|
|
||
 |
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||
|
Dr. Adler's Briefing Room - 7 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Many of Dr. Adler's books are available through The Radical Academy Bookstore. Books
by Mortimer J.
Adler
The Center for the Study of The Great Ideas Click Here for New & Used College Textbooks at Discount Prices Click
Here for College Education Information & Study
Resources
Bookstore
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
|
Index:
The Aristotelian and Thomistic doctrine concerning the intellect asserts that the human intellect is an immaterial power, in contrast to all the powers of sense, imagination, and memory that are embodied in the sensitive organs, together with the human brain. For example, the eye and brain are the organs of vision. We see with them, and one cannot see without them. The action of these organs constitutes vision. But when we think intellectually while we cannot think without action on the part of our brains, *we do not think with them*. The action of the brain may be a necessary, but it is not a sufficient cause of our intellectual performance. Thought involves the action of an immaterial power, the intellect, although this cannot operate by itself. That is the Aristotelian and Thomistic view of the matter. Of course, for materialists and all those who are optimistic about artificial intelligence machines, there is only an analytic distinction, not an existential one, between mind and brain. Materialists hold that every aspect of human thinking at the highest intellectual levels is explained by neurophysiological research -- if not yet, then in the future. Eventually, if not now, knowledge of the brain's structure and its electrochemical action will be able to account for such activity. It is generally recognized that human beings differ in the degree of their power to think conceptually and intellectually. Einstein, as a theoretical physicist, had that power to a much higher degree than most human beings do. What is true of Einstein is true of other great mathematicians and theoretical physicists. But when, after Einstein's death, his brain was taken out of his head and examined, it was found to be no more in its gross weight than, and also no different in structure from, the brains of ordinary human beings. Comparisons of the brains of other so-called intellectual geniuses have shown the same lack of physical distinction. Hence the antimaterialist is justified in thinking that brains alone cannot account for high intellectual performance. Even if the activity of the brain is necessary for such performance, some added cause must be posited to account for it; and according to Aristotle and Aquinas that must be an immaterial power -- the intellect. Aquinas sought for an explanation of the fact that some individuals can think intellectually better than others. In the first part of the Summa Theologica, in Article 7 of Question 85, he explicitly asked whether one person can understand the same thing better than another person can. He answered this question affirmatively by saying that some men have bodies of better disposition, and their intellects have, as a result, a greater power of understanding -- that is, a higher degree of intellectual power. We see, he went on, that "those who have delicate flesh are of apt mind." This occurs in the powers of which the intellect has need in its operation. Those in which the sensitive, imaginative, and remembering powers are better disposed are also better disposed to understand. In saying this, Aquinas did not think he was abandoning his view that, unlike the senses and the imagination, the intellect is an immaterial power. Even though its operation may depend on such bodily powers as those of the senses and the imagination, such dependence is quite consistent with the thesis that the intellect is immaterial and cannot be reduced to the action of the brain. The brain is not the material organ of intellectual thought, as eye and brain are the physical organs of vision. There is no organ of intellectual thought, nor as far as we know can such thoughts [concepts/universals] be accounted for in purely physical terms.
Almost everyone uses the word "God," but almost nobody can say what they mean by the word, especially if they are pagans or persons without religious beliefs. If they are members of the three religious communities of the West -- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam -- they have been taught how the word is used in the dogmatic or scared theology of their religion. However, let us suppose that they are pagans -- persons who have no religious beliefs of any kind, and let us suppose that this entry is being written by a pagan for pagans. As an exercise in philosophical theology, how shall we give meaning to the word "God"? For one thing, we know at once that the word "God" is a proper noun and that, as with any other proper noun, we must try to substitute a definite description for it. As with the proper noun "George Washington," we cannot be introduced to the individual named and so we cannot learn how to use it by acquaintance. Instead we must substitute a definite description, such as "the first President of the United States." Another preliminary point is that we can have no empirical concept of God. We have no experience of God, as we do have of cats, dogs, whales, and horses, from which we can abstract a concept of those kinds. Of inexperienceable entities, we must form theoretical constructs. It is of the theoretical construct "God" that we must now form a definite description. We are helped in doing this by St. Anselm. He asked himself: When I use the word "God,": how do I give that word meaning? His answer was. Must I not say to myself that when I think about God, I am thinking to that than which I can think of nothing greater? In short, the first step is to describe God as "the" supreme being. Not "a" supreme being, because there cannot be two supreme beings. Must I not also think of God as existing in reality, as well as existing as an object before my mind? Hence, God must be described as a really existing supreme being. Now any being that exist in reality either is one that came into being and passed away, or is one that necessarily exists -- one that cannot "not" exist. If I am thinking God as the supreme being, I must choose the latter -- a being that cannot "not" exist. To go further than this choice in my definite description of God, I must ask what the necessary, real existence of God is like. Three answers are possible: (1) totally unlike the existence of anything else we know as existing: (2) essentially like the existence of all the other things we know to exist: and (3) both like and unlike the existence of everything else the existence of which we know. These three alternatives are exhaustive and if the first two must be rejected, we are left with third. The first must be rejected, because then the word "existence" can have no meaning for us: and the second alternative must be rejected because then God's existence would be physical, mutable, material, and we would be unable to answer the question: Why do we not know God's existence in the same way that we know the existence of everything else? To say we know that God's real existence is both like and unlike the existence of everything else the existence of which we know is to say that when we apply the word "exists" to the things of the physical world and to God, we are using the word "exists" analogically. This usage requires us to say that, in formulating a definite description of God, we must first use negative words, such as "immaterial," immutable," "imperceptible,": "inconceivable," and "unimaginable." "Infinite" is another negative word we must use, and give that word meaning by saying that God is not a particular individual, not a member of any class. But to say that God really exists and that we human beings also exist is to say something positive about God. Since anything said of God and creatures is said analogically, not univocally or equivocally, we must always add that we do not exist as God exists, nor does God exist as we exist. Three more negative words enter into the definite description of God. They are "independent," "unconditional," and "uncaused." God has real existence from himself alone. His very being is to exist. Whereas the existence of all dependent, caused, and conditioned physical things is "ab alio" (from another), God's existence is "a se" (from himself). The unusual word "aseity" applies to God alone. Finally, we can ask about God's being alive, knowing, and willing. If these three positive attribute cannot be added to the definite description of God, then God is not the supreme being, for there could be a greater being than one who is not living, knowing and willing. But when we say that God lives, knows, and wills, we must add at once what the analogical use of these words requires: the God does not live as we live, does not know as we know, and does not will as we will. The definite description we have formulated to give meaning to the proper noun "God" does not answer the question of whether God does really exist. Anselm thought it did constitute as affirmation of God's existence -- that the definite description of God made God's existence self-evident. That is an error made by Anselm and others who think that the so-called ontological argument make it unnecessary to question whether the object the definite description puts before our minds is also one that does exist in reality.
All human beings have identical needs in order to live good lives. Surely what is good for any human being, is good for all human beings at all times and places. Just as surely that what is bad for any human being, is bad for all human beings at all times and places. If moral philosophy is to have a sound factual basis, it is to be found in the facts about human nature and nowhere else. Nothing else but the sameness of human nature at all times and places, from the beginning of Homo sapiens, can provide the basis for a set of moral values that should be universally accepted. Nothing else will correct the mistaken notion that we should readily accept a pluralism of moral values as we pass from one human group to another or within the same human group. If the basis in human nature for a universal ethic is denied, the only other alternative lies in the extreme rationalism of Immanuel Kant, which proceeds without any consideration of the facts of human life and with no concern for the variety of cases to which moral prescriptions must be applied in a manner that is flexible rather than rigorous and dogmatic. The only standard we have for judging all of our social, economic, and political institutions and arrangements as just or unjust, as good or bad, as better or worse, derives from our conception of the good life for man on earth, and from our conviction that, given certain external conditions, it is possible for men to make good lives for themselves by their own efforts.
The words "absolute" and "relative" are generally misused. At this time and in the present state of our culture, to affirm absolutes and assert that not everything is relative goes against the grain of popular prejudice. The popular prejudice is, for the most part, unenlightened. The difference between what is absolute and what is relative needs to be clarified. A moment's consideration of the word "relative" should help anyone to see that what is relative is called so because it stands in relation to certain conditions or circumstances. The absolute is that which does not stand in relation to any conditions or circumstances. It prevails at any time or place and under any circumstances. Thus, for example, the truth that atoms are divisible or fissionable is absolute, but the judgment we may make that that statement is true or false is relative to the time and place at which it is made. For most of past centuries the greatest physical scientists would have said that if atoms exist, they are indivisible. Relative to the time and place at which that judgment was made, and to the knowledge available at that time, the judgment had relative truth, but it is still absolutely true, at all times and places, that atoms are divisible or fissionable. The related distinction between the objective and the subjective might be considered here. Objective is that which is the same for you and me and for every other human being. Subjective is that which differs from one person to another. The objective is absolute: the subjective is relative to individual human beings. Finally, these two distinctions (between the absolute and the relative, and between the objective and the subjective) bring to mind a third distinction -- between matters of truth and matters of taste, That which belongs in the sphere of taste rather than truth includes everything that is relative to the circumstances of different times and places. Matters of taste those which differ from culture to culture and from one ethnic group to another, such as modes of salutation and preferences in cuisine, in dance, and customs. But if anything is absolutely true when it is entertained without any human judgment, such as the divisibility or fissionability of atoms, that truth is transcultural. At present, mathematics, the physical sciences, and technology are transcultural. Whether we think that history, the social sciences, and philosophy, will become transcultural in the future depends on how we view them either as bodies of knowledge or as matters of unfounded opinion.
|
|||||||
|
The Adler Archive Index |
|||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
|
||
|
|
||
[Homepage] [Newsletter] [Search] [Support the Academy] [Link to Us] [Contact the Academy] [Citing Articles from Our Website] [Privacy Policy & Disclaimer]
Copyright 1998-99, 2000-01, & 2002-03 by The Radical Academy. All Rights Reserved.