An argument for the immateriality of the intellect

[structureoftruth (Matthew Dickau)]

@Paul_King

Well, then perhaps you can explain why the imperfections of the physical triangle are relevant. I keep asking but I don’t get an answer.

This was my answer… (with emphasis added)

@structureoftruth

So, what is going on here is Feser is using the way that a material triangle deviates from perfect triangularity as an illustration of the fact that material things are not “exact” or “determinate” in the way that concepts are; unfortunately I think the illustration obscures the actual point somewhat.

As far as I can tell, it is just meant as an illustration or analogy of how physical things aren’t like concepts; the sense of “exact” or “determinate” in the illustration is not actually the same as the sense of “determinate” in the main argument, and the illustration is not an argument for premise that no material thing is semantically determinate. Confusing, perhaps, but there you have it.

@Paul_King

I mean that if it were true that a concept were encoded physically in the brain, it would not entail that the physical encoding would have a meaning in itself. Analogously to the way that a dictionary gives the meanings of words in terms of other words.

Right! Now if you consider that dictionary definitions only work because we already understand some of the words in a dictionary without having to look them up - otherwise you’d be left endlessly cycling through entries with no gain in understanding - you might see what I’m getting at when I say that material representations, words, etc., only have meaning derivatively, and that there must be something that has meaning non-derivatively.

@Paul_King

A computer can represent a perfect triangle. Where does Feser refute that?

A computer can only represent a triangle if you take into account the intentions of the programmers and comprehension of the users. Say you have some string of 1s and 0s. How do you know it represents a triangle? Well, you feed it into this program and it prints a picture of a triangle. But how did you know that you were supposed to feed it into that program instead of any other? How do you know the program is working properly? How do you know the printed image is supposed to just be a triangle, rather than a symbol for Harry Potter’s Cloak of Invisibility?

Computers can only represent meaning derivatively.

The other examples that you bring up are meant to show that even our mental images are semantically indeterminate in this way. Feser would have no problem saying that a mental image could be encoded in a pattern of neurons firing; his point is that these mental images (which are indeterminate - our mental image of 5000 trees is not going to be appreciably different from our mental image of 5001 trees) are not the same thing as concepts (which are determinate - we immediately and exactly know the difference between 5000 trees and 5001 trees).

@Paul_King

@structureoftruth

Which does nothing to rebut the arguments.

If the problems are a limitation of language that exists for practical reasons we cannot conclude that they are fundamental to physical representations.

Sorry, what I meant was, your assertion that the limitations of language are merely practical does nothing to rebut the philosophical arguments Feser references that these limitations are, in fact, fundamental.