Michael Egnor January 26, 2015 3:27 PM | Permalink
At Why Evolution Is True, Jerry Coyne has responded to my post about the immateriality of the intellect and will and the reality of free will. He admits that he doesn't grasp the argument completely, so I'll expand upon it a bit.
First, a note on the provenance of the argument. The argument is not mine. It was originally proposed by Aristotle (De Anima, Book III). For two millennia, it was the common wisdom of educated men, and was widely considered decisive. Thomas Aquinas and the scholastic philosophers developed it further (Sententia Libri De Anima). Through Aquinas and Maimonides and Averroes, this argument of the peripatetic pagan became a cornerstone of the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic understanding of the mental powers of the soul.
With the rise of Cartesian and Hobbesian mechanical philosophy and materialism in the 16th and 17th centuries, the classical argument for the immateriality of the intellect and will was simply ignored and then forgotten. Yet Aristotle's argument has never been refuted. Modern materialists confidently deny free will and deny the immateriality of the intellect and will without even the slightest acquaintance with this pivotal argument that has been extant for two thousand years. That we take the free-will deniers seriously is a pitiful commentary on our gullibility and the poverty of our intellectual culture.
What follows is a précis of the argument.
We have knowledge of two kinds of things -- particulars and universals. Particulars are things that exist as discrete objects in nature. An apple is a particular, as is a tree and a man.
Universals don't exist as discrete things in nature. Universals are characteristics of particular things. Goodness (say, a good apple), greenness (of a tree), and humanity (said of man) are universals. Universals are concepts, not discrete things existing in nature.
Particulars are substances -- things that exist in their own right. Universals are things that exist in other things -- accidents, in Aristotelian terminology.
Particulars have material agency, whereas universals don't. If you are hit by a red truck, you are hit by the truck, not by the red.
Aristotle asked: Is knowledge a material act, or an immaterial act? He noted that certain kinds of knowledge -- such as sense-perception, imagination and memory -- grasp particulars and can be readily understood as material acts. I see a rock, or a tree, or a man. Such perception of particulars can easily be understood as inherently material -- or at least very tightly linked to matter. In fact, modern neuroscience has dovetailed nicely with Aristotle's view. The visual perception of a tree involves a fully material process of light striking the retina, activating neurons and action potentials via projections to the occipital cortex, etc. In many situations, the sense-perception of an object correlates with brain activation in a somatotopic pattern. Regions of the retina project consistently to specific corresponding regions of the cortex. It's very well organized. It's quite elegantly material.
Now Aristotle understood "material" in a quite different way than modern materialists do, so modern materialism is still stymied in its ability to explain even sense-perception (the qualia problem). But the general Aristotelian principle that knowledge of particulars is inherently material has withstood the test of time.
Aristotle pointed out that universals are another issue entirely. Knowledge of universals like good and evil -- the kind of knowledge on which free will is based -- is mediated by intellect and will. Intellect and will entail knowledge of concepts, not particular things.
How can a concept be instantiated in matter? Well, it can't. Concepts (universals) are not particulars. Therefore concepts cannot be instantiated as a particular in brain tissue or as a particular in any material substrate, such as a brain state.
Simply put: brain states are particulars, and concepts are universals, so a concept cannot be a particular brain state.
The standard materialist reply to this observation (after the materialist admits that the two thousand year old argument is completely new to him) is that the concept is represented in a brain state. The materialist will appeal to "integrated... overlapping... massive parallel processing" or to whatever is the consensus neurobabble of the day. But all neurobabble reduces to representation. All (non-eliminative) arguments for the materiality of the intellect and will depend on brain representation of concepts.
The materialist will have a point here, although he won't understand it. While a universal cannot be a particular substance, it can be an accidental form in a particular substance. It is certainly true that concepts can be represented materially. I am doing so now as I type this. Perhaps concepts can be represented in the brain in some way, analogous to the way I am representing these Aristotelian concepts on my computer.
But this doesn't get materialists out of the bind. Imagine that a concept can be represented in a brain state, via a kind of neuro-HTML code for thought. In fact, philosopher Jerry Fodor and others have proposed a "language of thought" hypothesis that proposes that thoughts are represented in the brain by a specific syntax. The problem with the use of language of thought hypotheses to fully explain mental concepts materialistically is that a representation presupposes that which it represents.
Imagine drawing a map of a city. You must first have a city, or the concept of a city, in order to draw the map. No city, no map. A representation is a representation of something -- so the representation cannot be the complete instantiation of that thing. If the representation is the complete instantiation of a thing, the representation is the thing itself, not a representation.
If a concept is represented in a brain state, then the concept is presupposed by the representation, and therefore you haven't explained the concept. You've merely explained its representation.
Even if materialists could show that a concept is represented in a brain state, as an accidental form rather than a substantial form, they can't explain the concept materialistically, because the material representation of a concept by accidental form presupposes the concept.
A further problem with the view that a concept could be an accidental form is that accidental forms have no material agency -- the truck hits you, not the red -- so if concepts were accidental forms, they couldn't cause anything to happen in the material world, including in the brain. Concepts would be mere epiphenomena of brain activity, and would be causally impotent. This view, which is epiphenomenalism, hasn't been taken seriously for centuries, for obvious reasons. In case the reason doesn't seem obvious, consider this: if a concept is an accidental form, and it therefore has no material agency, your statement "a concept is an accidental form" couldn't be caused by any concept that you have.
A concept -- a universal -- can't be explained materialistically.
You may have noticed in this argument a way out for materialists. Materialists could claim that the brain state doesn't represent the concept -- it just is the concept. Materialists could claim that our folk concepts (sic) of concepts are mere ignorance of the reality that we have no concepts at all. (If you're not chuckling now you don't understand the argument.) This is the concept that there are no concepts. Matter is the only thing that exists. Our concepts are just matter, without remainder and aren't representations at all.
This view -- eliminative materialism -- is regnant in materialist circles. Suffice to say that eliminative materialism is the drain around which all materialism eventually swirls.
Intellect and will are immaterial powers of the mind. The will is not determined by matter, and free will is real.
Now all of this is not to say that intellect and will are not dependent on matter for their ordinary functioning. If you are hit in the head with a baseball bat, your immaterial intellect and will won't work properly for a while. This is because intellect and will are dependent on material sense-perception and imagination and memory for their ordinary function. If you cannot perceive anything or imagine anything or remember anything, you have no substrate by which to understand anything. The immaterial powers of the mind function normally only when the material powers of the mind are functioning normally.
You may notice that this Aristotelian view of the dependence of immaterial intellect and will on material sense-perception and imagination and memory comports nicely with our own experience of free will. We are obviously influenced, and sometimes influenced powerfully, by the material state of our body. We do not judge or act wisely when we are tired or drunk or sick. Sometimes the impairment is so profound that we are not held responsible for our actions (e.g., if we have schizophrenia).
So our will is free from determinism, but influenced by matter. Sometimes the material influence is strong. Sometimes the influence is weak. Matter does not determine our will, but matter most certainly influences our will. This is our common experience.
The heart of Aristotle's genius was his ability to provide an enduring and masterful explanation of what all men know to be true. The modern denial of free will is a bizarre delusion, and one wonders if the deniers really believe what they say. They certainly live their lives as if free will were undeniable.
It is a scandal that the debate over free will is taking place largely without acknowledgement or even awareness of the classical demonstration of the immateriality of intellect and will. Aristotle's demonstration of the immateriality of intellect and will and his implicit defense of the freedom of the will from materialist determinism is as valid and pertinent today as it was two thousand years ago.
On the miraculous creation of the first man Church Father John Chrysostom wrote: “And God formed man of dust (matter) from the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul….the inbreathing communicated to the one created out of earth the power of life, and thus the nature of the soul was formed. What does a living soul mean? An active soul, which has the members of the body as the implements of its activities, submissive to its will.” (Genesis, Creation, and Early Man, Seraphim Rose, p.215)
Gregory of Nyssa added: “The body and the soul were formed at the same time—not one before and the other afterwards…” (ibid, p. 218) Early Church Fathers make the point that the whole of creation---angels, time, matter, fire, wind, water, herbs, trees, all life and conscious life---was brought into existence from non-existence (ex nihilo) in six instantaneous creative acts and not from anything already in existence or from the Essence or Nature of God. Therefore creation does not have the same essence as the living, personal God Who spoke creation into existence and is not a part of God as most ancient and modern pagans believe.
Brahman: the Void (also Teilhards' Omega)
In the “Quantum Society,” physics writers Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall advocate a new "occult" science of pantheism, psychology and sociology grounded in a breathtaking range of practical implications in the,
“…fundamental physics that underlies all else that is in the universe” lending itself to a holistic understanding that “the nature of the mind, the nature of society, and the nature of nature are all one and the same thing…linked by a common physics.” (The Making of the New Spirituality: the Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition, James Herrick p. 170-171)
The ultimate discovery of the new "occult" Physics is "scientific" proof of the basic correctness of Benedict Spinoza’s pantheistic theology---nature is god.
According to Zohar and Marshall, the fundamental physics underlying all else in the universe consist of two sorts of particles, bosons and fermions. Fermions “are particles that make up things” including “protons, neutrons, and electrons, the basic constituents of the atom.” In other words, “all of the matter of the universe is made of fermions.” (ibid)
Thus there are only two kinds of matter in the universe, and all of one kind is what we call physical matter. The other kind of matter is spiritual and mental boson particles. Bosons are the fundamental spiritual/mental forces that “bind the universe together---the electromagnetic, the gravitational, the strong and weak nuclear…” Since bosons appear to “like clustering together,” consciousness and social qualities are most likely boson phenomena. (ibid)
Both physicists contend that the boson is implicated in basic evolutionary processes, thus there is a “whole new ‘metaphysic” of the human in the history of the boson:
“If the tendency of two bosons to bunch together at the most basic level of early physical processes can be traced in unbroken sequence to the principles underlying the physical basis for conscious mind,” then “we have traced the origins of the human mind back to primordial physical reality.” (ibid)
This means that in the so-called "social tendencies" of "thinking" bosons physicists have discovered the evolutionary origins of the human soul (self) since the boson is the critical link between the previously immaterial soul (prior to emanating into a material body) and the evolutionary emanation or emergence of both biological life on earth and of the universe itself.
Zohar and Marshal conclude that there is no longer any basis in the quantum worldview for any “ontological distinction between the human and the natural," meaning between human and divine nature, hence "god" is within man. Their conclusion represents “a radical shift away from the whole earlier Western worldview,” thus is applauded and greatly appreciated by New World Order occult pantheist globalists, Luciferian Theosophists, Satanists, Wiccans, and other nature worshippers.
Zohar and Marshal also find that when physicists probe the deep recesses of the universe they are confronted by a void, an indefinite and seemingly infinite field of energy that they call the ‘quantum vacuum,” a background without features that seems empty yet is where all physical objects originate:
“All the waves and particles that we can see and measure, literally, as in the Greek, ex-ist or ‘stand out from’ an underlying sea of potential that physicists have named the vacuum….just as waves undulate on the sea.” This ‘sea’ of proto-physicality is an “all pervasive, underlying field of potential…the vacuum.” (ibid, p. 172)
The ‘quantum vacuum’ is strikingly similar to some Hindu and Buddhist accounts of the origins of physical objects as emanations from the impersonal, non-living One and/or the Void. Nor do Zohar and Marshall deny the similarity:
“The vacuum spoken of by quantum physicists, like the Buddhist concept of Sunyata, or the Void, to which it is so similar, is replete with potentiality.” (ibid)
From the time of ancient Babylon the Void is the "ultimate ground of being" and true mystical religious experience. As the beginning and ending of all reality, the Void or vacuum is “the vast sea of all else that is.” Moreover, humans are not individual persons but excited modes of the Void:
“…the vacuum has the same physical structure as human consciousness.” As this is the case, then the (non)soul of the Void and soul of the human are one and the same substance. “There is…quite possibly a common physics linking human consciousness to the ground state of ‘everything that ever existed or can exist’ in the universe (and we) are part of it. Each one of us as an individual is an excitation of the vacuum, an individual being on the sea of Being” and this is a straightforward conclusion of “orthodox physics. It is…proven.” (pp. 172-173)
The Doctrine of Emanation
According to the doctrine of emanation, the entire universe, all spirit, life, and even all of the gods, human beings, and everything else, came about by a process of emanation (or unfolding, emergence or evolution) from the non-living energy field or Ultimate Ground of Being (Void, Abyss). Just as waves form across the surface of the ocean, so the Void forms upon itself successive waves (emanations) of entities that in turn emanate further entities and so on, with all of these entities interacting within an extraordinary network or great chain of being consisting of downward-sloping self-contained planes of existence, a top-down hierarchy of astral plane realities arranged vertically.
Each higher plane of existence emanates the one below it through a process of emanation, thus each plane stands in the position of ground of being (god) to the one below it. Therefore creation is not creation ex nihilo, as the Genesis account teaches, but emanation out of the Void, the ultimate ground of being.
Each plane of existence has its own specific characteristics, thus there can be a plane where spirit or thought forms exist; where the Gnostic demiurge, the evil Jehovah, God of material creation exists; the realm of the deities, demons, heavens, hells, angels, and so on, realm upon realm, all looking downwards to the physical realm and also looking upwards to the Void or quantum vacuum.
Nature Worship
Brahman by any other name is merely the evolving universe of energy and matter. It has within it no ultimate source for life and soul/spirit. Thus Nirvana is a nowhere land for nonbeings.
Ex-guru Rabi Maharaj and Vishal Mangalwadi left Hinduism behind because they know it is a dead-end. Moreover they have expressed in writing their shock that Westerners, having received the greatest gift of all--the Truth, the Way, and the Life, have rejected His offer of salvation and eternal life in favor of the nothingness of the Void. Do as they have done. Reject the Void and turn back to Jesus Christ Talisker.