An argument for the immateriality of the intellect

[Paul_King]

@structureoftruth

In Feser’s own words (from the third of the links I posted above):

That is clear enough but it doesn’t really answer my objections, Does a “material triangle” have a meaning? If it does how would unpercieved deviations from perfection affect that meaning?

@structureoftruth

Here is the actual point, which I was trying to explain: say you want to physically represent the concept “triangle”. You may try to do so by drawing a triangle. But nothing about the physical facts of such a drawing would fix whether it represented “triangle” as opposed to “triangle with these lengths and angles” or “2-d geometric figure”. You could add more instances of triangles to your drawing, but it still wouldn’t be determined by the physical facts alone whether it represented “triangle” as opposed to “this particular collection of triangles” or “idle geometric doodling” or something like that. You could label the drawing with the word triangle, but nothing about the physical facts fixes the meaning of that particular set of symbols (and the philosophical arguments from Kripke, etc, that Feser references make the case that the meanings of words are not determinate even taking the facts about the way those words are used into consideration).

So, Feser’s point is that the idea of triangularity can’t be represented by the idea of a physical trainable because of the imperfections of the physical triangle? That seems even weaker since unnoticed deviations aren”t going to be relevant, and digital technology manages to perfectly represent perfect triangles more easily than it can represent the imperfections of physical examples of triangles,

@structureoftruth

And the point generalizes. There is nothing to be found about a particular string of 1s and 0s in a computer, either intrinsically or in causal and functional relationships to other material things, that can determine its meaning is “triangle” as opposed to “trilateral” (even though all triangles are trilaterals and vice-versa, the meanings of those two words are different - after all, one means having three sides and one means having three angles, and sides are different from angles). Same goes for patterns of neurons firing or any material representation whatsoever; nothing material can be determinate in the relevant sense.

I don’t think that intrinsic meaning is a requirement. Surely meaning within the particular context of our minds is all that we would need of any representation. (I also think your example is incorrect, since any representation of “triangle” as a class would be distinguished from “trilateral”).

@structureoftruth

That is one premise in the argument; and of course Feser argues for the other premise (that some of our thoughts are determinate in the relevant sense) as well, with the conclusion that some of our thoughts cannot be material. I.e., there is some immaterial component or property of our thoughts which just is meaning itself (so that there is no gap between meaning and representation where the above kind of skeptical argument can enter), and it is this instrinsic meaning in the immaterial component of our thoughts that makes it possible for patterns of neurons firing, strings of 1s and 0s, or a drawing on a piece of paper to derivatively mean “triangle”.

I think that this is just an argument from ignorance. Since we don’t really understand where meaning comes from then assumptions that it cannot come from material processes are just assumptions. The claims about precision are just wrong, I don’t see any justification for the requirement for objective meanings outside the context of the mind, and multiple interpretations of language is mainly due to practical limitations.