Schooling Stephen Hawkings.

The man may know physics, but hasn't a clue about metaphysics.

Concerning Hawkings' "the mind is a just a computer" claim, Mike Flynn drops the Thomistic hammer in this post:

Briefly thus: the intellect knows by grasping the form or essence of a thing. If things did not have forms, science would have nothing to consider. You cannot have a science of this fork on my desk, which is a concrete particular; but one may have a science of forks, an abstract generality. You cannot have a physics of this particle or of that particle; but you can have particle physics. Now for matter to take on a form is just to be that thing. Matter that takes on the form of a cat just is a cat. But to know something is to take on its form. When I see a cat, I know that cat. The form of that cat is in the cat, and also in my mind. If my mind were matter, then some part of the mind would just be a cat. But this is absurd (I hear you say). Well, certainly, and that is why the mind cannot be material.(*) And in particular, it cannot be brain.


In particular, there are peculiar cases of people who lack virtually their entire brain and still live a normal life. They have minds, but not brains. Weird.

This does not mean there is no relationship. A human substance is a composite of matter and form, of body and soul (or body and mind, to use modern lingo). Thus, the condition of one affects the other in various ways. That is not at issue. The soul is the substantive form of the body, that is, its shape/functioning. It is what makes a living thing alive. It is not a separate substance somehow inhabiting the same space as the body any more than a sphere somehow inhabits the same space as a basketball.

Now any power dependent on a physical organ cannot survive the corruption of that organ. So, when the ear is destroyed, we no longer hear; when the eye is destroyed, we no longer see. But if intellection is not material, it cannot pass away due to the corruption of any material thing. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to suppose on the basis of experience and logic that at least some portion of a rational soul exists after death. Regardless of whether one is afraid of the dark or not.

The intellect reflects upon perceptions, and these come through sensation. "Nothing is in the mind that was not first in the senses." So with the decay of the body comes the decay of sensation, perception, memory, and the like. These are also part of the soul and, in the case of animals and plants, the whole soul. But the substance that is me, or you, or Great-aunt Matilda is a body and soul. This is why the Christian creed emphasizes "the resurrection of the body," that the soul be reunited with matter (not necessarily the self-same atoms.)

An argument can also be made for the existence of the disembodied intellect and volition, the rational part of the soul. Since it is immaterial and time is the measure of change in material being, it would have to exist in an eternal sense, rather than a time-bound sense. (Remember, "eternity" is a lack of time due to a lack of materiality; it is not "a really really long time.")

(*) Another way. An organ must lack the thing it apprehends. An ear apprehends sound; so the ear itself must lack sound. If the ear were making sounds itself, we would be unable to hear things. Cf. tinnitus. The eye apprehends light (photons bouncing off surfaces, say); but if the eye produced light of itself, it would be unable to apprehend light. So, if the mind's proper object is to apprehend the material world, it cannot be material itself.