Intellect is faculty of brain

[Texas_Longhorns]

The intellect is a spiritual/immaterial power of the spiritual/immaterial human soul. The brain is a material part of the material body. The interior sensory powers of the soul such as the common sense, imagination, and sensible memory function through some corporeal organ of the body which is probably the brain. Sense knowledge is the limit of the brain which kind of knowledge is also found in brute animals. The brain in tandem with the interior sense powers of the soul is probably also involved in the production of the sensory phantasms which the human intellect abstracts the universals or the essences of things from. In this life, the human intellect knows nothing without the phantasms. Intellectual knowledge is gained through the senses for human beings with a soul in a body here on earth.

Excellent explanation.

 

[setarcos]

How does the scientific method investigate the spiritual world? It cannot, therefore they are excluding the spiritual.

How do we know the spiritual world exists unless we invest energy into its investigation? Even simply labeling the concept is an investigation into the premise.

 

[Wesrock]

How do we know the spiritual world exists unless we invest energy into its investigation? Even simply labeling the concept is an investigation into the premise.

If science is the study of quantitative things, then it can only measure quantitative things. However, that does not in itself mean that only quantitative things exist.

 

[davidv]

How do we know the spiritual world exists unless we invest energy into its investigation? Even simply labeling the concept is an investigation into the premise.

There are investigation methods other than the empirical sciences.

 

[STT]

How does the scientific method investigate the spiritual world? It cannot, therefore they are excluding the spiritual.

You cannot experience spiritual world directly but it is possible to indirectly investigate its effect if there is any. It should be a causal relationship between spiritual and natural world otherwise what we are dealing with is pure natural. The result of that research is that there is a relation between intelligence and some areas of brain. This suggests that intellect is a faculty of brain rather than soul.

 

[vz71]

There are extensive studies about human intelligence. One of frontier theory in this area is Parieto-Frontal Integration Theory (PFIT). You can read more about it in here. The question which is interesting is what is duty of soul if intellect is a faculty of brain?

They define intellect very specifically. And it does not appear to be the same definition commonly used by people.
So if what they define is a function of the brain…so what?
They have not shown anything more then computation ability.

 

[STT]

There are investigation methods other than the empirical sciences.

Such as?

 

[setarcos]

The intellect is a spiritual/immaterial power of the spiritual/immaterial human soul. The brain is a material part of the material body. The interior sensory powers of the soul such as the common sense, imagination, and sensible memory function through some corporeal organ of the body which is probably the brain. Sense knowledge is the limit of the brain which kind of knowledge is also found in brute animals. The brain in tandem with the interior sense powers of the soul is probably also involved in the production of the sensory phantasms which the human intellect abstracts the universals or the essences of things from. In this life, the human intellect knows nothing without the phantasms. Intellectual knowledge is gained through the senses for human beings with a soul in a body here on earth.

You’ve merely hidden the problem behind esoteric definitions. If the souls “sensory powers” arises through the function of the brain, giving rise to our intelligence and our intelligence is inseparably connected to our intellect giving rise to who we are as a person, then how can you separate the effects of the one on the other without destroying the person they gave rise to in tandem? The brain is involved in not only sensory (name removed by moderator)ut but in sensory interpretation. Change the brain, change the soul?

 

[STT]

They define intellect very specifically. And it does not appear to be the same definition commonly used by people.
So if what they define is a function of the brain…so what?
They have not shown anything more then computation ability.

So intellect is not a faculty of soul.

 

[Wesrock]

You cannot experience spiritual world directly but it is possible to indirectly investigate its effect if there is any. It should be a causal relationship between spiritual and natural world otherwise what we are dealing with is pure natural. The result of that research is that there is a relation between intelligence and some areas of brain. This suggests that intellect is a faculty of brain rather than soul.

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
… 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.

 

[davidv]

You cannot experience spiritual world directly but it is possible to indirectly investigate its effect if there is any.

Exactly. Which is why limiting a study to the empirical world explicitly excludes the spiritual.

It should be a causal relationship between spiritual and natural world otherwise what we are dealing with is pure natural. The result of that research is that there is a relation between intelligence and some areas of brain. This suggests that intellect is a faculty of brain rather than soul.

No that is not suggested at all. It is conjecture based on the denial of the spiritual.

 

[STT]

Exactly. Which is why limiting a study to the empirical world explicitly excludes the spiritual.
No that is not suggested at all. It is conjecture based on the denial of the spiritual.

Do you have any argument that intellect is spiritual? They are supporting their claim with evidence, so it is more than a conjecture.

 

[STT]

Exactly. Which is why limiting a study to the empirical world explicitly excludes the spiritual.

My point was that it doesn’t if there is any causal relation between spiritual and natural world.

 

[setarcos]

If science is the study of quantitative things, then it can only measure quantitative things. However, that does not in itself mean that only quantitative things exist.

Because we are individual beings anything that can be communicated to another meaningfully about any other entity must be quantifiable in some manner. Individuals can never make equal judgments about another entity unless it is subject to being quantifiable.
Those things not quantifiable are doomed to the shadows and for communicative purposes meaningless.

 

[Wesrock]

Because we are individual beings anything that can be communicated to another meaningfully about any other entity must be quantifiable in some manner. Individuals can never make equal judgments about another entity unless it is subject to being quantifiable.
Those things not quantifiable are doomed to the shadows and for communicative purposes meaningless.

Our communication methods are quantifiable. I never said we could not discuss and make rational arguments about qualitative things, just that they can’t be quantifiably measured.

 

[PseuTonym]

Because we are individual beings anything that can be communicated to another meaningfully about any other entity must be quantifiable in some manner. Individuals can never make equal judgments about another entity unless it is subject to being quantifiable.
Those things not quantifiable are doomed to the shadows and for communicative purposes meaningless.

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.

 

[vz71]

So intellect is not a faculty of soul.

Not what I said at all.

They are not defining intellect very well.
The finding, given the erroneous meaning, is worthless.

 

[ColdComfort]

I don’t deny there is a causal relationship between the brain and the soul. A simple example would be emotional disorders like depression or illnesses like psychosis. The fact that the chemical composition of the brain can effect emotions and intellect is something I think few Christians would dispute. We are animals. Rational animals.

I don’t see how this disproves the existence of the soul. You can try this at home safely: Decide to raise your left arm after counting to ten. If you carry through with intention your left arm will move. Our bodies and soul interact. This doesn’t prove the existence of the soul I suppose but pointing out that our physical bodies have effects on our souls doesn’t prove anything either.

Edit: One really good easy to read book on this subject is Frank Sheed’s Theology for Beginners. It’s cheap as a e-book.

 

[Gorgias]

Intellect and intelligence are related. Intellect is the faculty of reasoning and understanding objectively

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

and intelligence is the ability the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.

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.

Intellect wouldn’t be possible without intelligence and vice versa.

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.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

I don’t deny there is a causal relationship between the brain and the soul. A simple example would be emotional disorders like depression or illnesses like psychosis. The fact that the chemical composition of the brain can effect emotions and intellect is something I think few Christians would dispute. We are animals. Rational animals.

I don’t see how this disproves the existence of the soul. You can try this at home safely: Decide to raise your left arm after counting to ten. If you carry through with intention your left arm will move. Our bodies and soul interact. This doesn’t prove the existence of the soul I suppose but pointing out that our physical bodies have effects on our souls doesn’t prove anything either.

Edit: One really good easy to read book on this subject is Frank Sheed’s Theology for Beginners. It’s cheap as a e-book.

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.