You are most likely generating an unnecessary quasi-problem.

My first instinct upon reading your question was to answer that the immaterial is above the material in such a way that it can influence the material which is lesser, while the material cannot influence the immaterial because it is lower. This would be the third solution, and it's basically common sense really.

Because if a material thing could create an immaterial thing, it would also stand to reason that a material thing could give rise to God, since God is immaterial (though He is also existence itself and isn't in any genus). But this not only violates PPC, but is incoherent since it implies self-causality - that a material thing could bring itself into existence because it can influence and create immaterial things, and is thus contradictory.

This really isn't a problem.

I would, however, slightly disagree with the idea that matter is purely negative because it's an absence and dissolution of being. It is similar to the Gnostic view of matter being not only lesser but also evil in itself, which Thomists don't accept. So, in other words, matter is still good in itself because it exists.

Last edited by aftermathemat (4/08/2018 1:29 pm)

aftermathemat wrote:

You are most likely generating an unnecessary quasi-problem.

My first instinct upon reading your question was to answer that the immaterial is above the material in such a way that it can influence the material which is lesser, while the material cannot influence the immaterial because it is lower. This would be the third solution, and it's basically common sense really.

Because if a material thing could create an immaterial thing, it would also stand to reason that a material thing could give rise to God, since God is immaterial (though He is also existence itself and isn't in any genus). But this not only violates PPC, but is incoherent since it implies self-causality - that a material thing could bring itself into existence because it can influence and create immaterial things, and is thus contradictory.

This really isn't a problem.

I would, however, slightly disagree with the idea that matter is purely negative because it's an absence and dissolution of being. It is similar to the Gnostic view of matter being not only lesser but also evil in itself, which Thomists don't accept. So, in other words, matter is still good in itself because it exists.

 
Certainly people would find it bizarre to suggest a material thing can produce an immaterial process; that an immaterial process can be carried out in a material medium; but what I'm asking is why, then, wouldn't it work the other way around too? If it's just because of how radically sifferent matter is from spirit, then one could wonder how spirit can produce matter, too. And this is also why the problem of interaction has been such a thorny issue in philosophy. Why is the immaterial, which is just that which exists yet lacks matter, "above" the material? How exactly?

I don't understand your argument. To suggest a material thing can produce matter is not the same as saying that it can produce *any* immaterial being; God can't be produced because God is a necessary being, not because he is immaterial.

So I want to know how we can affirm the intuitively clear view that matter does not produce spirit. The way I see it, it is either because spirit implies perfections which matter cannot have (like universality or potential for universality, whereas matter is always individuated and limited to space-time, dimensions, etc,) or because matter itself just is some kind of "deficient being" as I proposed in solution 3.

The problem is that I do grant that there is something intuitive in thinking that a material thing cannot produce something immaterial, so maybe it's stronger than solution 2. But then I don't know what other account we could have other than solution 3.

Brentano himself held that it seems easier to imagine a spiritual thing creating matter by having an idea of it, than imagining matter creating spirit. I'm not exactly disputing that, but I want to know why.

Calhoun wrote:

I think maybe you need to elaborate a little on what you mean by "produce" here.
It doesn't seem to me that soul theorists have to hold that matter can't cause immaterial processes, only that the latter are distinct and irreducible to the former.  

 
Let's use Fessr's own argument (which is based on Ross's). Thinking is immaterial because it is universal/determinate. Material things cannot be universal and determinate, only particular and indeterminate. Our thoughts about triangles will universally apply to any triangles we might encounter, any questions about triangles etc; our thoughts about triangles are determinately about triangles and not circles. So thought itself is immaterial, because universal and determinate. Thinking is an immaterial process.

Could this immaterial process be carried out in a material medium? Or be produced by a material organ? Why not?

If not, why then can we not say that what is immaterial also cannot produce matter?

I gravitate towards answering that the reason why material cannot produce or carry out the immaterial process in question is because what is material only has potency for particularity, not universals. But what is immaterial has as perfection the potency to be universal, too. So even an individual material thing can produce universal concepts, or carry out universal processes (such as thinking), because being immaterial it has potency for universalitt which materiality cannot have. What do you think? How would you answer all that?

Calhoun wrote:

Let's use Fessr's own argument (which is based on Ross's). Thinking is immaterial because it is universal/determinate. Material things cannot be universal and determinate, only particular and indeterminate. Our thoughts about triangles will universally apply to any triangles we might encounter, any questions about triangles etc; our thoughts about triangles are determinately about triangles and not circles. So thought itself is immaterial, because universal and determinate. Thinking is an immaterial process.

Could this immaterial process be carried out in a material medium? Or be produced by a material organ? Why not?

That is all well and and good but what I don't understand is what could "produced" mean here, immaterial processes might only be carried out by immaterial soul but why should soul theorist believe that such process or the instantiation of the soul isn't "caused" by something material, if that is what you mean by "produced" ? 

There doesn't seem to be any puzzle about how immaterial might produce material because there doesn't seem to be any reason to hold that material can not produce the immaterial as you suggest in Op. 

 
If you wanna drop the term "produced" for fear it might sound too close to efficient causation if you think that's a wro way to characterize the operations of the mind, fine. But then my question can just be reformulated to "why can't an immaterial process occur in a material medium?" or just "why can't a material brain carry out the immaterial processes of thinking?". By showing thought could not be an operation of any material organ is hownFeser and other thomists typically establish dualism. And I agree with that conclusion, which I take to be justified at least along the lines of Solution Two, maybe Solution Three as well. I want opinions on this; I want to see how you people would establish the conclusion of these soul arguments in a way that doesn't lead to problems with God creating matter.

Perhaps the whole creation of matter by God itself is special and just the big differences between immaterial and material would be enough, intuitively. Or perhaps it's as I said in the post you quoted.

So, just don't use "produced" if you feel uneasy.

My own view is that the material cannot cause the immaterial because the immaterial has more perfection -- namely, potency for universality, determinacy, etc. A material thing is only ever particular; qua material it does not have any potentiality for universality and so a material brain cannot carry out universal and determinate processes of thinking (and therefore must be immaterial).

Last edited by Miguel (4/08/2018 10:32 pm)

This is a good point. The Thomist argues from the PPC;

"For example, the materialist philosopher Paul Churchland argues that both the individual human being and the human species as a whole have purely material beginnings and develop from these beginnings via purely material processes. The end result, he concludes, must therefore be purely material.6 What this assumes, of course, is that if the total cause is material, so too must the effect be material. The mind-body dualist would agree with Churchland about that, but argue that since part of the effect (the human intellect) is not material, neither could the total cause have been purely material."

As well as agere sequitur esse;

"The thesis that agere sequitur esse can be understood as an application, in the context of what Aristotelian philosophers call formal causes, of the basic idea that the PPC expresses with respect to efficient causes. An efficient cause is what brings about the existence of something or a change in something. The PPC tells us, again, that whatever is in the thing that changes or comes to exist must in some way have been in the total set of factors that brought about this change or existent. In this sense, the effect cannot go beyond the cause. A formal cause is the nature of a thing, that which makes it the kind of thing it is.9 For example, being a rational animal is the nature of a human being. The characteristic attributes and activities of a thing flow or follow from its nature—as, for instance, the use of language flows from our nature as rational animals. The principle agere sequitur esse basically says that these attributes and activities cannot go beyond that nature, any more than an effect can go beyond its efficient cause. Hence, a stone cannot exhibit attributes and activities like nutrition, growth, and reproduction, because these go beyond the nature of a stone. Anything that could do these things wouldn’t be a stone in the first place. The principle agere sequitur esse, like the PPC, follows from the PSR. If an effect could go beyond its total efficient cause, then the part of the effect that went beyond it would have no explanation and be unintelligible. Similarly, if a thing’s activities could go beyond its nature—if, for example, a stone could take in nutrients or use language—then this activity would lack an explanation and be unintelligible.10 I noted above that the PPC is implicit even in the argumentation of some naturalistic philosophers who are otherwise unsympathetic with the metaphysical views defended by thinkers like Aquinas. The same thing is true of the principle that agere sequitur esse. Aquinas himself perhaps most famously deploys this principle when arguing that the human soul can persist beyond the death of the body.11 His reasoning is as follows: Intellectual activity, which is among the human soul’s activities, is (so Aquinas holds, on independent grounds) essentially immaterial. But for a material thing to carry out an immaterial activity would violate the principle that agere sequitur esse. So, the human soul must be an immaterial thing. And since immaterial things have, unlike material things, no natural tendency to decay, the soul does not go out of existence when the material body does. Of course, a materialist would disagree with the claim that intellectual activity is immaterial, but that is neither here nor there for present purposes.12 The point is that even a materialist could agree that if intellectual activity were immaterial, then the thing which carries out that activity would itself have to be immaterial. And indeed, the naturalist philosopher John Searle takes precisely that view in criticizing a theory known as property dualism. Property dualism holds that mental properties are immaterial but that they are nevertheless properties of a material thing—namely, the brain. The theory is essentially an attempt to acknowledge the problems with materialist theories of the mind without having to accept the dualist view that the mind is an immaterial thing. Searle’s criticism is that the theory is unstable. If the property dualist maintains that a mental property is something “over and above” the brain, then the trouble in Searle’s view is that such a property cannot be a property of the brain, but must be “a separate thing, object, or non-property type of entity”.13 On the other hand, if a mental property really is a property of the brain, then it cannot be something “over and above” the brain. Other critics of property dualism have complained that it is mysterious how an entirely material thing like the brain could give rise to immaterial properties."