In
my latest article at Postliberal Order, I discuss how the
novel metaphysical assumptions that modern philosophy brought to the
traditional project of establishing the existence and nature of God often either
led to heterodoxy or greased the skids for atheism, using George Berkeley as a
case study.
Sort of off-topic, I have a quick clarification question with regard to the A-T approach to the mind-body relation.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I've come to understand, the A-T tradition handles the mind-body relation via formal causation: the neuromuscular events are the material/efficient-causal side of which our thoughts and intentions are the formal/final-causal side. This makes a lot of sense to me and seems like a very elegant "solution" (or maybe pre-emption) of the mind--body problem.
However, I'm a little unclear on where mental images fit into this. To me, mental images seem clearly to be immaterial to some degree ("form without matter", as Aristotle himself put it). But I repeatedly see Dr. Feser say that mental images are "entirely material", and in some blog posts it sounds like he wants to assimilate mental images to the material/efficient side of things. And this would seem to put is right back into the unattractive alternative between reductionism and property dualism (with all the causal problems that come with the latter).
So I'm a bit confused. Are mental images on the formal/final-causal side (as I feel they should be), or are they on the material/efficient-causal side?
And this would seem to put is right back into the unattractive alternative between reductionism and property dualism (with all the causal problems that come with the latter).
DeleteCould you elaborate ingx24, because the way I understand it, it is precisely because the mental images are ultimately intrinsically dependent on matter and is material in that regard albeit irreducible to neural firings, it avoids the issues you mention smoothly, one doesn't have to wonder how mental images and sensations related to the neural aspects and the brain, they are both material at the end of the day. And material things can cause efffects in other material things, as such the neural fittings of animals result in sensations and mental images and this in turn influences the animals behaviour however we wouldn't say that anything strictly immaterial is going on here.
However there is a sense in which sensations and mental images involve our senses faculties pulling out the accidental forms of things around us that enables us to see the things we do, and what makes it direct realism.
Prof talks about it in this post,
https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2014/12/progressive-dematerialization.html?m=1
I think it would be really clarifying for you.
Fr Stephen Brock also has an excellent extended treatment of perception in his book on Aquinas.
I think that one thing to keep in mind for you is that things can be formal causes and final causes in different respects, I would say the form of red that is present in both the object being apprehended and in our perception of it, is part of the formal cause of our apprehending the object. This is in the context of our sense apprehension. We can later call back to our mind those forms, by way of our internal senses, and that will have it's own final, formal, material and efficient causes. But at the same there is nothing strictly immaterial at this juncture.
Hope this helps
I think Feser would say mental images are material because they still have properties of material things, such as being extended spatially (any mental image of a triangle will necessarily have length even in our mind's eye for example). For similar reasons, I don't think Aristotle thought mental images are form without matter - rather, that description of form without matter belongs to the intellect's apprehension of universals. Because a mental image isn't the same as the general concept of triangularity that applies to all triangles.
DeleteThe picture at the head of the article and the first two paragraphs are repeated. Assuming a copy-paste error.
ReplyDeleteEntered my email at Postliberal Order, but couldn't link up to the article.
ReplyDeleteMaybe there's a glitch. I'll let them know.
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