a nerve system, solving problem.

Not so fast…! You’re asserting more than just simple “problem solving” (by which I take to mean “observation and making choices” – you’re asserting the use of reason. I disagree that all animals are rational decision-makers.