Consider that "the mind is potentially all things." In this, it is somewhat akin to prime matter (indeed, some commentators speak of "intellectual matter").The formal object of sight is color, for smell odor. These are quite limited. For the intellect, it is the whole of being itself, actuality and intelligibility. In order for the intellect to be all forms thought, it cannot be itself any prior form. The intellect is able to receive form not by being "made of stuff/building blocks" but rather by being formless.

Also, consider that "our thoughts can be elsewhere." Aristotle does not fall into the trap of the much maligned but often reproduced Cartesian theater, whereby all we experience and think about is "in our head." But the mind's ability to "be anywhere" is also an indication of its immateriality.

Obviously, we can know an apple. Yet when we know an apple, our heads don't become apples, nor are there physical apples in our head. The mode of existence in the intellect is different, immaterial.

This leads to a helpful way to understand the real distinction between essence and existence. Suppose we think of a purple horse. Well, for so long as we think of it, if has mental existence, but it doesn't have real existence; two different modes. The mental being is not composed of form received by material substrate. But this is also where Thomas departs most radically from Aristotle, who identified form/essence with actuality, whereas for Thomas being is ultimately existence, which is an act/actuality, and cannot be reifed into a concept because it is beyond concepts, beyond essence. This makes all beings "participatory."

1. What is Aristotle's view of the mind here? Is it a nothingness, a negativity, like Hegel? Is it pure form that is immaterial?

This is far from clear because those passages on De Anima have produced tons of speculation. The Islamic commentators take these in very different directions. It definitely isn't pure actuality though because we have the passive ("material" for Averoese and some others) intellect. The solution to the Meno Paradox lies in our knowing things potentially prior to that potential being actualized.

The difficulty is that there is often an equivocation between matter as simply potency and matter as what receives form in composite physical (changing) beings. This is a tension right into Thomas, one he resolves with the act of existence and the essence existence distinction (from Avicenna). Material beings are in some sense constrained by their physicality. But, we must not make the mistake of the moderns here in thinking that this must make physical "substance" a sort of subsistent building block. Ultimately, it is anything at all only as respects it's form, and material being itself is a sort of limiting determination (we might say act). Hence, one way to put it is that it is all inside the "mind" of God, God as ground, since it is God "in whom we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28).

2. How does Aquinas argue for the soul being immaterial? Is it just that thinking cannot have a sense-organ?

In many different ways. The most obvious is its grasp of universals outside any materiality.

So consider the famous Nietzsche quote:




Actually, guys like Saint Augustine were very aware that nature had no perfect circles or triangles. This is precisely why they thought the intellect must be immaterial (or one reason at least, they had many).

So, if you ask GPT or Google around, this will be the most common answer, and the idea that the intellect, in order to be able to receive all form, cannot itself be materially limited. However, I think Thomas' case is more compelling as you layer on more and more of his philosophy, which all touches on it.

Going back to Parmenides, there is the idea that "the same is for thinking as for being." A thing's eidos, form, is its whole intelligible quiddity, what makes it appear as any thing at all and not nothing in particular. To be untinelligible would be to be nothing, no thing. So, being itself is like a two headed coin, being and being experienced/known. Plotinus makes just this point. These are unified in the One.

So, from Perl's Thinking Being:

The key insight of phenomenology is that the modern interpretation of knowledge as a relation between consciousness as a self-contained ‘subject’ and reality as an ‘object’ extrinsic to it is incoherent. On the one hand, consciousness is always and essentially the awareness of something, and is thus always already together with being. On the other hand, if ‘being’ is to mean anything at all, it can only mean that which is phenomenal, that which is so to speak ‘there’ for awareness, and thus always already belongs to consciousness. Consciousness is the grasping of being; being is what is grasped by consciousness. The phenomenological term for the first of these observations is ‘intentionality;’ for the second, ‘givenness.’ “The mind is a moment to the world and the things in it; the mind is essentially correlated with its objects. The mind is essentially intentional. There is no ‘problem of knowledge’ or ‘problem of the external world,’ there is no problem about how we get to ‘extramental’ reality, because the mind should never be separated from reality from the beginning. Mind and being are moments to each other; they are not pieces that can be segmented out of the whole to which they belong.”* Intended as an exposition of Husserlian phenomenology, these words hold true for the entire classical tradition from Parmenides to Aquinas...

In arguing that being qua intelligible is not apart from but is the content of intellectual apprehension, Plotinus is upholding what may be called an 'identity theory of truth,’ an understanding of truth not as a mere extrinsic correspondence but as the sameness of thought and reality. The weakness of any correspondence theory of truth is that on such a theory thought can never reach outside itself to that with which it supposedly corresponds.1 Thought can be ‘adequate’ (literally, ‘equal-to’) to reality only if it is one with, the same as, reality. In Aristotle’s formulation, which as we have seen Plotinus cites in support of his position, knowledge is the same as the known.2

If thought and reality are not together in this way, then, as Plotinus argues, there is no truth, for truth just is the togetherness of being with thought. Plotinus’ arguments against the separation of intellect and being thus resonate profoundly with the nihilistic predicament of modernity. If thought and reality are conceived in modern terms, as ‘subject’ and ‘object,’ extrinsic to and over against one another, and truth is conceived as a mere correspondence between them, then thought cannot get to reality at all, then there can be no knowledge, and in the end, since nothing is given to thought, no truth and no reality. We must rather understand thought in classical Platonic, Aristotelian, and Plotinian terms, as an openness to, an embracing of, a being-with reality, and of reality as not apart from but as, in Plotinus’ phenomenological terms, “given” (V.5.2.9) to thought. This, again, is the very meaning of the identification of being as εἶδος or ἰδέα. Being means nothing if it is not given to thought; thought means nothing if it is not the apprehension of being. Hence at the pure and paradigmatic level of both, intellect as perfect apprehension and the forms as perfect being, they coincide. “We have here, then, one nature: intellect, all beings, truth” (V.5.3.1–2).

The idea of truth as a transcendental also comes into play here. Truth cannot be convertible with being if there unintelligible, eidos-free noumena that are, but exist in a sort of intellect free space (which also implies they could never make any difference to anyone ever). The only being free of limiting essence and eidos is not "a being" but rather infinite being itself, God. In a sense then, everything is intellect.

However, there is still a real distinction between mental being in our intellects and what has a true/full act of existence through participation with God (even though our intellects are also a participation in divine being). The intellect is immaterial, in part, because it is not limited by material existence, it has access to these mental beings, "ens rationis," as well as "conceptual but not real distinctions" (e.g. a cup being half full versus half empty—you won't find this distinction in material existence).

2. How does Aquinas argue for the soul being immaterial? — Bob Ross

Apparently there is a whole book on the subject, "Thomas Aquinas on the Immateriality of the Human Intellect," by Adam Wood.

Here is one of Aquinas' arguments for the incorporeality of the intellect:

I answer that, It must necessarily be allowed that the principle of intellectual operation which we call the soul, is a principle both incorporeal and subsistent. For it is clear that by means of the intellect man can have knowledge of all corporeal things. Now whatever knows certain things cannot have any of them in its own nature; because that which is in it naturally would impede the knowledge of anything else. Thus we observe that a sick man's tongue being vitiated by a feverish and bitter humor, is insensible to anything sweet, and everything seems bitter to it. Therefore, if the intellectual principle contained the nature of a body it would be unable to know all bodies. Now every body has its own determinate nature. Therefore it is impossible for the intellectual principle to be a body. It is likewise impossible for it to understand by means of a bodily organ; since the determinate nature of that organ would impede knowledge of all bodies; as when a certain determinate color is not only in the pupil of the eye, but also in a glass vase, the liquid in the vase seems to be of that same color.

Therefore the intellectual principle which we call the mind or the intellect has an operation per se apart from the body. Now only that which subsists can have an operation "per se." For nothing can operate but what is actual: for which reason we do not say that heat imparts heat, but that what is hot gives heat. We must conclude, therefore, that the human soul, which is called the intellect or the mind, is something incorporeal and subsistent. — Aquinas, ST I.75.2.c - Whether the human soul is something subsistent?

:up:

Do you find his arguments compelling?

Also, if the form of an organism extends to some other substantial, immaterial aspect (of a thinking faculty), then how would that work with interacting with the body? It seems like this view loses that edge that Aristotle has of the form being nothing more than the self-actualizing principle of the body and ends up in Cartesian territory.

Do you find his arguments compelling? — Bob Ross

I do, yes. I also think his premise is widely accepted, namely <If man can have knowledge of all corporeal things, then man's intellect is incorporeal>. Some people use this to affirm the immateriality of the intellect; others use it to deny that man can have knowledge of all corporeal things.

Also, if the form of an organism extends to some other substantial, immaterial aspect (of a thinking faculty), then how would that work with interacting with the body? It seems like this view loses that edge that Aristotle has of the form being nothing more than the self-actualizing principle of the body and ends up in Cartesian territory. — Bob Ross

Well even in your OP you point out that Aristotle holds that the mind is not "blended with the body," and therefore must apparently be somehow incorporeal. So he isn't altogether off the hook.

But what do Thomists say about "the interaction problem"? I would have to revisit the issue, to be honest. Feser offers accessible blog posts on Thomism, and he has at least four entries on the interaction problem (one, two, three, four). That's where I would begin. The fourth one looks like it is the most concise.

or Aristotle, apart from an obscure passage in De Anima, thinks of the soul as the form of an organism in virtue of which the organism is alive. It is the self-actualizing principle that unifies the organism into the kind of alive thing it is. This seems to suggest that the soul is not substantially distinct from the body insofar as it is analogous to the imprint of the ring on the wax which makes wax a wax seal. Thusly, it seems like the soul does not survive the body and is not immaterial in the sense that it is pure form (although it isn't matter either: it's the self-actualizing principle of matter in virtue of which makes it alive). — Bob Ross

You say, Aristotle says it is "the form". Then you go on to say it is not "pure form'. That is contradiction. For Aristotle, as "the form", it is pure form.

1. What is Aristotle's view of the mind here? Is it a nothingness, a negativity, like Hegel? Is it pure form that is immaterial? — Bob Ross

I think that the key to understanding this is that Aristotle distinguishes between the soul, and the intellect, or mind, which is a capacity of the soul. He explained that prior philosophers. like Plato, did not properly distinguish between soul and mind, and often used the words interchangeably.

By pure form, I just meant substantial form like Aquinas thinks of. A kind of being which is not received by matter: it is just form itself subsisting.

In terms of distinguishing soul and mind, I agree; but that doesn't explain if Aristotle thought the mind is pure/substantial form like Aquinas; and if he does, then how does this not entail a sort of interaction problem even if it is not the same problem as Cartesian dualism? It would be an immaterial mind interacting with a materially body even if the soul is the form of a living being.

namely <If man can have knowledge of all corporeal things, then man's intellect is incorporeal>. Some people use this to affirm the immateriality of the intellect; others use it to deny that man can have knowledge of all corporeal things.

When you say 'man can have knowledge of all corporeal things', is this in the sense that if the a particular of any kind of given to the senses that the mind could abstract out it's form? Or are you saying the mind can know all corporeal things indirectly through testing and self-reflective reason?

I would have to revisit the issue, to be honest. Feser offers accessible blog posts on Thomism, and he has at least four entries on the interaction problem (one, two, three, four). That's where I would begin. The fourth one looks like it is the most concise.

I haven't found a Thomist that addresses tbh. I read Ed Fezer's elaborations and his doesn't focus on how the immaterial mind interacts with the material body. He just vaguely states that there is no interaction problem for hylomorphisists because the soul is the form of the body. The problem I have with that is that it ignores the fact that the immaterial mind is not the soul: the soul would be the form of the body and the mind (together unified); so how could they interact or be unified together like that?

When you say 'man can have knowledge of all corporeal things', is this in the sense that if the a particular of any kind of given to the senses that the mind could abstract out it's form? Or are you saying the mind can know all corporeal things indirectly through testing and self-reflective reason? — Bob Ross

Either one. Obviously some things require instruments, and are therefore known indirectly.

I haven't found a Thomist that addresses tbh. I read Ed Fezer's elaborations and his doesn't focus on how the immaterial mind interacts with the material body. He just vaguely states that there is no interaction problem for hylomorphisists because the soul is the form of the body. The problem I have with that is that it ignores the fact that the immaterial mind is not the soul: the soul would be the form of the body and the mind (together unified); so how could they interact or be unified together like that? — Bob Ross

I think Feser is wondering why, as a non-Cartesian, a critique of Cartesian dualism would stick to him.

But let's try to identify your argument. Is it this?

1. The mind is not the soul
2. The soul is the form of the unified body-mind composite
3. Therefore, the soul and the mind cannot interact or be unified together

I don't see how (3) follows. The question here asks what is supposed to be objectionable about Aquinas' view.

What I am arguing is more like this:

1. Abstraction of a universal from phantasms requires interaction between the phantasm and the thing which abstracts.

2. The immaterial mind abstracts.

3. The brain produces phantasms.

4. Therefore, the brain and mind interact.

5. A material thing and an immaterial thing cannot interact.

6. Therefore, either the mind is not immaterial or it does not interact with the brain.

By "interact", I mean some sort of process of impact from one to the other; instead of like the participation matter has in receive form. I get form is act, but if there's a subsistent form that can think then I don't see how it doesn't have a part of it that interacts with the matter that is informed in a way not like participation. Somehow the subsistent rational form not only provides the self-actualizing principle for self-development, but it also comes equipped with a mind that somehow interacts with the brain.

What I am arguing is more like this: — Bob Ross

Okay.

5. A material thing and an immaterial thing cannot interact. — Bob Ross

Why think that?

Is the concept of triangularity material? No. Do we interact with it? Yes.

3. The brain produces phantasms. — Bob Ross

Why do you say the brain produces phantasms? Why couldn't the mind do it?

Is the concept of triangularity material? No. Do we interact with it? Yes.

But triangularity is a form: the mind isn't a form. If it isn't a form then wouldn't it have to interact with things? Likewise, wouldn't that have to be an interact where something that is not involved with matter whasoever extracts from matter something?

I was using Aquinas' view that brain is capable of and does in fact produce images of things based off of the sensations; but that the agent intellect, which is immaterial, abstracts the form from it for the passive intellect to receive it.

Oh, so he's saying the intellect witnesses the images. And you're saying it couldn't do that?

According to Aquinas, if I understand correctly, the intellect does not just witness the images: it (viz., the agent intellect) actively extracts the form from the image and passes it along to the understanding (viz., the passive intellect).

The image of this particular apple is used by the agent intellect to extract the form of appleness and received and retained for reasoning by the passive intellect. This seems to imply that the agent intellect somehow operates on images which are material and yet the agent intellect itself is completely void of matter. @Leontiskos, how does the form of a particular thing (which is in the state of sense-matter) get transferred into immaterial thought?

According to Aquinas, if I understand correctly, the intellect does not just witness the images: it (viz., the agent intellect) actively extracts the form from the image and passes it along to the understanding (viz., the passive intellect). — Bob Ross

So do you think the intellect can or cannot witness the images? If it can, it would just abstract based on what it saw. In this scenario the brain would be an interface between the world and the intellect. The intellect is a central processing unit and the brain is an analog to digital converter. That sort of thing.

I guess it is metaphysically possible, but how does that work? Wouldn't there have to be some medium which supplies the imaginery to the agent intellect? Otherwise, why doesn't the agent intellect receive imaginery from other bodies?

I guess it is metaphysically possible, but how does that work? Wouldn't there have to be some medium which supplies the imaginery to the agent intellect? Otherwise, why doesn't the agent intellect receive imaginery from other bodies? — Bob Ross

I guess the soul is supposed to be fused to one brain. You could think of the way a computer's software interacts with the hardware. Or maybe it's like a tuning fork and it picks up vibrations. Or by electromagnetism. I mean, Aquinas was in the 13th Century. Our idea of materiality has expanded a lot since his day.

But, again, then that admits that there is interaction, not in the sense of merely participation in a form, by the mind and body. No?

But, again, then that admits that there is interaction, not in the sense of merely participation in a form, by the mind and body. No? — Bob Ross

Aquinas believed the soul is fused to the body by supernatural means. They aren't really separate. The intellect is an aspect of the soul, right?

But triangularity is a form: the mind isn't a form. — Bob Ross

You made a claim about "things," not "forms." In fact the very vagueness of that word "thing" is doing most of the work in your premise. For example, if you had used "substance" instead of "thing" the premise would not do any work (except against Descartes).

But, again, then that admits that there is interaction, not in the sense of merely participation in a form, by the mind and body. No? — Bob Ross

I think your basic idea here is correct. Whether or not we want to talk about brains, there will still be "interaction" between the material and the immaterial.

In terms of distinguishing soul and mind, I agree; but that doesn't explain if Aristotle thought the mind is pure/substantial form like Aquinas; and if he does, then how does this not entail a sort of interaction problem even if it is not the same problem as Cartesian dualism? It would be an immaterial mind interacting with a materially body even if the soul is the form of a living being. — Bob Ross

I believe that Aristotle thought the soul is pure substantial form. Aquinas also thought the soul is pure substantial form. However, maintaining the already mentioned distinction between soul and mind, the mind is not necessarily pure substantial form. Aristotle distinguished passive and active intellect, and Aquinas upheld this distinction. Since form is actuality, and the intellect has a passive aspect, I think it is impossible that the intellect is pure form.

If the mind is immaterial, then it has to be pure form because there is only form and matter. Are you suggesting an immaterial 'matter' that the intellect would be of?

Aristotle distinguished passive and active intellect, and Aquinas upheld this distinction. Since form is actuality, and the intellect has a passive aspect, I think it is impossible that the intellect is pure form.

From my understanding, something that is pure form is not necessarily purely actual; and what you are noting is that beings which are purely being in idea (such as angels, the mind, etc.) have potency and thusly are not purely actual. That is true, but they are pure form nevertheless because they do not exist in matter.

The potency that an angel has is not like our potency as material beings. My body is what received my form; but an angel is form that was not received by matter.

Perhaps you are denying the distinction between potency and matter; but I would say passive vs. active potency are different, and beings with matter have passive potency.

You made a claim about "things," not "forms." In fact the very vagueness of that word "thing" is doing most of the work in your premise. For example, if you had used "substance" instead of "thing" the premise would not do any work (except against Descartes).

True, but my point is that the mind is not a form and it is immaterial and it is infused with the body that is material; so the question arises: "how does the mind interact with the body in this sort of fusion?". It may not be a hard problem like descartes', but it is still a problem.

I think your basic idea here is correct. Whether or not we want to talk about brains, there will still be "interaction" between the material and the immaterial.

How does that work, then? Is it a mystery we cannot solve?

True, but my point is that the mind is not a form and it is immaterial and it is infused with the body that is material; so the question arises: "how does the mind interact with the body in this sort of fusion?". It may not be a hard problem like descartes', but it is still a problem. — Bob Ross

For Aquinas the intellect is a power of the soul. So it's not a separate "thing" from the body. It's not like we have three separate "things": a body, a soul, an intellect (and also a will), and then we have to figure out how to weld them all together.

(This is another instance where you are running up against reverse mereological essentialism, and want to place parts before wholes.)

I have a thread about "Physical cannot be the cause of its own change" (you can find the argument here); therefore, the mind is needed to cause the change.

If the mind is immaterial, then it has to be pure form because there is only form and matter. Are you suggesting an immaterial 'matter' that the intellect would be of? — Bob Ross

No, I'm suggesting that for Aquinas, (following the lead of Aristotle), the human intellect is not purely immaterial, it is dependent on the material body. This is actually the reason Aquinas gives for why human beings cannot adequately know God, and separate Forms. The human intellect is deficient in this sense, and that is why we cannot adequately know God until the soul is disunited from the body.

From my understanding, something that is pure form is not necessarily purely actual; — Bob Ross

I would say that this is a misunderstanding of Aristotle, and Aquinas.

Perhaps you are denying the distinction between potency and matter; but I would say passive vs. active potency are different, and beings with matter have passive potency. — Bob Ross

No, I do not deny that distinction. Matter is a type of potency, or potential, it is placed in that category. This means that potential defines matter, in a way similar to how animal defines human being. All matter is potential, but not all potential is matter. Notice that Aristotle defines the essence of human ideas as potential also. So potency, or potential, is the broader term, such that not all potential is matter. In a similar way "actual" defines form, such that all form is actual. But not necessarily all actualities are form. Aristotle distinguishes two very distinct senses of "actual", one being "what is the case" (the form, or formula), the other being active, activity.

Aristotle seems to be regarding the mind (viz., the thinking aspect of the soul) as 'unmixed' with the matter and that, for some reason, this mind is not real prior to knowing something.

It seems like Aquinas picks up on this and leverages it as epistemic points in favor of the mind being immaterial.

I have two questions:

1. What is Aristotle's view of the mind here? Is it a nothingness, a negativity, like Hegel? Is it pure form that is immaterial?

2. How does Aquinas argue for the soul being immaterial? Is it just that thinking cannot have a sense-organ? — Bob Ross

The reason why the mind must be immaterial, is illustrated with the tinted glass analogy. The mind's apprehension of the material world, is like seeing through a glass lens. If the lens is tinted, the person seeing will not correctly see the colour of things. So the person will not correctly see every aspect of the world, because the colour will be incorrect. Likewise, if the mind is in anyway material, it could not correctly know the entirety of the material world.

The analogy is good, but there is more than one way to look at it. If it is the case that the human mind cannot correctly know the entirety of the material world, this may be because the mind is not immaterial.

Let me ask you a point of clarification: would you agree with the following?

A soul is a substantial form and a substantial form is the self-actualizing principle which unites a substance towards its natural ends. A self-actualizing principle can be reduced to the way matter is organized, with the right materials, to self-actualize towards certain ends: there is no unity which subsists that directs the matter itself. Therefore, a robot that has been designed to self-actualize from its own inward principles towards its own natural ends has a soul.

I think you are going to deny this on grounds that I am implicitly thinking in terms of reverse mereology again; but if an unsubstantial form, like that of a chair, is reducible to way the material and organization of parts suit the natural end(s) of 'chairness', then a substantial form is the same but the addition that it is organized to self-organize: this doesn't seem to entail some sort of subsistent unity that directs the self-movement. Let me know what you think.