Is the intellect necessarily immaterial?

[Ben_Shipman]

In this thread a couple of years ago, I had an argument over whether it is possible to build machines that act more intelligently than people. This in turn depends on whether the intellect is something that works according to physical laws we can exploit, like various other bodily functions, or whether it is immaterial and impossible to physically capture.

I think that intellect works according to physical laws, even if the experience of being transcends physics. In other words, the brain is a ‘machine’ that suffices to produce intelligent behavior, while the soul is immersed in the brain and has experiences that correspond to the brain’s physical activity.

I also believe in supernatural grace (where the Holy Spirit alters the spiritual activity of the soul and the physical activity of the brain), but I don’t believe it is necessary for intelligence. Your thoughts?

 

[GEddie]

The workings of the head are physical; the experience of a human mind is nonphysical.

ICXC NIKA

 

[Tomdstone]

The workings of the head are physical; the experience of a human mind is nonphysical.

ICXC NIKA

Is the experience of the mind of a dog nonphysical?

 

[Ben_Shipman]

If having subjective experiences suffices for having a soul, then all subjective experiences are immaterial, including any that dogs have. Otherwise, having a brain would suffice for having subjective experiences, and hence for having a soul, but we know that the human soul is a direct creation of God, which it would not be if humans naturally formed souls when they form brains.

 

[lmelahn]

In this thread a couple of years ago, I had an argument over whether it is possible to build machines that act more intelligently than people. This in turn depends on whether the intellect is something that works according to physical laws we can exploit, like various other bodily functions, or whether it is immaterial and impossible to physically capture.

I think that intellect works according to physical laws, even if the experience of being transcends physics. In other words, the brain is a ‘machine’ that suffices to produce intelligent behavior, while the soul is immersed in the brain and has experiences that correspond to the brain’s physical activity.

I also believe in supernatural grace (where the Holy Spirit alters the spiritual activity of the soul and the physical activity of the brain), but I don’t believe it is necessary for intelligence. Your thoughts?

Yes, the intellect as such is a spiritual capacity or faculty. It can do things that no material capacity can do.

The most obvious one is that it makes us capable of understanding what something is, not merely to the degree that it gratifies, or helps to gratify, or repulses, some sensory appetite, but in and of itself.

No animal, not even the smartest gorilla or chimpanzee, is capable of speculative knowledge like that, not even close.

Even if our object of knowledge is something material (say, a rose), our manner of knowing it requires a power superior to that provided by merely material things. Roses do not just please our noses; without much difficulty, we come to know roses for what they are, not merely how they benefit us. We can even attach symbolic meanings to them (love, the House of Lancaster, or what have you). Only a human being could have said “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

Moreover, these abilities require a certain detachment from the material aspect of the things we know. In order for Juliet to say and (more to the point) understand, “a rose by any other name,” she needs to know what a rose is in general—apart from this particular rose or that one. But only an immaterial (i.e. spiritual) capacity or power can do that—because it is precisely the materialness of the individual rose that makes it an individual, distinct from other roses.

Sub-human animals, on the other hand, can recognize things as helpful or hurtful, imagine things, and even show a kind of affection toward things (e.g., dogs towards their owners), but they do not come to know those things. Dogs, for instance, do not know that the thing they are eating is food, or that the man over there is their master, or even what a man or a master is. They know that such things bring them comfort and companionship, and that is enough.

In a word, sub-human animals cannot get past the individuality of the things they experience. Hence, none of their knowledge really transcends materiality.

 

[lmelahn]

…

I think that intellect works according to physical laws, even if the experience of being transcends physics. In other words, the brain is a ‘machine’ that suffices to produce intelligent behavior, while the soul is immersed in the brain and has experiences that correspond to the brain’s physical activity.

…

The brain certainly works according to physical laws, but I think it is a mistake to equate brain with intellect.

(I think it would also be mistake to characterize the brain as a “machine”—since practically nothing in it works deterministically—but I would rather not press this point at the moment.)

Humans have certain capacities (see my previous post) that go far beyond what any physical organ, let alone a machine, can do.

Can a machine, or an organ, or even a non-human animal, know what it is processing, sensing, or eating?

 

[lmelahn]

If having subjective experiences suffices for having a soul, then all subjective experiences are immaterial, including any that dogs have. Otherwise, having a brain would suffice for having subjective experiences, and hence for having a soul, but we know that the human soul is a direct creation of God, which it would not be if humans naturally formed souls when they form brains.

In some philosophical systems (those that descend from Aristotle), every living thing has a “soul,” which is just its form (i.e., the intelligible principle that gives something its consistency and unity). But only human beings have a “rational” or “spiritual” soul.

So sure, having subjective experience is a prerequisite for having an animal soul (like dogs and chimpanzees), but in their case, it is not immaterial. In fact, all of their behavior is easily explainable by material means.

In our case, no. For instance, speculative knowledge (like the kind we are using right now to discuss this issue) is simply not bound to any sense organ—nor any organ, not even the brain.

 

[Ben_Shipman]

Things fall into multiple abstract categories. An individual rose is a rose, a flower, a part of a plant, and a living thing. Being able to think abstractly only requires that you have a neural network capable of capturing abstract patterns. See for instance this article about a computer teaching itself chess.

Animals are also capable of abstraction - just not conscious abstraction.* A lion could never see a gazelle to eat it if the lion’s visual cortex did not abstract from the pattern of colors received by the lion’s retina to the gazelle’s actual shape, and the lion wouldn’t chase the gazelle if its brain didn’t classify the gazelle into the ‘prey’ category.

I’ll grant that the ability to grasp the significance of a thing ‘in and of itself’ is uniquely human, but that ability need not be immaterial. What it consists of is the ability to grasp how a thing stands in relation to the world as a whole. Animals aren’t smart enough to have a mental model of the world as a whole, so they can’t compare things to that model. But modelling things is something that brains can do; modelling the world just requires a sufficiently powerful brain.

*Actually, the African Grey parrot Alex seems to have been a powerful counterexample, being able to name and use abstract categories like color and shape.

 

[Ben_Shipman]

Being able to think abstractly only requires that you have a neural network capable of capturing abstract patterns.

Actually I should make a correction. A neural network needs more sophistication to think for itself than it does to merely recognize patterns. But if animal brains can think, and artificial neural networks can abstract, then abstract thought seems within the potential scope of neural networks in general.

 

[Ben_Shipman]

There is a fundamental error in thinking about this topic that it seems many people fall into. They equate the materiality of the thing being thought about with the materiality of the thing doing the thinking. They speak as though one had to literally hold the object of one’s thought in one’s mind, so that only an immaterial mind could think an immaterial thought.

Not so, since the conceptual interconnections of immaterial things can still be represented in a physical neural network, or sometimes even in an ordinary electrical circuit (a pocket calculator manipulates representations of immaterial numbers, for instance).

 

[lmelahn]

There is a fundamental error in thinking about this topic that it seems many people fall into. They equate the materiality of the thing being thought about with the materiality of the thing doing the thinking. They speak as though one had to literally hold the object of one’s thought in one’s mind, so that only an immaterial mind could think an immaterial thought.

A merely material thing is too weak to think of things in an immaterial way; only an immaterial (spiritual) thing has that capacity. We are not “equating”*the immaterial mind and the material object, just saying that to do things like understanding something it itself requires more capacity than a merely material creature would have.

Not so, since the conceptual interconnections of immaterial things can still be represented in a physical neural network, or sometimes even in an ordinary electrical circuit (a pocket calculator manipulates representations of immaterial numbers, for instance).

I don’t think I can grant your premise here. Numbers can indeed be material: there is nothing more material than 5 eggs, or 1000 kilograms of sand, or 5 meters of road (or, for that matter, five binary digits represented by transistors).

Only human beings can think of numbers in the abstract. Not even computers do that: they just tally up bits (ones and zeros, represented by tiny electronic switches) and mechanically perform operations on them. On the the programmer (and to some degree the end user) knows what they actually mean.

 

[lmelahn]

Things fall into multiple abstract categories. An individual rose is a rose, a flower, a part of a plant, and a living thing.

Sure, these are different concepts, but all of them refer to the same underlying reality. They just differ in the degree to which they bring one to an understanding of what the rose is.

Being able to think abstractly only requires that you have a neural network capable of capturing abstract patterns. See for instance this article about a computer teaching itself chess.

Mechanically detecting patterns is not the same thing as understanding those patterns. I can make my computer use regex to find patterns, but it is I who understand the patterns, not the computer.

Animals are also capable of abstraction - just not conscious abstraction.* A lion could never see a gazelle to eat it if the lion’s visual cortex did not abstract from the pattern of colors received by the lion’s retina to the gazelle’s actual shape, and the lion wouldn’t chase the gazelle if its brain didn’t classify the gazelle into the ‘prey’ category.

All of these are examples of complex forms of sensation. (I believe the psychologists call some of it “cognition.”) I never denied that animals are capable of it. But it is a far cry from true abstraction. The lion knows that the gazelle is good to eat, but not what a gazelle is; the parrot is trained (by giving it food as a reward) to say “color” or “shape” when presented certain objects (I have seen this experiement), but it has no idea what color or shape are.

I’ll grant that the ability to grasp the significance of a thing ‘in and of itself’ is uniquely human, but that ability need not be immaterial. What it consists of is the ability to grasp how a thing stands in relation to the world as a whole.

I disagree. I don’t need to know anything about the rest of the world in order to understand what a rose is—it is sufficient for me to see a rose and smell its fragrance. Sure, I won’t benefit from scientific knowledge or anything like that, but that doesn’t make my primitive knowledge invalid.

Animals aren’t smart enough to have a mental model of the world as a whole, so they can’t compare things to that model. But modelling things is something that brains can do; modelling the world just requires a sufficiently powerful brain.

Again, I don’t deny that brains can model. I just affirm that there is an irreducible difference between the sensorial modelling that animals do (and we do too, incidentally), and the properly intellectual modeling that we do.

Notice that “the world” is an infinite concept—“the world” includes whatever is not present before me. I have no experience of “the world,” but I infer its existence based on a speculative judgment.

Material faculties simply do not have the capacity to do that. No matter how powerful you made the brain, if it were not “powered” by an immaterial soul, it would not be able to conceive of “the world.”

 

[Tomdstone]

Things fall into multiple abstract categories. An individual rose is a rose, a flower, a part of a plant, and a living thing. Being able to think abstractly only requires that you have a neural network capable of capturing abstract patterns. See for instance this article about a computer teaching itself chess.

Animals are also capable of abstraction - just not conscious abstraction.* A lion could never see a gazelle to eat it if the lion’s visual cortex did not abstract from the pattern of colors received by the lion’s retina to the gazelle’s actual shape, and the lion wouldn’t chase the gazelle if its brain didn’t classify the gazelle into the ‘prey’ category.

I’ll grant that the ability to grasp the significance of a thing ‘in and of itself’ is uniquely human, but that ability need not be immaterial. What it consists of is the ability to grasp how a thing stands in relation to the world as a whole. Animals aren’t smart enough to have a mental model of the world as a whole, so they can’t compare things to that model. But modelling things is something that brains can do; modelling the world just requires a sufficiently powerful brain.

*Actually, the African Grey parrot Alex seems to have been a powerful counterexample, being able to name and use abstract categories like color and shape.

So the intellect of man is just a higher form of the intellect seen in animals?

 

[Ben_Shipman]

So the intellect of man is just a higher form of the intellect seen in animals?

I’m suggesting “sort of yes”. The most crucial distinction between human and animal intellect is that humans can grasp the concept of God, and are thus able to develop a relationship with God, and thereby receive supernatural grace. Animals don’t have enough neurons in the right places. If they did, they would also be capable of entering into a relationship with God, if God were willing.

 

[Ben_Shipman]

A merely material thing is too weak to think of things in an immaterial way; only an immaterial (spiritual) thing has that capacity. We are not “equating”*the immaterial mind and the material object, just saying that to do things like understanding something it itself requires more capacity than a merely material creature would have.

Fair enough. But it still doesn’t make sense. A number, for instance, is an immaterial thing - an immaterial thing which is so easy to apply to material things (such as a pair of eggs) that you don’t realize you are doing it. Two eggs is not the same thing as two.

Further, when you type two into a calculator, you understand it as two in the abstract, and the calculator works in the context of your understanding. Which is to say, the answer it gives you - about an immaterial thing - seems right.

 

[Tomdstone]

I’m suggesting “sort of yes”. The most crucial distinction between human and animal intellect is that humans can grasp the concept of God, and are thus able to develop a relationship with God, and thereby receive supernatural grace. Animals don’t have enough neurons in the right places. If they did, they would also be capable of entering into a relationship with God, if God were willing.

According to Cardinal Mahony, there is a heaven for cats.

 

[Ben_Shipman]

Mechanically detecting patterns is not the same thing as understanding those patterns. I can make my computer use regex to find patterns, but it is I who understand the patterns, not the computer.

What is meant by understanding? If understanding means being able to give the right answers, then the computer understands what it is doing in a narrow context, while you understand in a broad context. If understanding means being able to judge the value of something in a human context, then yeah, humans win for now. But this need mean nothing more than that human brains are the best computers around. It could still be possible to build a computer that matches or exceeds the human context in the future.

…] the parrot is trained (by giving it food as a reward) to say “color” or “shape” when presented certain objects (I have seen this experiement), but it has no idea what color or shape are.

If the parrot in question can answer how one object is different from the others, and the answer is that it is a different color, or that it is a different shape, then the parrot is using the abstract concepts of color and shape functionally. I can’t think of a better criterion for basic understanding than that.

I disagree. I don’t need to know anything about the rest of the world in order to understand what a rose is—it is sufficient for me to see a rose and smell its fragrance. Sure, I won’t benefit from scientific knowledge or anything like that, but that doesn’t make my primitive knowledge invalid.

So a primitive man picks up and smells a rose, and a chimpanzee does the same. The man appreciates the rose more deeply, but who is to say that the chimp can’t also appreciate the rose in its own way? The chimp, perhaps unlike most animals, can remember the rose as a distinct object. It knows that the rose is a [whatever roses are to chimps]. What more can you ask? If you don’t understand what a rose is to God, then does that mean you don’t understand what a rose is at all?

I concede your point that you don’t need to know about the world as a whole to have valid knowledge, but knowing about the world as a whole is about the level at which knowledge becomes uniquely human. If you consider lesser sorts of knowledge to be valid, then animals too can (partially) know things for what they are.

Again, I don’t deny that brains can model. I just affirm that there is an irreducible difference between the sensorial modelling that animals do (and we do too, incidentally), and the properly intellectual modeling that we do.

This is the key. Why need there be such an irreducible difference? How do you know that the transition from animal to human intelligence isn’t largely a phase transition, as a critical brain size is reached?

 

[Tomdstone]

The workings of the head are physical; the experience of a human mind is nonphysical.

ICXC NIKA

If consciousness is non-physical, how do you explain the 2014 experiment of Mohamad Koubeissi, an American neurologist who implanted electrodes near one of the claustra of his epileptic patient. When he switched the electrode on, she lost consciousness, but when he turned it off, she regained consciousness?

 

[fisherman_carl]

In this thread a couple of years ago, I had an argument over whether it is possible to build machines that act more intelligently than people. This in turn depends on whether the intellect is something that works according to physical laws we can exploit, like various other bodily functions, or whether it is immaterial and impossible to physically capture.

I think that intellect works according to physical laws, even if the experience of being transcends physics. In other words, the brain is a ‘machine’ that suffices to produce intelligent behavior, while the soul is immersed in the brain and has experiences that correspond to the brain’s physical activity.

I also believe in supernatural grace (where the Holy Spirit alters the spiritual activity of the soul and the physical activity of the brain), but I don’t believe it is necessary for intelligence. Your thoughts?

Then you don’t believe in free will, because if our minds are nothing more than physical chemical reactions then our thoughts are merely cause and effect. They are merely chemical reactions responding to stimulus.

There is something about this in Dr. Edward Feser’s book called “The Last Superstition”. He also has a whole book on the subject which I have not read.

A little background knowledge on it. The problem posed was how could a physical object know something about another physical object without actually becoming that physical object. Indeed, how could a physical object know anything about another object? Ok so this problem existed which seemed to suggest that the mind is not physical. A mind is needed in order to recognize objects without actually becoming them. Then the more modern materialists suggested that it is not necessary for a physical object to become another physical object in order to have knowledge about it. That instead the brain can store symbols of that object. For instance, If I think about a giraffe, my brain does not actually become a giraffe in order to know about it. My brain can store a symbol of a giraffe instead, like a computer. A computer stores patterns and symbols of other things. A picture for instance can be stored as a series of zero’s and one’s. Ok, so what is the problem with this theory? It doesn’t get rid off the problem. It just moves it back a step. Because, you still need a mind to interpret the symbols. What symbol gets associated with a giraffe? A mind still needs to interpret these symbols. So you are back to the need for an immaterial mind. Even with a computer you still need a human mind to interpret the symbols and data that it displays on the screen. The computer itself does not ‘know’ these things. It simple stores the data that the human mind has organized and interpreted.

Consequently some atheistic philosophers have come to believe in a kind of dualism. That is there is an immaterial mind of sorts. While other committed materialist philosophers reject dualism in favor of the idea that we don’t actually think about anything, that it is all an illusion, a trick of the brain. However, it is impossible to actually live out that belief. How can one live as though they are not actually able to think about something else?

I’m no expert on this subject. But I have read a little about it. As well I have a degree in Computer Science. So I understand how computers work more than the average person. Some atheists claim that our brains are like computers. Dr. Edward Feser notes that even with a computer you need a mind to make sense of any of the symbols or data. The computer itself just does what it is programmed to do. You still need a human mind to program it. The intelligence of the computer is actually an intelligent mind who has programmed it to behave that way. And, thus our minds can not be computers because even computers need minds. Yes, a computer can do many calculations in a short time compared to a human. However, the intelligence behind those calculations comes from a human mind. The computer could do nothing if it wasn’t for the human mind telling it what to do.

 

[Wesrock]

Is there a reason why the form of a developed AI can’t be analogous to a soul and have analogous capabilities to intellect that would allow it to know things?