From a June 1990 Firing Line which I recorded from NPR station WBHM The discussion is about the book Intellect Mind Over Matter
entitled What is Intellect?
Farewell and Rest in Peace Mr Buckley
Transcript of Intellect Mind Over Matter:
http://radicalacademy.com/adlerinterview2.htm
Best Mortimer J Adler Archive:
http://radicalacademy.com/adlerdirectory.htm
Duration : 0:9:24
http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/adler_mortimer.html
Mike Wallace interviews Dr Adler in 1958
http://audio.xanga.com/dingorex/fe1992585566/audio.html
:a discussion of Aristotle’s Metaphysics
Transcript of Intellect Mind Over Matter:
see comment field.
The June 1990 video of the last half ( some idiot I know taped over the first 14 minutes) of the Firing Line discussion of Mortimer J Adler’s Intellect Mind Over Matter
Dualism Defended:
First, if theism is true, then physicalism as a worldview is false. God is not a physical being. Second, a number of people have argued that numbers exist and that they are abstract, nonphysical entities (e.g., sets, substances, or properties). Firstly, mathematics claims to give us knowledge. But if this is so, there must be something that mathematics is about. Just as the biologist discovers biological truths about biological objects (organisms), so the mathematician often discovers mathematical truths (he does not invent them all the time) and these truths are about mathematical objects. If one denies the existence of numbers, then it is hard to rescue mathematics as a field which conveys knowledge about something. Without numbers, mathematics becomes merely an internally consistent game which is invented. Without numbers mathematical and scientific knowledge is hard to maintain. But if numbers exist, physicalism as a worldview is false because numbers are not physical entities.
If physicalism is true, it is hard to see what one should make of the existence and nature of theories, meanings, concepts, propositions, the laws of logic, and truth itself. It would seem that theories themselves exist and can be discovered. The laws of logic seem to be real laws that govern the relationships between propositions. Propositions seem to exist and be the content of thoughts which become ociated with the physical scratchings of a given langualge called sentences. Sentences may be made of black ink, be on a page, and be four inches long. But it is hard to see how the content of the sentence (i.e. the proposition or thought expressed by the sentence ) could be on the page. Such entities seem to be nonphysical entities which can be in the mind. Truth appears to be a relation of correspondence between a thought and the world. if a thought really describes the world accurately, it is true. It stands to the world in a relation of correspondence. But whatever else one wants to say about the relation of correspondence, it does not seem to be a physical relation like cause and effect.
Universals seem to exist and they are not material. A universal is an entity that can be in more than one place at the same time. Some universals are properties (redness, hardness, triangularity); others are relations (larger than, to the left of). Whatever else one may use to characterize the nature of matter, it is clear that a clump of matter is a particular. A piece of matter cannot be in more than one place at the same time. Physicalists deny the existence of universals at the level of general worldview, because universals are not physical entities.
For example, just because one cannot see the soul, weigh it , or say where it is, it does not follow that the soul does not exist. One cannot see, weigh, or locate numbers or values, but they still exist.
Duration : 0:10:34