The Soul and the Brain

[NowAgnostic]

The primary reason why immaterial abstraction must exist for any abstraction to occur is that abstraction creates immaterial concepts. The intellect possesses immaterial concepts (and most atheists I’ve come across acknowledge this) and yet they hold on to the idea that material instruments can pull this off. I’ve never received an explanation how this isn’t absurd. Most of them just stop talking when I bring this up. Perhaps not this time though.

Sure. There are actually two refutations.

Your argument would work if there were no such thing as mind at all, if a material brain were the only reality. But no one says this, regardless of how the mind-brain relation is conceived. Even if mind and brain are two aspects of the same single ontological reality, then that reality has both a material and an immaterial aspect, and can therefore deal with immaterial concepts and abstractions in the “mind” part, yet not without some necessary physical correlate in the “brain”.

And what is a “concept” but a “classifier” anyway? “Tree” is a classifier. A machine could be taught to recognize trees. Ah, but you will say, computers don’t understand the “essence” of treeness. Well, guess what, neither do we! What is the essence of treeness? That which makes a tree a tree! All we can do is classify based on sensory information.

The naturalists, I would say, are finding “material mind in the gaps.” They don’t know how the brain works, certainly can’t explain abstraction at least, and sees something going on there and say “Uh, yeah, this is abstraction … yep, that’s what it is. No immaterial intellect necessary. Trust me.”

Neuroscientists and neuroimagers are quite a bit smarter than all that. Trust me. Resorting to straw men won’t get you anywhere.

Aristotle and Aquinas argued that by necessity, no matter how the material brain works, is unable to abstract immaterial concepts. Naturalists try and disprove this by pointing to nebulous activity in the brain and say, “Nope, something’s going on here. You’re wrong.” Wha?

Bide your time. If you’re right, the truth shall side with you. Until then, your bold claims will not be scientific claims.

It goes farther if the specific claim is made that the intellect is intrinsically independent of brain. That’s what the issue is. They apparently concluded that because a material brain can’t abstract immaterial concepts that therefore all the brain could do would be to provide sensory information.

One has to show that all the physical goings-on in the brain is what is sufficient to abstract immaterial principles. Various neuroscientists claim that this will be done someday. If they are successful, then the Thomistic model is legitimately trashed.

OK, get ready to open the garbage can lid… with the caveat that the physical goings-on in the brain are also intrinisically to what the mind is doing.

If I’m not mistaken (and maybe I am because I could be thinking of a different philosopher) Descartes said that memory was immaterial. Neuroscience has disproved this.

Well not by your hermeneutic. Cartesians would say, “Thomists don’t know how the brain works, certainly can’t explain all there is to know about its relation to memory, but they see something going on in the hippocampus and say uh yeah, that’s memory, yep that’s what it is, no immaterial intellect necessary… We have shown by necessity memory must be immaterial… Thomists try and disprove this by pointing to nebulous activity in the brain and saying ‘Nope, something’s going on. You’re wrong.’”

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.

No because Thomas always maintained that memory was material.

Memory of concepts? How can a material brain store immaterial memories?

As said before, if memory, instinct, imagination, etc. can be proved to be powers of the brain, then Descartes is wrong. As far as I understand, these have been proven to be part of the brain (right?). And so Descartes is proven wrong.

But immaterial concepts are still immaterial. Hence, they are not in the brain.

Is this entirely unreasonable?

Yes, because you’re assuming the same cleavage-like separation between “brain” and “mind” you deny the Cartesians to memory and imagination when it comes to concepts.

 

[GEddie]

Thomas always maintained that memory was material.

As said before, if memory, instinct, imagination, etc. can be proved to be powers of the brain, then Descartes is wrong. As far as I understand, these have been proven to be part of the brain (right?). And so Descartes is proven wrong.

But immaterial concepts are still immaterial. Hence, they are not in the brain.

Is this entirely unreasonable?

Hmmm. It would seem that without the admittedly material faculties of mind (memory etc), the abstract concepts could not be formed at all. Therefore, if the other faculties reside in the brain, so do the “immaterial concepts.”

Something can be immaterial and still dependent upon a material (physical) process. Information is a priori immaterial, but the information on your C: drive is lost if you run an electromagnet over it, the information on a printed page is lost if the paper is shredded, and the “immaterial concepts” in your head are potentially lost if your head were to take a hard enough knock. The concepts reside there, just as the info resides on the C: drive, or on the printed page.

 

[NowAgnostic]

Just because he didn’t mention something isn’t evidence that he denied it or that it therefore necessarily contradicts his model.

Um, yes the intellect is entirely immaterial in his model.

What do you mean a “physical correlate?”

Do I need to explain what correlation means?

The real issue that must be addressed is how a purely material mind can grasp immaterial concepts. This is the reason why Aristotle said abstraction was immaterial. So instead of pointing to obscure brain activity that no one understands yet, it would seem more fruitful to go at this question. No?

Who is saying the mind-brain is “purely material”? It’s not purely immaterial either. It’s a composite in some way, both material and immaterial. To say because the mindbrain is not purely material it must be purely immaterial is a fallacy.

 

[NowAgnostic]

No, it’s accepting the more parsimonious explanation that the brain activity is correlated with the “immaterial” abstraction, making it not immaterial.

What I meant to say here is not entirely immaterial.

 

[itinerant1]

You’re saying that if all brain and mind states are ontologically identical and merely logically distinct, that is consistent with Thomism? Or if they are ontologically distinct but mind is an emergent property of brain, that is consistent with Thomism? Doesn’t seem that way to me.

Does not seem that way to me either. Re-read more carefully what I wrote.

There is very strong evidence from neuroscience the brain is doing more than merely making phantasms available for the intellect. At this stage, as I said in another post, claiming that is all the brain does is like adding eccentrics and epicycles.

Who ever claimed that that was the only thing the brain does? Not I.

Exactly, if the soul is the essential form of the body, and the intellect is a faculty of the soul, why wouldn’t you expect a physical correlate to all intellectual processes?

Why wouldn’t I? Especially since I have repeatedly stated that there are correlates. However, I have not been big on the use of the word “correlate” because it is highly ambiguous and needs to be defined as to what it is intended to mean in the particular context in which it is being used.

That’s just an unsupported bare assertion.

Spoken by one who has mis-characterized everything I said.

 

[Areopagite]

No, it’s accepting the more parsimonious explanation that the brain activity is correlated with the “immaterial” abstraction, making it not immaterial. The idea that you can just explain away that activity as an unexplained “effect” for which there’s no good reason we can see for it to occur is completely ad hoc, the equivalent of eccentrics and epicycles.

I’m not saying the activity is forever mysterious. I’m saying it’s rash to condemn the Thomistic model, since no one really understands that brain activity yet.

Also, again, to believe abstraction is immaterial runs not into a parsimonious explanation but an absurd explanation. Unless you can explain how a mere material brain can grasp immaterial concepts in any way.

At the moment, sure, my explanation is parsimonious, but your explanation is absurd. At least, that’s my claim.

Yes, but God and the angels have a purpose in so interacting with matter, for which their interaction is necessary. Their interaction isn’t just proposed as an unexplained, unnecessary ad hoc thesis to save a doomed theory.

And once again, if you can prove that a purely material mind can grasp immaterial concepts, then the Thomistic model is a doomed theory. If you can’t, then it is far from doomed … it is immortal. Right? Until you prove that, my “theses” regarding that extra brain activity (even though I never said anything definite) are perfectly called for.

The more complex explanation is sometimes better than the simpler one, if, of course, the simpler one contradicts a known truth, when the more complex one does not.

Your statement directly contradicts Pius X, in the 24 Thomistic Theses:

Yeah, it does. I don’t scold you for pointing that out. I shamelessly have contradicted it word for word. I must admit, this is a good point you bring up.

This is what I meant: the only natural way the intellect gains knowledge is through the senses (and through phantasms … thus necessitating the brain).

What Pius XII means (I am assuming): the intellect, for its existence, does not require any bodily organ.

So it’s possible we meant different things by “intrinsically independent.” I suppose I was talking about the intellect’s operation, whereas he was talking about the intellect’s existence. Is that fair? Nonetheless, it was amazing how (at least superficially) I managed to say the exact opposite of the Pope. But I think it’s all good. Maybe.

Your argument would work if there were no such thing as mind at all, if a material brain were the only reality. But no one says this, regardless of how the mind-brain relation is conceived. Even if mind and brain are two aspects of the same single ontological reality, then that reality has both a material and an immaterial aspect, and can therefore deal with immaterial concepts and abstractions in the “mind” part, yet not without some necessary physical correlate in the “brain”.

I … think I agree with you so far. Was I not supposed to?

 

[itinerant1]

Hmmm. It would seem that without the admittedly material faculties of mind (memory etc), the abstract concepts could not be formed at all. Therefore, if the other faculties reside in the brain, so do the “immaterial concepts.”

Something can be immaterial and still dependent upon a material (physical) process. Information is a priori immaterial, but the information on your C: drive is lost if you run an electromagnet over it, the information on a printed page is lost if the paper is shredded, and the “immaterial concepts” in your head are potentially lost if your head were to take a hard enough knock. The concepts reside there, just as the info resides on the C: drive, or on the printed page.

It is not possible for “immaterial concepts” to reside in a physical brain in the same way that neural activity does. What is “immaterial” by definition cannot be in a place like data on a hard drive. The data on a hard drive or the writing on a piece of paper are not immaterial.

The markings on a paper have no meanings in themselves. They are just physical marks. We attach meanings to the marks or words on piece of paper. Electronic data has no meaning in itself. It takes a mind to understand the meanings that the minds in a culture have previously attached or associated with certain forms of data, i.e. primarily the numbers and letters generated by a computer.

To say that concepts reside in the brain is to attribute substantial being to them However, concepts have accidental being; they are modifications of the intellect that serve as a “means” of knowing. Concepts are not that which we know in the act of knowing. It is their content which we know. In knowing something we do not apprehend our concepts, rather we know things by means of concepts, which by the way, are self-effacing.

 

[Areopagite]

And what is a “concept” but a “classifier” anyway? “Tree” is a classifier. A machine could be taught to recognize trees. Ah, but you will say, computers don’t understand the “essence” of treeness. Well, guess what, neither do we! What is the essence of treeness? That which makes a tree a tree! All we can do is classify based on sensory information.

So, we don’t understand trees? We literally don’t know what a tree is? Is that what you’re saying? We don’t understand anything? I admit, saying this is the logical consequence of materialistic epistemology. I didn’t think you would admit it already.

Also, it is true that the definition of essence is “that which makes a thing what it is.” And so you could say that the essence of tree is “that which makes a tree what it is.” And it is also true that if we ask “well, what makes a tree a tree?” we could respond “it’s essence!” (followed by maniacal laughter). We could also answer the question (more usefully perhaps) in the form of a definition. And yes, definitions would entail it to be classified.

Now is a concept a classifier? Good question. First of all, the Thomistic claim is that a concept of something is the form of that something as it exists in the intellect. I believe no classification is necessary there. We can have the same concept of a thing and yet make many co-divisions or co-classifications of it. Thus, how we classify it is not the same as the concept itself … for then the concept would change when we classify it differently.

Also, sometimes we don’t classify thing based on how they are sensed. We can classify numbers, for example. Numbers are immaterial, are they not?

Neuroscientists and neuroimagers are quite a bit smarter than all that. Trust me.

I hope so. They study brains after all.

It goes farther if the specific claim is made that the intellect is intrinsically independent of brain. That’s what the issue is. They apparently concluded that because a material brain can’t abstract immaterial concepts that therefore all the brain could do would be to provide sensory information.

No they didn’t say this. They DID say that the brain couldn’t abstract concepts, but they never concluded that the brain ONLY provided phantasms. I have said this over and over again. Have I not?

Well not by your hermeneutic. Cartesians would say, “Thomists don’t know how the brain works, certainly can’t explain all there is to know about its relation to memory, but they see something going on in the hippocampus and say uh yeah, that’s memory, yep that’s what it is, no immaterial intellect necessary… We have shown by necessity memory must be immaterial… Thomists try and disprove this by pointing to nebulous activity in the brain and saying ‘Nope, something’s going on. You’re wrong.’”

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.

I will deny that I have one clue about what you’re talking about.

Thomists never pointed to brain activity. So how is this at all representative of what they said?

Memory of concepts? How can a material brain store immaterial memories?

Um … did I ever say that?

Yes, because you’re assuming the same cleavage-like separation between “brain” and “mind” you deny the Cartesians to memory and imagination when it comes to concepts.

Well if I’m making distinctions (body&phantasms vs. intellect) that are different from the Cartesian distinctions (body vs. phantasm&intellect), I would say that I’m making a different separation than what the Cartesians are making. I don’t understand the point you make.

I have yet to respond to those large passages you quoted. Perhaps here my medieval mindset shall finally be destroyed …

 

[itinerant1]

It is not possible for “immaterial concepts” to reside in a physical brain in the same way that neural activity does. What is “immaterial” by definition cannot be in a place like data on a hard drive. The data on a hard drive or the writing on a piece of paper are not immaterial.

The markings on a paper have no meanings in themselves. They are just physical marks. We attach meanings to the marks or words on piece of paper. Electronic data has no meaning in itself. It takes a mind to understand the meanings that the minds in a culture have previously attached or associated with certain forms of data, i.e. primarily the numbers and letters generated by a computer.

To say that concepts reside in the brain is to attribute substantial being to them. However, concepts have accidental being; they are modifications of the intellect that serve as a “means” of knowing. Concepts are not that which we know in the act of knowing. It is their content which we know. In knowing something we do not apprehend our concepts, rather we know things by means of concepts, which by the way, are self-effacing.

Correction: I meant to say "To say that concepts reside in the brain is to attribute substantial physical being to them.

 

[Areopagite]

All right, now to Dehaene…

Activation of the horizontal segment of the intraparietal sulcus (hIPS) has been observed in various number-processing tasks, whether numbers were conveyed by symbolic numerals (digits, number words) or by nonsymbolic displays (dot patterns).

I’m suspicious how a number could be “conveyed” by “nonsymbolic” dot patterns. If a dot pattern is made to express a number … then it’s symbolic. It may be a natural symbol opposed to a conventional symbol … that is, the image of the symbol might better express what it is symbolizing rather than an image whose meaning is unclear but only known by prior agreement or definition. Obviously, at least, the dot pattern was not synonymous with their corresponding numbers themselves. Hence the numbers were expressed symbolically by the dot patterns. No? Does this sound unreasonable? I might be wrong.

This suggests an abstract coding of numerical magnitude.

Yet, why were these phantasm being arranged in this way?

Aristotle and the Scholastics said (I’m pretty sure at least) that phantasms should become organized. If phantasms are more organized they can be retrieved more effectively, and thus so too their corresponding concepts.

Here, we critically tested this hypothesis using fMRI adaptation to demonstrate notation-independent coding of numerical quantity in the hIPS. Once subjects were adapted either to dot patterns or to Arabic digits, activation in the hIPS and in frontal regions recovered in a distance-dependent fashion whenever a new number was presented, irrespective of notation changes. This remained unchanged when analyzing the hIPS peaks from an independent localizer scan of mental calculation. These results suggest an abstract coding of approximate number common to dots, digits, and number words. They support the idea that symbols acquire meaning by linking neural populations coding symbol shapes to those holding nonsymbolic representations of quantities.

And that last sentence is the killer (the killer of your theory, NowAgnostic).

“They support the idea the symbols acquire meaning by linking neural populations coding symbol shapes to those holding nonsymbolic representations of quantities.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it says that the phantasms of number symbols are linked to the phantasms of nonsymbolic representations of quantities.

I’m sorry but isn’t “nonsymbolic representations” kind of an oxy-moron? Maybe I’m wrong. It seems to suggest that the dot patterns (the “nonsymbolic” stuff) are actually not the quantities themselves but represent (or SYMBOLIZE!) the quantities. Perhaps more natural symbols (like dot patterns) are organized in the brain such that the phantasms of the more conventional symbols are linked to them subserviently … or something.

The fact is though, this explanation doesn’t aid in disproving immaterial abstraction at all. It clearly says that the “neural populations” hold representations. And where oh where do we find the meaning of those representations?

Now, maybe there is some distinction between “representation” and “symbolism” that I’m missing. I would like to know. They are different words and so perhaps they have different meanings. If someone knows the difference, I do beg your knowledge be mine as well.

I admit, I didn’t understand the second big quote you gave. I’ll try again later perhaps … unless you can digest it a bit for my dark age mind.

 

[grannymh]

In Aquinas’ model the intellect does not use the brain to abstract from the phantasms or perform higher order processing, correct? The brain is necessary to make the phantasms available.

All I can say is I hope that you’re prepared to be a gracious loser. I don’t think you’re up to date on the latest findings from neuroimaging. I’ll bring up Dehaene again:

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17224409?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_SingleItemSupl.Pubmed_Discovery_RA&linkpos=1&log$=relatedarticles&logdbfrom=pubmed

Or:

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19781939?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&ordinalpos=5

So why would they be able to predict numerosities of dot sets above chance from the brain activation patterns evoked by digits, if all the brain was doing was storing the “phantasm” of the visual symbol of the digit?

I could go on and on with studies from language, auditory processing and other domains.

(Cont…)

So far, I only found abstracts… One needs to read the whole paper to find out the essential information which is method, number of subjects, etc. etc.
How do I get complete information? Did I miss a link? How were subjects adapted?
What other research was cited?

 

[itinerant1]

In Aquinas’ model the intellect does not use the brain to abstract from the phantasms or perform higher order processing, correct? The brain is necessary to make the phantasms available.

I am not sure what you mean “by the intellect does not use the brain to abstract from the phantasms”. It can be interpreted in different ways. So I thought I would articulate the Aristotelian-Thomistic position for the sake of clarity.

The phantasm, as recognized by Thomistic psychology is the product of sense knowledge. The content of the phantasm is always of what is particular. Hence, it must be accounted for by the activities of the sense organs and brain. Sense knowledge is inherently dependent on matter for all of its operations.

In contrast, the extension of the intellectual power to the apprehension of universals is due to its purely psychic nature. It is inherently independent of matter in all of its operations. The intellect depends on the body merely for its object, since it does not act through a material instrument. As Aristotle said, images are the objects of intellect. And since one cannot have imagery without a material organ, there can be no intellectual operation without the cooperation of matter.

Sense and intellect must work together in the production of the idea. The dependency of the latter on the former is merely of an objective or extrinsic sort, inasmuch as the senses furnish the data from which the intellect abstracts the intelligible species.

 

[Fran65]

…our results illustrate the potential of functional magnetic resonance imaging pattern recognition to understand the **detailed format of representations **within a single semantic category, and beyond sensory cortical areas for which columnar architectures are well established.

Aeropagite,

As you can see, the second abstract posted by NowAgnostic also deals with representations…not with the abstractions themselves.

In addition, NowAgnostic made great play of the report that researchers were able to predict numerosities of dot sets above chance from the brain activation patterns evoked by digits, but this too deals with representations.

Secondly, in relation to this point, researchers are only able to do this once they have observed multiple occasions of the participant’s brain’s response to dot sets. In other words, they (the researchers) had learned which patterns occurred in response to particular dot sets. They cannot look at fMRI for an individual whose patterns they have not already mapped multiple times and identify the dot set. This is therefore not as clever as NowAgnostic thinks.

Finally, NowAgnostic does not report whether the studies have been replicated. An above chance result can occur for several reasons other than that claimed. Beware making extravagent claims from a single study.

 

[itinerant1]

NowAgnostic,

I think there are some over active phantasms at work here. The studies by S. Dehaene, et.al. you cited, whether or not they can be replicated (another important matter), do not in the least demonstrate what is claimed. Briefly, in one study it is asserted that “They support the idea symbols acquire meaning by linking neural populations coding symbol shapes to those holding nonsymbolic representations of quantities.”

However, symbol shape association with nonsymbolic representations of quantities is not sufficient to account for “meaning”. The most that can be legitimately inferred from the data is that such neural activity is part of the physiological foundation and is only meaning potentially. Actual meaning, the intelligible or intentional, is hardly accounted for or even remotely suggested by the data. Thus I would not agree with researchers interpretation of this matter. What they understand as meaning is inadequate to the task of a proper analysis of the data.

One needs to think more rigorously about the meaning of meaning.

Deciphering cortical number coding from human brain activity patterns.

A magnitude code common to numerosities and number symbols in human intraparietal cortex.

 

[Fran65]

Yes, it is the meaning that is not addressed in these types of studies. The representation *is not *the meaning!

 

[grannymh]

PLoS Biol. 2006 May; 4(5): e125.
Published online 2006 April 11. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040125.

PMCID: PMC1431577

Functional Imaging of Numerical Processing in Adults and 4-y-Old Children
Jessica F Cantlon,http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/corehtml/pmc/pmcgifs/corrauth.gif1,2 Elizabeth M Brannon,1,2 Elizabeth J Carter,1 and Kevin A Pelphreyhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/corehtml/pmc/pmcgifs/corrauth.gif1,3

Experimental design
"Stimuli were visual … ( Figure 1http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1431577/bin/pbio.0040125.g001.gif).
…

"Participants fixated on a central fixation cross and were given the experiment-irrelevant task of pressing a joystick button when the central fixation cross turned red to ensure that they attended to the stimuli. This happened three times per block: once near the beginning of the block, once in the middle, and once near the end of the block.

…

"The primary analysis consisted of a random-effects assessment of the differences between the shape and number deviant conditions at the expected peak of the hemodynamic response (HDR). "

Note:
Occasionally, a deviant stimulus was presented that differed from the standard stimuli either in the number of elements (number deviant) or in the local element shape (shape deviant). The order in figure 1 is standard, number deviant, standard, shape deviant.

Analytically speaking.

If this is representative of the physical brain studies previously cited, it is easy to see that the stimuli (figure 1), the conditions, and instructions given 12 adult participants are extremely limited.

The common sense conclusion is that studies in this genre cannot be applied to the functions/abilities of human nature.

 

[NowAgnostic]

I’m not saying the activity is forever mysterious. I’m saying it’s rash to condemn the Thomistic model, since no one really understands that brain activity yet.

Utter hogwash. Just because we don’t understand everything about the brain doesn’t mean we understand nothing about it.

At the moment, sure, my explanation is parsimonious, but your explanation is absurd. At least, that’s my claim.

My explanation is not absurd.

And once again, if you can prove that a purely material mind can grasp immaterial concepts, then the Thomistic model is a doomed theory.

But I’m not saying the mind is purely material! What I am saying is that spirit and matter, brain and mind, are so intricately linked that there is no mental activity of any sort without physical activity, and vice versa. Such a “brain-mind” entity is capable of grasping immaterial concepts, and yet when it does there will be physical correlates to that activity.

If you can’t, then it is far from doomed … it is immortal. Right? Until you prove that, my “theses” regarding that extra brain activity (even though I never said anything definite) are perfectly called for.

No, they aren’t, they’re completely ad hoc.

The more complex explanation is sometimes better than the simpler one, if, of course, the simpler one contradicts a known truth, when the more complex one does not.

True, but you haven’t shown the contradiction of the known truth. You are talking about apples (a purely material mind) when I am talking about oranges (an entity with both material and immaterial aspects).

This is what I meant: the only natural way the intellect gains knowledge is through the senses (and through phantasms … thus necessitating the brain).

What Pius XII means (I am assuming): the intellect, for its existence, does not require any bodily organ.

Is it really reasonable to believe that all Pius X was saying there was the logical possibility of disembodied spirits? If that’s all that is maintained by Thomism, then I certainly have no argument - no brain data could possibly falsify that!

So it’s possible we meant different things by “intrinsically independent.” I suppose I was talking about the intellect’s operation, whereas he was talking about the intellect’s existence. Is that fair? Nonetheless, it was amazing how (at least superficially) I managed to say the exact opposite of the Pope. But I think it’s all good. Maybe.

Maybe. I think Thomism really claims more than the possibility of disembodied spirits. I think the claim is that abstraction and what follows are themselves purely immaterial processes.

I … think I agree with you so far. Was I not supposed to?

Well if you agree that there can be some intrinsic relation between mind and brain such that higher-order mind activity doesn’t occur without a brain correlate then maybe we aren’t that far apart.

 

[Touchstone]

Yes, it is the meaning that is not addressed in these types of studies. The representation *is not *the meaning!

I believe meaning is representational. Do you suppose meaning is not representational? The “representationality” of meaning is straightforward to show, I think.

Consider: is the meaning of the words “Halle Berry” representational in nature, that is to say, symbolic? Well, “Halle Berry” as words is certainly representational – the referent (the person named “Halle Berry”) is not the symbol. So we can agree that Halle Berry’s name is representational. “Halle Berry” as text has symbolic meaning in pointing to the person. Same goes for a picture of Halle Berry – the representation is not the referent, the picture is not the person.

But in our minds, no matter whether you embrace the idea of mind in dualist fashion or not – this obviously holds true, no matter how meaning is stored and processed. Halle Berry, the person, is not “in your mind”. She’s a person that exists outside our minds. The meaning, then of “Halle Berry”, is NECESSARILY representational. Whether its neurons and axons or “immaterial mind non-substance”, doesn’t matter, the meaning a mind accepts, recalls and uses is representational, symbolic.

This is true for all meaning. Meaning is symbolic, and provably so, just by noting that the anchors of meaning – the referents – are extramental. Meaning is a semantic representation of referents outside the mind.

-TS

 

[grannymh]

Just because we don’t understand everything about the brain doesn’t mean we understand nothing about it.

Agreed that we do know a number of important things about the brain. Example would be the mapping techniques in awake brain surgery. However, as pointed out earlier, due to the inherent limitations in brain studies, their qualified/restrictive conclusions cannot be applied to the functions/abilities of human nature.

 

[NowAgnostic]

So, we don’t understand trees? We literally don’t know what a tree is? Is that what you’re saying? We don’t understand anything? I admit, saying this is the logical consequence of materialistic epistemology. I didn’t think you would admit it already.

Your nonmaterialistic epistemology doesn’t do any better, as you yourself admit below. You answer the question, what is a tree?

Also, it is true that the definition of essence is “that which makes a thing what it is.” And so you could say that the essence of tree is “that which makes a tree what it is.” And it is also true that if we ask “well, what makes a tree a tree?” we could respond “it’s essence!” (followed by maniacal laughter).

Right.

We could also answer the question (more usefully perhaps) in the form of a definition. And yes, definitions would entail it to be classified.

Yes.

Now is a concept a classifier? Good question. First of all, the Thomistic claim is that a concept of something is the form of that something as it exists in the intellect.

And what is the form of that something? Its intrinsic principle of existence, that which makes it what it is. And what makes it what it is? Its form, its intrinsic principle of existence! We still understand nothing **about **the form, so how do we actually understand it?

And the idea of a form (e.g. understanding what is meant by the word “form”) is itself a concept, yes? So then you need yet another form in the intellect to have the concept of an idea of a form. But that’s yet another concept, and yet another form, off to infinity.

I believe no classification is necessary there.

Something you need to substantiate.

We can have the same concept of a thing and yet make many co-divisions or co-classifications of it.

You need to show why these co-divisions or co-classifications aren’t concepts, and how you can pick the “right” classification that actually corresponds to the concept.

Thus, how we classify it is not the same as the concept itself … for then the concept would change when we classify it differently.

Which argues against your idea and you’ve contradicted yourself. Is classification necessary or not? Which is it? We need a definition, you say, to avoid the ridiculous circular definition of essence which explains nothing. The definition entails classification. But classification can occur in several different ways, and thus you can get several different results. Thus classification can’t be necessary, you say, because then you wouldn’t have an immutable concept. So just how do you get a concept without a definition, and without a definition how do you avoid a circular “concept” of a tree as that which makes a tree what it is.

Does a deciduous tree have the same substantial form (causing “treeness”) as an evergreen tree, leaves falling in the fall being a mere accident. Or does a deciduous tree actually have a different substantial form as an evergreen; we’ve merely mislabeled them both as “trees” when in fact they belong in different categories. I’m honest enough to say we don’t know; tree is just a category that we have created.

Also, sometimes we don’t classify thing based on how they are sensed. We can classify numbers, for example. Numbers are immaterial, are they not?

Yes, and we can classify integers as even or odd. We can’t do that without a definition of evenness and oddness. We don’t have an “intrinsic” concept of evenness or oddness apart from the definition.

I have yet to respond to those large passages you quoted. Perhaps here my medieval mindset shall finally be destroyed …

OK, on to the nitty-gritty now.