KARL JASPERS FORUM

TA 62 (Mikes)

Commentary 6

INTELLIGENCE AND IDEAS - MATERIAL WORLD, IMMATERIAL MIND
by Hugh Bone
21 September 2003, posted 7 October 2003

<1>
The following discussion has relevance to TA 62, and also to TA 51, for which I am preparing a response..

Human intelligence in the modern world is unique,

<2>
There are extremely complex social problems due to invention, development and growth of engines of physical power, and to parallel development of large institutions, of political/ economic power. This situation threatens global communities in both industrial and undeveloped nations - in their cities, and in their rural domains.

It also endangers the environment with global warming and extinction of useful species. Can human intelligence and responsible action reverse this trend ?

<3>
FUNCTIONS OF INTELLIGENCE:

1) define problems

2) define solutions

3) influence human minds, mobilize physical resources, effect solutions

APPARENT MAINIFESTATIONS

OF INTELLIGENCE

1) Divine intelligence.

2) Human intelligence.

3) Artificial intelligence (computers).

4) Nature's intelligence, as demonstrated by genetic construction of new life.

5) Nature's intelligence as demonstrated in natural laws of inanimate matter.

6) Do intelligent extra-terrestrials exist?

<4>
Permanence of natural law: Quoting Max Planck (Bartletts) "We have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or if they have existed up to now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future."

How real is the real world ? Quoting Erwin Schrodinger ("Mind and Matter") - "Is there one real world to be distinguished by its pictures introjected by way of perception into every one of us? and if so, are these pictures like unto the real world or is the latter, the 'world-in-itself', perhaps very different from the one we perceive?"

<5>
CONSCIOUSNESS AND MIND

What we call 'mind' is our ability to attach meanings to physical signs, i.e., to link Platonic ideas to some signs written on some physical media, human brain included. Don't try to find the human mind in the brain though: you will find just its blueprints called 'neural correlates of consciousness', but not the mind itself. (For a different interpretation of the nature of mind, with emphasis on depressions and emotions, see Baroness Susan Greenfield. (Chakalov)

<6>
Baroness Susan Greenfield: "My own view is that we could define soul as a distinct entity from mind and consciousness and I'll say how I think this can be done. The mind, I argue in the book, is the personalisation of the brain through all the personalised brain cell connections that reflect your personal experiences as you grow. (...) Now what about the soul then, if we've distinguished consciousness mind and brain, where does soul come in ? Well, the one thing about a soul, the concept of a soul, whether you believe in it or not, is that it's immortal. Now if it's immortal, then it can't have much to do with the physical brain, because that for sure is not immortal. My own view is to say to people 'look if you believe in the soul I respect that view, but I cannot see how it has anything to do with the physical brain or indeed the mind and that's what I know about. It's fine if you believe in it, it's fine if you don't believe in it, but it has nothing to do with neuroscience, it has nothing to do with the study of the mind and consciousness"..

<7>
COMMENT:

If immortals exist they would have knowledge of present existence, but could never have proof, of immortal existence, for it is unending..

GREENFIELD: "The mind, I argue in the book, is the personalisation of the brain through all the personalised brain cell connections that reflect your personal experiences as you grow."

<8>
COMMENT:

This explicit and concise expression of "mind", is also an expression of "self", or "person".

Self and personality are nodes in networks of familial/communal relationships. Self and personality are functions of accumulated memories/ experiences.

Neuroscientists may have an atheistic aversion to the religious idea of soul, but are relatively comfortable with the idea of "person" or "personalised brain cells", raising the linguistic question of the meaning of the term: "idea".

As Greenwood says, minds are mortal and perish.

Ideas, not being minds, survive.

<9>
They survive in artifacts, such as monuments or books inscribed with words. Without words, some survive in paintings, buildings, bridges, towers, acqueducts. Artifacts are not immortal, but in current views of the physical universe, artifacts precede humans and all other species, and may continue after all species are extinct.

Artifacts are history, and, like history, artifacts are meaningless without human senses, perception, and interpretation. The reality and value of history is produced in "personalized braincells". In this sense, history as artifact is timeless, but history as "idea", is always "now" in the personalised brain cells of a living human.

<10>
IDEAS THAT LEAP FROM ONE HEAD TO ANOTHER

Jacob Bronkowski, in "Magic, Science and Civilization", quoted Erastus, the great Protestant critic as follows: "Certainly no one in their right mind will think that an image fashioned in the spirit of my fantasy can go out of my brain and leap into the head of another man." Then Bronkowski says: "But of course, the fact is that the whole of human language would fail if you couldn't do that."

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep." (Shakespeare, "The Tempest, Act !V)

<11>
COMMENT:

Dreams are part of language (words) and all the languages of the senses.and the arts.

Mortal human beings have an idea, a concept, of soul, as being immortal. Although the idea of soul may eventually perish, it has endured for millenia.

Soul is an idea that "lives" in the brains/minds of relatives and friends who share an individual's world and value her/his personality..

Soul is akin to love: "Not to believe in love is a great sign of dullness. There are some people so indirect and lumbering that they think all real affection must rest upon circumstantial evidence." (Santayana)

The persistence of such identity in the memory of loved ones and generations of descendants, is an ordinary phenomenon known to ordinary persons.

<12>
There are, however, exceptional individuals whose accomplishments, scientific, political, or artistic, become historical artifacts, such as monuments, books, buildings, paintings. Creations of these departed "persons" or "souls" persist as intangible and perhaps indestructible "ideas" which are shared for centuries or millenia by new generations of living humans.

These ideas, this intelligence, constituted an approximate, though not literal, "immortality".

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Hugh Bone