Is the intellect necessarily immaterial?

[fisherman_carl]

Death is the separation of the soul from the body. When the soul ‘unplugs’ from the brain, mental events cease to correspond to physical processes. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t correspond before.

Uncertainty means the outcome is up to chance. It might seem confining if I say that what you do is up to chance, but you are the chance. The dice that are rolled are atoms in your own brain - they are your choice.

Can you ask for more? What if you could dictate how the dice would come up? How would you choose what to dictate? This route leads to an infinite regress.

There is supernatural grace, and I’m sure it plays no small role in Christian life. But even in the realm of the supernatural, there is chance.

Why did Lucifer choose to defy God, when he was created capable of loving God? Chance. That’s just what happened.

If anyone can improve on this analysis of free will, please do. Maybe free will isn’t chance, but then I don’t see what it is.

---

And yes, it is still necessary for humans to write algorithms, or algorithms that write algorithms. But eventually there will be algorithms that write algorithms that write algorithms that write algorithms, and the circle will close. At that point, discussions like this may be too late to do much.

Also, take a look at this video
youtu.be/MTJ9DDbYxh8

 

[fisherman_carl]

You may have thought that the person was dead, but he was not because he was living and breathing a short time after your observation. It is well verified that applying transcranial magnetic stimulation to the temporoparietal region of the brain and then deactivating it causes out of body experiences in living human beings. A similar effect is observed when this part of the brain is damaged.

If you could generate a magnetic field on the brain to stimulate feelings of love does that explain love? Does that mean love is nothing more than a chemical reaction in the brain?

 

[Michael19682]

I think we sometimes forget that without sensory and environmental (name removed by moderator)ut any algorithmic chain is closed. like a person with an incurable genetic defect, environmental (name removed by moderator)ut is always needed to give any meaningful operational cure to the system. there is no such thing as an algorithm with no purpose. furthermore, they cannot repair themselves except as against the functions they were intended to utilize. I don’t even think people have perfect insight into the information their bioalgorithms produce. simply put, disagreement with this analysis proves someone is incorrect. calling the disagreement an example of parallel processing won’t work because all processors could be equally deceived by (name removed by moderator)ut.
without integration of the senses and a simultaneous foot in heavens door, the intellect is useless to itself.

 

[GEddie]

I think we sometimes forget that without sensory and environmental (name removed by moderator)ut any algorithmic chain is closed. like a person with an incurable genetic defect, environmental (name removed by moderator)ut is always needed to give any meaningful operational cure to the system. there is no such thing as an algorithm with no purpose. furthermore, they cannot repair themselves except as against the functions they were intended to utilize. I don’t even think people have perfect insight into the information their bioalgorithms produce. simply put, disagreement with this analysis proves someone is incorrect. calling the disagreement an example of parallel processing won’t work because all processors could be equally deceived by (name removed by moderator)ut.
without integration of the senses and a simultaneous foot in heavens door, the intellect is useless to itself.

I’m not sure what your point is. What do you mean by the “foot in Heaven’s door”?

If you are simply saying that the senses are needed to have a proper human mind, I could not agree more. That is the major issue I have with the Thomist idea of the mind: Without embodiment or even sensory memory, the mind would have nothing to think about.

ICXC NIKA

 

[GEddie]

Also, what is the distinction betemween sensory, and environmental (name removed by moderator)ut?

We perceive the “environment” only via our senses, which ISTM makes the two categories the same.

ICXC NIKA

 

[Michael19682]

I’m not sure what your point is. What do you mean by the “foot in Heaven’s door”?

If you are simply saying that the senses are needed to have a proper human mind, I could not agree more. That is the major issue I have with the Thomist idea of the mind: Without embodiment or even sensory memory, the mind would have nothing to think about.

ICXC NIKA

The foot in heaven’s door is that without which meaningful choice cannot exist. Just as you posit a mind with nothing to think about, without the foot in heaven’s door there is nothing happening. There is no journey of faith. Simply, well, animal behavior that wouldn’t ever have a thing like religion [although I’ve heard that the major saint did preach to the animals on occasion?]. Unfortunately, I will have to employ your quibble with the Thomist school against you. What of both feet in heaven’s door? Direct revelation to the mind from God. Whether this is the hallmark of psychosis or not, it remains possible: a mind with no need for subject matter since it is pure subject in mystical union if only momentarily.

The distinction between sensory (name removed by moderator)ut and environmental (name removed by moderator)ut was either a misplaced ‘and’ instead of an ‘or’ – or else I was caught up with the forthcoming comparison to digital computers, which have no biological sense organs.

 

[Ben_Shipman]

Chance is not the same as free will. That would be like saying every time you are forced to make a decision it is like there is a little guy in your brain that throws the dice to see what you are going to do. This is not the case. Free will is not being dictated an action by the roll of the dice, but it is being able to freely choose one path or another. It is anything but random. Because it requires you to use your intellect to determine what is the best course of action. Using the dice does not require any intellect or freedom of thought/action. If you were forced to follow any action that was governed by the rolling of the dice you would not have free will. Your will would be dictated by the roll of the dice.

“The circle will close” What does that mean? Sounds a bit like the perpetual motion machine.

In the quantum randomness explanation of free will, you do use your intellect to determine the best course of action, and your intellect itself works in the context of physical laws. It’s just at the small scale, when you could go either way, that your choice is up to chance.

By closing the circle I mean something like this: Right now, algorithms write algorithms at lower levels of abstraction than themselves, but truly intelligent algorithms will encompass the full chain of abstraction from hardware to software, and will be able to design systems that perform with more power and versatility than themselves. It won’t be a perpetual motion machine; unless it discovers new physics, it will have to dissipate energy in order to work, just like us, although reversible computing would reduce the amount.

I think we sometimes forget that without sensory and environmental (name removed by moderator)ut any algorithmic chain is closed. like a person with an incurable genetic defect, environmental (name removed by moderator)ut is always needed to give any meaningful operational cure to the system. there is no such thing as an algorithm with no purpose. furthermore, they cannot repair themselves except as against the functions they were intended to utilize. I don’t even think people have perfect insight into the information their bioalgorithms produce. simply put, disagreement with this analysis proves someone is incorrect. calling the disagreement an example of parallel processing won’t work because all processors could be equally deceived by (name removed by moderator)ut.
without integration of the senses and a simultaneous foot in heavens door, the intellect is useless to itself.

The point about environmental (name removed by moderator)ut is well taken. A key step in AI is to reach the level of sophistication where the AI can learn by interacting directly with the real-world environment (via a robotic body, for instance). There should not be anything impossible about this.

 

[fisherman_carl]

I’m not sure what your point is. What do you mean by the “foot in Heaven’s door”?

If you are simply saying that the senses are needed to have a proper human mind, I could not agree more. That is the major issue I have with the Thomist idea of the mind: Without embodiment or even sensory memory, the mind would have nothing to think about.

ICXC NIKA

Are you saying God has nothing to think about as he is a bodiless mind?

 

[fisherman_carl]

Has any of you heard of Rupert Sheldrake? He has some interesting theories. I’ve been watching some of his videos. A little background, he was once an atheist materialist and a plant biologist. Eventually, he came back to his roots, Christianity, and is an Anglican now. He has a theory called morphic resonance. He does not believe that memory is stored in the brain. He goes against the classic model of the brain. The classic model is that light goes into the eye and then our brain produces a little picture inside our brains. However, he says that no one knows where our memories are stored in the brain. For instance, you can cut out any part of the brain and still maintain a memory. (If you cut out the whole brain then you lose all function and can not test for memory). But, if you cut out different parts the animal it still has the memory. His theory is the memory isn’t store in the brain but in this morphic field he calls. When light comes in our eyes he says that our brain doesn’t produce a picture in the brain, but projects the picture to where the object is that we are looking at. In other words are minds are extended beyond the brain. Here is a video of his which goes into more the experiments that he does. For instance, have you ever had the experience of someone looking at you from behind and you turn around and there they are? Or have you had the sense that a certain someone was going to call you and then they did? He believes that similar objects are linked to each other through these morphic fields, especially if they know each other because their minds have become entangled. He envisions these morphic fields kind of like a magnetic field that extends beyond the magnet and affect things around them.

youtu.be/JnA8GUtXpXY

He says he originally started thinking about this as a plant biologist because he found that genes could not explain the shape of our bodies. He says that genes are highly overrated. And that genes don’t govern our shape or our behavior, that people have written that into genes because they think where else could that info be, but that no one has actually found these to be in genes. His idea of morphic resonance says the info for our shape is governed by the info stored in morphic fields.

Some interesting predictions are that if a group of rats learn a new thing then it will be easier for rats all over the world to learn it because the info is in the morphic field. He cites an experiment with rats that shows exactly this. Each generation of rats were able to learn the task quicker than the previous generation.

Here is another of his videos that goes into the theory more
youtube.com/watch?v=MtgLklXZo3U

 

[Ben_Shipman]

I don’t know what to make of Rupert Sheldrake. He seems both intelligent and calm in his Google TechTalk video, but his theory is the sort that is commonly dismissed as pseudoscience. If there is no explanation from conventional physics, and there is not accidental or deliberate deception going on here, then we are dealing with spiritual phenomena.

I’ve tried and failed to come up with theories that make rigorous sense of the spiritual; the endeavor is probably dangerous, at least if one begins to contemplate magic. Spirits are personal, I’m told, and we don’t understand the personal yet. If we did, building AI would be a lot easier.

I still think the brain obeys the laws of conventional physics to a large degree, so that it will be possible to replicate most of its functions by building the right machine.

 

[fisherman_carl]

I don’t know what to make of Rupert Sheldrake. He seems both intelligent and calm in his Google TechTalk video, but his theory is the sort that is commonly dismissed as pseudoscience. If there is no explanation from conventional physics, and there is not accidental or deliberate deception going on here, then we are dealing with spiritual phenomena.

I’ve tried and failed to come up with theories that make rigorous sense of the spiritual; the endeavor is probably dangerous, at least if one begins to contemplate magic. Spirits are personal, I’m told, and we don’t understand the personal yet. If we did, building AI would be a lot easier.

I still think the brain obeys the laws of conventional physics to a large degree, so that it will be possible to replicate most of its functions by building the right machine.

I’m not sure I quite understand your philosophy of mind. You say you believe in the soul, but you sound like a materialist when you say the mind is just a physical machine. Does your soul include a mind? . If you believe in God doesn’t he have an immaterial mind? If we are created in his image then wouldn’t we also have one?

 

[Michael19682]

Has any of you heard of Rupert Sheldrake? He has some interesting theories. I’ve been watching some of his videos. A little background, he was once an atheist materialist and a plant biologist. Eventually, he came back to his roots, Christianity, and is an Anglican now. He has a theory called morphic resonance. He does not believe that memory is stored in the brain. He goes against the classic model of the brain. The classic model is that light goes into the eye and then our brain produces a little picture inside our brains. However, he says that no one knows where our memories are stored in the brain. For instance, you can cut out any part of the brain and still maintain a memory. (If you cut out the whole brain then you lose all function and can not test for memory). But, if you cut out different parts the animal it still has the memory. His theory is the memory isn’t store in the brain but in this morphic field he calls. When light comes in our eyes he says that our brain doesn’t produce a picture in the brain, but projects the picture to where the object is that we are looking at. In other words are minds are extended beyond the brain. Here is a video of his which goes into more the experiments that he does. For instance, have you ever had the experience of someone looking at you from behind and you turn around and there they are? Or have you had the sense that a certain someone was going to call you and then they did? He believes that similar objects are linked to each other through these morphic fields, especially if they know each other because their minds have become entangled. He envisions these morphic fields kind of like a magnetic field that extends beyond the magnet and affect things around them.

youtu.be/JnA8GUtXpXY

He says he originally started thinking about this as a plant biologist because he found that genes could not explain the shape of our bodies. He says that genes are highly overrated. And that genes don’t govern our shape or our behavior, that people have written that into genes because they think where else could that info be, but that no one has actually found these to be in genes. His idea of morphic resonance says the info for our shape is governed by the info stored in morphic fields.

Some interesting predictions are that if a group of rats learn a new thing then it will be easier for rats all over the world to learn it because the info is in the morphic field. He cites an experiment with rats that shows exactly this. Each generation of rats were able to learn the task quicker than the previous generation.

Here is another of his videos that goes into the theory more
youtube.com/watch?v=MtgLklXZo3U

Some of these theories are so abstruse and seemingly arbitrary that they seem reverse engineered from the linguistic possibility. Like saying, what if we concatenated the following words, “Dysmorphic heliotropic inverse positronic relay conductivity,” amounts to nothing other than bombastic poetry – what would this mean? Sometimes they hit a note so close to reality that it dumbfounds the reader/listener with awe - because of course, unlike me, they are making far more educated guesses.

 

[fisherman_carl]

Some of these theories are so abstruse and seemingly arbitrary that they seem reverse engineered from the linguistic possibility. Like saying, what if we concatenated the following words, “Dysmorphic heliotropic inverse positronic relay conductivity,” amounts to nothing other than bombastic poetry – what would this mean? Sometimes they hit a note so close to reality that it dumbfounds the reader/listener with awe - because of course, unlike me, they are making far more educated guesses.

I’m not sure about his theories, but I find his experiments fascinating. I can relate to that thing where you look at someone and they immediately turn and look. It usually happens with pretty ladies.

Its interesting to note that he is also receiving funding from Cambridge now. He got a $100000 grant to continue his research.

 

[GEddie]

Are you saying God has nothing to think about as he is a bodiless mind?

Well, no, as apart from the human Jesus, He is not a human mind.

The human mind, deprived of body, is helpless. The infinite mind has no need of body.

ICXC NIKA

 

[fisherman_carl]

Well, no, as apart from the human Jesus, He is not a human mind.

The human mind, deprived of body, is helpless. The infinite mind has no need of body.

ICXC NIKA

I question that assumption that apart from the brain the mind is helpless. How could you know that? If people go to heaven without their bodies, presumably they still have minds.

 

[Richca]

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?

The Church teaches that “the human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual” (CCC#362). The human person is composed out of a spiritual soul and a material body (CCC#365). The intellect and will of a human person’s spiritual soul are spiritual powers “an outstanding manifestation of the divine image” (CCC#1705). Being spiritual, a human’s soul is not something that can be physically captured; it is beyond the material and the physical laws of nature which pertain to man’s body. Being that a human is a union of soul and body though, defects of the body can hinder the proper operation of the soul’s powers.

 

[Ben_Shipman]

I’m not sure I quite understand your philosophy of mind. You say you believe in the soul, but you sound like a materialist when you say the mind is just a physical machine. Does your soul include a mind? . If you believe in God doesn’t he have an immaterial mind? If we are created in his image then wouldn’t we also have one?

I don’t say that the mind is just a physical machine. And yes, my soul does include a mind. What I am trying to do is draw a distinction between mind and brain, and the same time an analogy. The soul produces the mind, by which I mean the interior experience of being. The brain produces electrochemical activity. My claim is that in an information-theoretic sense, the mental activity of the soul mirrors the electrochemical activity of the brain - that for each element of the former there is an element of the latter. [The only exception would be mystical experiences that you can’t fully remember later.]

The Church teaches that “the human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual” (CCC#362). The human person is composed out of a spiritual soul and a material body (CCC#365). The intellect and will of a human person’s spiritual soul are spiritual powers “an outstanding manifestation of the divine image” (CCC#1705). Being spiritual, a human’s soul is not something that can be physically captured; it is beyond the material and the physical laws of nature which pertain to man’s body. Being that a human is a union of soul and body though, defects of the body can hinder the proper operation of the soul’s powers.

I am not saying that it is possible to capture the activity of the soul in general; I am saying it is possible to capture most of the physical activity of the soul, because that activity mostly falls under the laws of physics.

 

[Michael19682]

Are you saying God has nothing to think about as he is a bodiless mind?

I cannot answer for GEddie, but I did want to add that environmental (name removed by moderator)ut is data and not information to a machine. I cannot conceive of a machine growing in love of god. for a machine the question would be binary, or at best ordinal. I would either love God or have faith or else the opposite. evil machines would be utterly evil. Hopefully the project of AI is not to involve those whom have already revealed their evil. I doubt the evil of our world could do any other than craft evil machines.

 

[Ben_Shipman]

I am not saying that it is possible to capture the activity of the soul in general; I am saying it is possible to capture most of the physical activity of the soul, because that activity mostly falls under the laws of physics.

Note that when I write “the physical activity of the soul”, I mean more or less “the physical activity of the brain”. I attribute the brain’s physical activity to the soul because the body and soul are united. But if the Church says that the soul “is beyond the material and the physical laws of nature which pertain to man’s body”, then I can consider the soul to have spiritual activity only, and it doesn’t change much. The spiritual activity of the soul (including inner experience) cannot be physically reproduced, but it can be physically mirrored, as the body’s actions mirror the soul’s actions.

My contention is more or less that the body affects the soul, with the effects of the soul on the body being less clear. It is reasonable to question this from a Catholic perspective.

One way that the soul could affect the body that is consistent with the laws of physics, is that the soul could be the “observer” of the body in the quantum mechanical sense. This would be no small role, as it determines what the body does.

 

[Tomdstone]

Note that when I write “the physical activity of the soul”, I mean more or less “the physical activity of the brain”. I attribute the brain’s physical activity to the soul because the body and soul are united. But if the Church says that the soul “is beyond the material and the physical laws of nature which pertain to man’s body”, then I can consider the soul to have spiritual activity only, and it doesn’t change much. The spiritual activity of the soul (including inner experience) cannot be physically reproduced, but it can be physically mirrored, as the body’s actions mirror the soul’s actions.

My contention is more or less that the body affects the soul, with the effects of the soul on the body being less clear. It is reasonable to question this from a Catholic perspective.

One way that the soul could affect the body that is consistent with the laws of physics, is that the soul could be the “observer” of the body in the quantum mechanical sense. This would be no small role, as it determines what the body does.

Does a dog have a soul. It sounds like, yes. But if so, why is the soul of a human immortal, but the soul of a dog not.