It is a novel experience to read someone’s describing Aquinas as ignorant!
I think you and he would disagree about the relationship between “appetite” and reason. He would say that man desires what he thinks (mistakenly or not) to be good, and that reason regulates the appetites (again, more or less well, depending on graces and virtues.)
I don't think he was aware of such things as the nucleus accumbens, the hippocampus, the amygdala, small world networks, selective inhibitory synchrony, Baysian updating, ect... All elements of the machinery of mind. There are no graces, or virtues that effect this machinery, other than what the person chooses, as values by rational decision making processes. Pleasure(an appetite) can be a part of that, but the person must choose that as a fundamental value in order for it to.
Gen 26-27(the Image is given), Ezekiel 18(the Image is never taken away, or defect) and the passages I posted above from Mark, that are God's view on the matter(the Image is sufficient — as modern Intellegence theory indicates) of grace, faith and virtue as gifts also contradict Aquinas's claims.
I don't think he was aware of such things as the nucleus accumbens, the hippocampus, the amygdala, small world networks, selective inhibitory synchrony, Baysian updating, ect... All elements of the machinery of mind. There are no graces, or virtues that effect this machinery, other than what the person chooses, as values by rational decision making processes. Pleasure(an appetite) can be a part of that, but the person must choose that as a fundamental value in order for it to.
Gen 26-27(the Image is given), Ezekiel 18(the Image is never taken away, or defect) and the passages I posted above from Mark, that are God's view on the matter(the Image is sufficient — as modern Intellegence theory indicates) of grace, faith and virtue as gifts also contradict Aquinas's claims.