Is the intellect necessarily immaterial?

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If no one has any further objections to the notion that a material entity might be able to behave intelligently, I’ll start a new thread on the Back Fence with the following subject: Assuming AI can be built, is there a Catholic answer whether it should be?
 
Ben_Shipman said:
If no one has any further objections to the notion that a material entity might be able to behave intelligently, I’ll start a new thread on the Back Fence with the following subject: Assuming AI can be built, is there a Catholic answer whether it should be?
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Start the thread. vote=1 yes
 
Ben_Shipman said:
This is a different argument against seeing the brain as hardware and the mind as software than the one Feser used, and it is a better one. I myself do not identify the interior experience of being as any abstraction of the brain, the way that software is an abstraction of the configuration of the hardware running it.

Nor do I think that in the brain the line between hardware and software is well-defined; even the number of neurons in the brain is changeable.

Nevertheless, I do suggest that the function of the brain might be stochastically predicted if the internal environment of the brain were known. You would need a computer much more complex than the brain, but in principle a computer could simulate the brain, given its atomic configuration and highly realistic boundary conditions (a virtual body and environment).

Now, I’ll grant that even a typical person might be the beneficiary of enough supernatural grace that the computer simulation of the person would fail to match their actions closely (maybe the simulation would ask why it suddenly felt empty inside). I conjecture, however, that the simulation would still display intelligence, because I believe intelligence to be a function of neural structure.

Further, an artificial brain (not a simulation of a natural brain) might learn by adapting the strength of its synaptic connections but not by growing or eliminating neurons. In the case of an artificial brain, then, one might be able to take the number and topology of its electronic components as fixed hardware, and the strength of its synaptic connections as software.
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Re comparing the mind with a computer, apparently when railways first appeared, some thought the mind worked like railway networks. Then when telegraphs appeared, some thought the mind worked like telegraphs. Just as both ideas seem a bit weird to us, maybe our great grandchildren will think we were weird for comparing it to computers (outside of, maybe, neural networks).
 
inocente said:
Whoa :eek:. Cartesian mind/body dualism isn’t biblical, it has nothing to do with revelation, it was invented by a philosopher. A number of Catholic posters do seem to confuse Descartes’ substance dualism with Christian tradition, but the CCC says the soul is the form of the body, not some separate, independent paranormal ghost in a machine.

My bible keyword look-up gives 563 occurrences of “spirit”, but even if you quote all of them it still won’t make Descartes a latter-day Prophet.
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Please quote the exact section of the catechism that says that. If the soul is nothing more than the “form” of the body, as you have defined it, (not a ghost), then why would it continue to exist as a rational entity apart from the body as all Christians believe? The Catholic encyclopedia gives us a better definition. The soul is something with substance. It is real, not merely abstract.

"Various theories as to the nature of the soul have claimed to be reconcilable with the tenet of immortality, but it is a sure instinct that leads us to suspect every attack on the substantiality or spirituality of the soul as an assault on the belief in existence after death. The soul may be defined as the ultimate internal principle by which we think, feel, and will, and by which our bodies are animated. The term “mind” usually denotes this principle as the subject of our conscious states, while “soul” denotes the source of our vegetative activities as well. That our vital activities proceed from a principle capable of subsisting in itself, is the thesis of the substantiality of the soul: that this principle is not itself composite, extended, corporeal, or essentially and intrinsically dependent on the body, is the doctrine of spirituality. If there be a life after death, clearly the agent or subject of our vital activities must be capable of an existence separate from the body. "

newadvent.org/cathen/14153a.htm
 
… Continued…

“The belief in an animating principle in some sense distinct from the body is an almost inevitable inference from the observed facts of life. Even uncivilized peoples arrive at the concept of the soul almost without reflection, certainly without any severe mental effort. The mysteries of birth and death, the lapse of conscious life during sleep and in swooning, even the commonest operations of imagination and memory, which abstract a man from his bodily presence even while awake—all such facts invincibly suggest the existence of something besides the visible organism, internal to it, but to a large extent independent of it, and leading a life of its own. In the rude psychology of the primitive nations, the soul is often represented as actually migrating to and fro during dreams and trances, and after death haunting the neighbourhood of its body. Nearly always it is figured as something extremely volatile, a perfume or a breath. Often, as among the Fijians, it is represented as a miniature replica of the body, so small as to be invisible. The Samoans have a name for the soul which means “that which comes and goes”. Many peoples, such as the Dyaks and Sumatrans, bind various parts of the body with cords during sickness to prevent the escape of the soul. In short, all the evidence goes to show that Dualism, however uncritical and inconsistent, is the instinctive creed of “primitive man” (see ANIMISM).”

newadvent.org/cathen/14153a.htm
 
These terms so beloved of philosophers really need to be translated into modern, if they are to have any meaning anymore.

Specifically, “form of the body” does NOT imply something like an outer bodyshape or moldline, although that is what the word “form” has come to mean.

Methinks the Aquinians and everybody else should reexamine whether they in fact speak the same language.

ICXC NIKA
 
St. Thomas Aquinas defines the soul as the form of the body, but not in the way you do (without an immaterial substance).

The encyclopedia states:

"St. Thomas’s doctrine is briefly as follows:
  • the rational soul, which is one with the sensitive and vegetative principle, is the form of the body. This was defined as of faith by the Council of Vienne of 1311;
  • the soul is a substance, but an incomplete substance, i.e. it has a natural aptitude and exigency for existence in the body, in conjunction with which it makes up the substantial unity of human nature;
  • though connaturally related to the body, it is itself absolutely simple, i.e. of an unextended and spiritual nature. It is not wholly immersed in matter, its higher operations being intrinsically independent of the organism;
  • the rational soul is produced by special creation at the moment when the organism is sufficiently developed to receive it."
I should add that the Church would say Aquinas is wrong about that last point. Because it asserts the soul at the moment of conception, not at some point of time after as Aquinas thought.
 
Now in contrast the encyclopedia lists the view of materialism, which you seem to hold yet deny.

"Later Materialism has three main sources:
  • Newtonian physics, which taught men to regard matter, not as inert and passive, but as instinct with force. Why should not life and consciousness be among its unexplored potencies? (Priestley, Tyndall, etc.) Tyndall himself provides the answer admitting that the chasm that separates psychical facts from material phenomena is “intellectually impassable”. Writers, therefore, who make thought a mere “secretion of the brain” or a “phosphorescence” of its substance (Vogt, Moleschott) may be simply ignored. In reply to the more serious Materialism, spiritualist philosophers need only re-assert the admissions of the Materialists themselves, that there is an impassable chasm between the two classes of facts.
*Psychophysics, it is alleged, shows the most minute dependence of mind-functions upon brain-states. The two orders of facts are therefore perfectly continuous, and, though they may be superficially different yet they must be after all radically one. Mental phenomena may be styled an epiphenomenon or byproduct of material force (Huxley). The answer is the same as before. There is no analogy for an epiphenomenon being separated by an “impassable chasm” from the causal series to which it belongs. The term is, in fact, a mere verbal subterfuge. The only sound principle in such arguments is the principle that essential or “impassable” distinctions in the effect can be explained only by similar distinctions in the cause. This is the principle on which Dualism as we have explained it, rests. Merely to find relations, however close, between mental and physiological facts does not advance us an inch towards transcending this Dualism. It only enriches and fills out our concept of it. The mutual compenetration of soul and body in their activities is just what Catholic philosophy (anticipating positive science) had taught for centuries. Man is two and one, a divisible but a vital unity.
  • Evolutionism endeavours to explain the origin of the soul from merely material forces. Spirit is not the basis and principle; rather it is the ultimate efflorescence of the Cosmos. If we ask then “what was the original basis out of which spirit and all things arose?” we are told it was the Unknowable (Spencer). This system must be treated as Materialistic Monism. The answer to it is that, as the outcome of the Unknowable has a spiritual character, the Unknowable itself (assuming its reality) must be spiritual."
 
GEddie said:
These terms so beloved of philosophers really need to be translated into modern, if they are to have any meaning anymore.

Specifically, “form of the body” does NOT imply something like an outer bodyshape or moldline, although that is what the word “form” has come to mean.

Methinks the Aquinians and everybody else should reexamine whether they in fact speak the same language.

ICXC NIKA
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Yes, I agree. I am familiar with Aristotlean forms, first from reading Feser’s book. However, the way innocente is using it, in order to say any sort of dualism is wrong, and that belief in an immaterial mind is the same as Descartes dualism is wrong. Feser is one who clearly believes in an immaterial mind. In fact he was once a materialist atheist. It was reading other atheists on the subject of mind dualism that convinced him. It was through that, that helped start leading him to belief God.
 
I found the catechism reference. It does not say the soul is without immaterial substance. It merely accentuates the link between soul and body. Yet it acknowledges that the soul can exist apart from body, but not the other way around.

"The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the “form” of the body: i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature. The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God—it is not “produced” by the parents—and also that it is immortal: It does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.“
catholic.com/quickquestions/what-exactly-is-a-soul
 
According to the encyclopedia Descartes conceived of a soul and a body that were essentially separate and unlinked. That is the kind of dualism the church would reject. The church would affirm the soul and body are not separate natures but one nature. However, it still draws a distinction between soul and body. The soul animating the body and existing apart from body as a thinking rational soul after death until it can be reunited with body at the general resurrection.
 
fisherman_carl said:
inocente;13301016:
Whoa :eek:. Cartesian mind/body dualism isn’t biblical, it has nothing to do with revelation, it was invented by a philosopher. A number of Catholic posters do seem to confuse Descartes’ substance dualism with Christian tradition, but the CCC says the soul is the form of the body, not some separate, independent paranormal ghost in a machine.

My bible keyword look-up
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gives 563 occurrences of “spirit”, but even if you quote all of them it still won’t make Descartes a latter-day Prophet.
Please quote the exact section of the catechism that says that. If the soul is nothing more than the “form” of the body, as you have defined it, (not a ghost), then why would it continue to exist as a rational entity apart from the body as all Christians believe? The Catholic encyclopedia gives us a better definition. The soul is something with substance. It is real, not merely abstract.
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I see you found the paragraph, CCC 365, and in post #138 you agree with me that Descartes’ substance dualism, his separate material and immaterial substances, is not what the Church means. So it seems you now agree with my “Whoa :eek:”

Where the CCC says the soul is the form of the body, I’m told “form” has the Aristotlean meaning, as interpreted by Aquinas, that matter cannot exist without a form nor form without matter. So body and soul can’t be separated, which the CCC makes clear from the section heading BODY AND SOUL BUT TRULY ONE, and its summary of the biblical meanings of soul: CCC 363: In Sacred Scripture the term “soul” often refers to human life or the entire human person. But “soul” also refers to the innermost aspect of man, that which is of greatest value in him, that by which he is most especially in God’s image: “soul” signifies the spiritual principle in man. (Note also that the dogma requires a new body in heaven, not merely a disembodied soul).

On Aristotle’s and Thomas’ theories, fans in previous threads have said it requires a lifetime of study to understand (and they certainly have problems trying to explain it :D). One issue in the source material is knowing enough to pick out what may be correct from what has since been proved wrong. I just point that out as you seem to be relying a lot on the Catholic Encyclopedia, which was written between 1907 and 1912 and so is well out of date in terms of science and later philosophical commentaries. btw for anyone who doesn’t know, the encyclopedia is also on Catholic Answers, where you’ll see the dates - oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=Home
 
inocente said:
I see you found the paragraph, CCC 365, and in post #138 you agree with me that Descartes’ substance dualism, his separate material and immaterial substances, is not what the Church means. So it seems you now agree with my “Whoa :eek:”

Where the CCC says the soul is the form of the body, I’m told “form” has the Aristotlean meaning, as interpreted by Aquinas, that matter cannot exist without a form nor form without matter. So body and soul can’t be separated, which the CCC makes clear from the section heading BODY AND SOUL BUT TRULY ONE, and its summary of the biblical meanings of soul: CCC 363: In Sacred Scripture the term “soul” often refers to human life or the entire human person. But “soul” also refers to the innermost aspect of man, that which is of greatest value in him, that by which he is most especially in God’s image: “soul” signifies the spiritual principle in man. (Note also that the dogma requires a new body in heaven, not merely a disembodied soul).

On Aristotle’s and Thomas’ theories, fans in previous threads have said it requires a lifetime of study to understand (and they certainly have problems trying to explain it :D). One issue in the source material is knowing enough to pick out what may be correct from what has since been proved wrong. I just point that out as you seem to be relying a lot on the Catholic Encyclopedia, which was written between 1907 and 1912 and so is well out of date in terms of science and later philosophical commentaries. btw for anyone who doesn’t know, the encyclopedia is also on Catholic Answers, where you’ll see the dates - oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=Home
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I would say that the soul and body can be separated according to church teaching. Otherwise where would the soul go when the body dies? Also, there is much to think about in this topic. As you said it would take a life time. However, I think you were mistaken when you seem to imply that belief in an immaterial mind is against the idea of the soul defined as the form of the body. I assume you understand what forms are since you seem to be so knowledgeable about everything else.

However, last night I read some of Feser’s book on the chapter on the soul which brings some clarification on the issues I have been talking about including this idea of the form of the body and the immaterial mind. In my next post I will quote some of Feser, although I can not quote the whole thing due to space. It is worth reading the whole chapter. But for that you would need his book - “The Last Supersition”. But, I will quote sections pertenant to our discussion.
 
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