NOTES & DISCUSSIONS

The Epistemology of Immortality:

Searle,Pomponazzi,andFicino
Paul Richard Blum

1. Introduction
The title of my paper, Epistemology of Immortality, needs to be explained.
The problem of the relationship between body and mind was traditionally dis-
cussed in connection with the immortality of the intellect, because one necessary
condition for the mind to be immortal was to be immaterial. Ren Descartes,
who seems to have been the father of the modern mind/body dualism, wrote
his Meditations on First Philosophywhich would then be read as the founding
charter of the infamous dualism1precisely for the sake of proving once and for
all the immortality of the human soul. We do not have to dwell upon that here,
but it shows the tie between immortality and the mind-body debate. Now, what
might remain surprising is that Icombine the mind-body issue with epistemolo-
gy. For much of the debate on the interaction of mind and bodyand specifically
when dualism vs. monism (or any of their variants) is at stakeseems to be about
metaphysics and religion. It seems that religion, or more precisely: Christian
theology, demands unphilosophically to argue for an immortal individual soul.
Since this is astatement about existence, it also seems to be one of metaphysics.
However, Iam sure that epistemology is the problem, for cognition is what the
mind does. Therefore, the question might be this: are epistemological tenets
of metaphysical implication? Or, the other way round: does understanding the
1
G. Ryle, The Concept of Mind (London: Hutchinson, 1949).

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mind as asubstance have epistemological results? Or again in other words: how

could mind-stu think? The answer is: the essence of mind is thinking activity
(as just stated), therefore the existence of mind is an epistemological feature.
In my presentation Iwill work my way backwards: starting with John Searles
worries about the existence of consciousness; Iwill show some parallels with the
Aristotelian Pietro Pomponazzi (14621525), and eventually show the Neoplatonic
approach in Marsilio Ficino (14331499). The guiding question is: how can one
philosophically address the problem of cognition in terms of corporeality and
incorporeality?
Although this study is comparing certain authors, its method is not that of
pointing to aliations between them. There is no claim, specifically, that John
Searle had been influenced by any Renaissance philosopher. Rather, on the
basis that both the early moderns (Ficino, Pomponazzi, and Descartes) and the
moderns (here, Searle) dealt with the mind-body problem, Iwill show that there
are similarities in the structure of their arguments and hence also apotential to
compare them. Whimsically speaking: no, Searle did not read Pomponazzi but he
would have profited om doing so. Ishould also mention that Ichose Searle as
arepresentative of present-day philosophy of mind because he does not advocate
programmatically that there is no such thing as mind and consciousness or that
it has to be reduced, methodically or factually, to physical states or processes;
rather, he maintains there is mind, although essentially related to abiological
basis. Searle is comparable to the Renaissance thinkers for his taking the interac-
tion of the mental and the corporeal seriously.

2. The problem: the defense of the mental

It seems that John Searle has decided to defend the existence of mind in
spite of naturalist and materialist interpretations of thought. Obviously, he is
still committed to amaterialist approach, so that he is unable to see mind as an
entity distinct om everything corporeal. That forces him to interpret mind in
the pattern of causation: some kind of bodily function brings about that what
he is willing to call mind.
When he enters the debate about materialist interpretations of the mind in
his book claiming the Rediscovery of the Mind, he expressly rules out the
existence of immortal spiritual substances.2 Therefore, in his own description of
consciousness and its place in nature, he believes taking recourse to atomism to
2
John R. Searle, The Rediscovery of the Mind. Representation and Mind (Cambridge, Mass: MIT
Press, 1992), 27.

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be appropriate. Atomism, since the ancient world, has the great advantage to be
an explanation of the physical world through the idea that big systems are made
up of little systems; and in addition to that, the advantage that macrosystems can
be causally explained by the behavior of microsystems.3 So his intention is to
defend the existence of the mental by making it caused by the non-mental. This
raises two questions: why does Searle want to save the existence of the mental?
And is he well served with searching for acausal explanation?4
In the ill-famed mind-body dualism the whole point is not to have acausal
relationship between the two substances. It is true that such dualism has the
twofold problem to understand the relationship between those two substances
in either direction: how can the mind understand bodily things; and how can
the mind change bodily things? Historically, there have been two solutions to
that problem. One was occasionalism that maintains that by some divine in-
tervention the operations of the mind and those of the bodies are coordinated,
atheory Icannot further dwell upon.5 The other solution is known as any kind
of Platonism, basically the same thing as what John Searle is saying, only in
the opposite direction. For Searle the mental is an ospring of the physical, for
Platonists the physical is some kind of sediment of the mental. Admittedly, that
is not an option today, not for religious or anti-religious reasons, but only because
the solution appears to be farfetched as Searle suggested.6
Now Ineed to show that John Searles defense of the existence of the mental
is relying on almost the same argumentative strategies as Platonism so that they
are theoretically speaking matching alternatives. The theoretical outcome will
be to describe the problem of mind and body not in terms of problem-solving,
so that by the end of this paper everybody knows what mind is and how it works
with body, provided they are distinct at all; rather, Iwill remain within terms of
philosophy by describing aphilosophical problem to as much detail as is needed
to explain why certain theories had come up and to what extent those theories
are philosophically valid and/or practically useful. In order to do so, Iwill refer
to two Renaissance philosophers, namely Pietro Pomponazzi and Marsilio Ficino.

3
Searle, The Rediscovery of Mind, 87.
4
For adetailed analysis of the insuciency of causal reduction of mind while defending the onto-
logical status of it, see D. D. Novotn, Searle on the Unity of the World. Axiomathes 17 (2007): 4151.
5
Cf. R. Specht, Commercium mentis et corporis. ber Kausalvorstellungen im Cartesianismus (Stuttgart
Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1966).
6
Searle, The Rediscovery of Mind, 27.

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3. Searle
For John Searle, consciousness cannot be defined by way of genus and dif-
ferentia but only be described as opposed to sleep, dreams, anaesthesia, or
death.7 Why that is so he does not explain; he describes consciousness as an
on/o switch: asystem is either conscious or not.8 He further dierentiates it
om awareness and self-consciousness and adds: Conscious states always have
acontent.9 If we try to extract om those parameters adefinition of conscious-
ness, it is obvious that Searle would run into something like mind or intellect,
of which the mentioned mental activities would be species, to the eect that
consciousness would be one overarching or one peculiar activity of the mind
above or next to dreaming, alertness, etc. Obviously, Searle avoids defining con-
sciousness because he is aaid of incurring metaphysical claims, which Ithink
is unnecessary, because not every definition by genus and species implies ameta-
physical reality.
Together with his reluctance of defining consciousness and his preference
for describing it, he refers to certain discoveries of neurological anatomy, which
promise to show where mind is located:
Furthermore, and this is the crucial point, some extremely complex nervous
systems are capable of causing and sustaining conscious states and processes.
Specifically, certain big collections of nerve cells, that is, brains, cause and
sustain conscious states and processes. We do not know the detail [singular]
of how brains cause consciousness, but we know for afact that this occurs
in human brains, and we have overwhelming evidence that it also occurs in
the brains of many species of animals.10

There are some problems with this statement.

We remain still on the level of description, although employing em-
pirical anatomy.
The description claims acausal relationship that is admittedly un-
known, although of defining importance.
This description maintains that lower-level physical objects can pro-
duce higher-level objects, namely consciousness.

7
Searle, The Rediscovery of Mind, 83.
8
Ibid., 83.
9
Ibid., 84.
10
Ibid., 89.

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In this explanatory pattern:

consciousness is acausally emergent property of systems. The existence
of consciousness can be explained by the causal interactions between elements
of the brain at the micro level, but consciousness cannot itself be deduced
or calculated om the sheer physical structure of the neurons without some
additional account of the causal relation between them.11

The paradox is that Searle wants to explain the existence of mind as not
reducible to body by way of relying upon acausal relationship within the brain.
Ibelieve that Searle is committing anumber of scientific omissions that make
his claims less powerful than they could be. First of all, atomic theory has much
improved since Epicurus. Second, Copernicus made plausible, mathematically,
that the old geocentric world system is coherent and yet mistaken; this is evi-
dence that acausal explanation (that of Ptolemy) can be eective without hav-
ing necessarily ontological foundations. Third, quantum mechanics has done
away with push-and-pull-causality. Finally, emergence has become astaple of
all theories that address the problem of hierarchies of complex systems like
organisms. When Searle speaks of causally emergent, he mixes two alterna-
tive methods in assessing scientific data, the mechanistic eciency model and
the non-causal emergency model, favoured in the current debate on science and
religion.12 Systems theory itself, including theories of self-organization, has ad-
vanced theoretical tools that allow describing allegedly spiritual realities in their
continuity with the material world without dependence upon causality. It should
be noted, just for the record, that for Searle causation is still ecient causality,
which is atheoretical reductionism advanced by 17th-century mechanicism, i.e. at
the same time when mind-body dualism became an option. Therefore, amech-
anicist causation model tries to fight dualism with the old tool that originated it.
Already in his earlier book, Intentionality, Searle had addressed the problem.
He suggested an approach that avoids a priori pictures about how mental phe-
nomena must be related to physical phenomena that allowed him to claim: On
my account, mental states are as real as any other biological phenomena, as real
as digestion.13 First of all, notice the language that prepares Searles solution.

11
Ibid., 112.
12
Cf. the chapters by Gregersen, Silberstein, and Goodenough/Deacon in Clayton and Simpson
2008. Searle does not refer to the history of scientific discoveries, and it is not the purpose of this paper
to supply that.
13
J. R. Searle, Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1983), 264.

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Who has ever never seen a priori pictures? Of course, he did not mean it, but
in philosophy words should mean what they say. The term apriori can only be
employed for concepts that are not dependent on experience and empirical obser-
vation. Even if he referred to prejudiceshermeneutically speaking prejudices are
not apriori but rash conclusions om antecedent experience. Well, what Searle
is trying to persuade of is that there is asolution to the relationship between
mental states and physical states. Searles account is another presupposition that
is not warranted by what follows, but prescribes the possible way of solution. He
would call that apriori.
So, the thesis is: as liquidity of water is anatural phenomenon,14 so mental
states are as real as biological phenomena; even more, they are biological facts
like digestion. Since he loves vivid imagery and pairs mind with digestion, we
may describe his method metaphorically: John Searle throws the baby out with
the bath water; together with the brain he sends the mind down the drain. If
mind is nothing but abiological phenomenon, as Searle purports, interaction
between mind and brain should not be aproblem, just biological/physical details.
Therefore, in suggesting biological naturalism,15 Searle is not truly oering
anew approach.
In order to save the distinction between the mental and the physical, Searle
makes adistinction between caused by and realized in. This distinction is
then transformed into identification, for he says that mental states are both
caused by the operations of the brain and realized in the structure of the brain.16
The subtle dierence lies actually in the words by and in. Something that
is caused by something else may well be located within that something. Jack
arrived at New York in an airplane. Obviously in this case, the airplane is the
ecient cause to get him there. Is that adistinction that makes adierence? That
depends on the purpose of the distinction; however, om apractical point of
view, i.e., Jack getting somewhere, it does not make any dierence. The co-
incidence and dierence that the brain causes mental states and that the mind
is located in the brain is of no practical consequence. The distinction does not
yield mind as something distinct. The factual identity between the vehicle that
brings someone to adestination and the vehicle in which Jack was sitting does
not at all change through the distinction between being located in and be-
ing carried by. Ibelieve, aScholastic would treat that problem as the question
concerning the reality of the distinction (distinctio rationis vs. distinctio realis). In
14
J. R. Searle, Minds, Brains, and Science (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1984), 22.
15
Searle, Intentionality, 264.
16
Ibid., 265.

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other words, Searle tries to deny the philosophical importance of that distinction
while insisting upon it. It seems he needs it because, again, accepting it as areal
distinction would force him to acknowledge mind to be something real. Being
committed to some version of physicalism, Searle is constantly undoing what
he is trying to achieve. And this is an important result in interpreting Searle.
A great step forward was made by Searle, however, with his analysis of Back-
ground, which admits that mind, whatever that may be, operates in contexts
that are at times physical, at times mental again. What he called Background
capacities are both intellectual contexts (thoughts) and physical conditions
of reality. In his Rediscovery of the Mind, he stated the hypothesis of the
Background as follows:
All conscious intentionalityall thought, perception, understanding, etc.
determines conditions of satisfaction only relative to aset of capacities that
are not and could not be part of that very conscious state. The actual content
by itself is insucient to determine the conditions of satisfaction.17

This highly technical description implies nothing less than the thesis that
consciousness is both conditioned by and independent om physical conditions
and om various states of consciousness within that same consciousness. Is dual-
ism returning through the backdoor? The Background stands for the admittance
that consciousness is not just an on or o switch of some content, but that con-
sciousness consists in producing content that has an ontological status of its own.
Here as throughout his writings Searle refers to states. Ihave to explain
that in my opinion it is deplorable that in many treatises on philosophy of mind
everything that has to do with mind is described as states, as on/o switch
situations, because traditionally mind, especially when termed intellect, was
seen to be an activity, and as an activity distinct om bodily functions, which
are exercised by the lower parts of the soul. This will become evident when
we talk about the Renaissance authors. Ibelieve that Searle, like most of the
20th century philosophers of mind, fell prey to the focus on physiological data
when discussing mind. That focus created ageneral fusion and confusion of
all operations of the soul (as tradition would have it) into the one concept of
consciousness. Iexpect that to be aresult of Descartes identification of soul and
mind,18 but there seems to have been atransition during the 18th century. For
instance, the philosopher Hermann Samuel Reimarus (16941768) deliberately
17
Searle, Tje Rediscovery of the Mind, 190.
18
R. Pasnau, The Mind-Soul Problem, in Mind, Cognition and Representation: The Tradition
of Commentaries on Aristotles De Anima, ed. Paul J. J. M. Bakker and Johannes Thssen (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2007), 46.

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summarized all sensations as one consciousness of our singular being in one

present state, which allows to distinguish between the Self and things that
are external.19 However, he came to the conclusion that the uniing power
of consciousness is the essence of being human over and against corporeality.
Reimarus perhaps opened, against his intentions, the notion of consciousness as
apresent state of mind.
In spite of this defect, Searles notion of Background is helpful, because it al-
lows for the option that consciousness is de facto not astatus or lack thereof, but
adynamism of relations, some of which allow for physical descriptions, some of
them are part of what other philosophers would call the life of the mind.

4. Pietro Pomponazzi
I will now move over to Pietro Pomponazzi (14621525) who is best known
for his attempt at describing mind in terms of bodily functions or, at least, as
the conundrum of the interaction of mental actions and bodily functions. In his
treatise On the Immortality of the Soul of 1516, Pomponazzi advocated the factual
identity of the sensitive and the intellectual power in one soul. In that he claimed
to agree with Aquinas, with the proviso that he meant to prove that such agree-
ment makes the soul and the intellect dependent on the body.20 This was the
setting, in which Renaissance and medieval thinkers addressed the question of
the relation of mind and body.21
Sense perception deals with material objects, but in such away that de-
prives the images of their materiality.22 Pomponazzi shied perspective by
19
H. S. Reimarus, Abhandlungen von den vornehmsten Wahrheiten der natrlichen Religion, 5th ed., ed.
Joh. Alb. Hinr. Reimarus (Hamburg: Bohn, 1781), chapter 6, 2, p. 481: Ein jeder unterscheidet sein Ich,
von fremden Dingen auer sich, durch ein Gefhl in einem gewissen Krper. Und ich betrachte alle solche
Empfindungen als ein Bewutseyn unseres einzelnen Wesens in einem gegenwrtigen Zustande. Reimarus
was an Enlightenment theologian, the background of Lessings Nathan the Wise.
20
P. Pomponazzi, Tractatus de immortalitate animae, in his Tractatus acutissimi, utillimi et mere
peripatetici, (Venice: Scotus, 1525, repr. Casarano: Eurocart 1995), chapter 7, fol. 43ra. Whether he
represents Aquinas correctly or not is another question. Pomponazzi uses the term idem but may have
meant unified. When repeating the claim, in chapter 9, he says (ibid., chapter 9, fol. 44va): quod
intellectivum et sensitivum in homine identificantur in re.
21
For detailed treatments of Pomponazzi and his historic context see J. Kraye, Pietro Pomponazzi
(14621525): Secular Aristotelianism in the Renaissance, in Philosophers of the Renaissance, ed. P. R. Blum
(Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 92115; and P. R. Blum, The immortality of
the soul, in The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy, ed. J. Hankins (Cambridge: University
Press, 2007), 211233; with the relevant literature.
22
Aristotle, De anima III, 8, 431b29, quoted by Aquinas, STh I, q. 85, a. 2, co.: lapis non est in anima,
sed species lapidis. Cf. Aquinas, De unitate intellectus, chapter 5. Pomponazzi, Tractatus de immortalitate
animae, chapter 9, fol. 44va: omnis cognitio quoquo modo abstrahat amateria.

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distinguishing between subject (i.e. what underlies operation) and object (what
is acted upon or produced).23 Sense perception, of course, works with the bodily
organs as the subject and the images abstracted om matter as its object. At the
other extreme, pure intelligences, i.e. immaterial spiritual beings, lack corporeal
subjects that move them, while the object of their knowledge is absolutely im-
material. Between these two there is an intermediate power, the human intellect,
which is ee of body as its subject or material foundation but relies upon body
as its object (i.e. it relies on sensual experience as its object). Thus the human
soul is halfway between things abstract and things not abstract.24 Pomponazzi
reproduces scholastic terminology when he says,
the human intellect diers om the sensitive power in its way of depend-
ing on the body, because the sensitive depends subjectively and objectively
[i.e., it works with body and produces bodily images] but the human intellect
objectively only [i.e., it processes bodily provided images without being itself
acorporeal organ]. And thus in afashion halfway between the material and
the immaterial the human intellect is the act of an organic body.25

Pomponazzi connects the human intellect not with the pure intelligences (as
before him Albert the Great, Ficino and others did) but with the material world,
emphasizing in his way the unity of the intellective and sensitive powers of the
soul. In doing so he also rejects as afallacy the postulate that abstract thinking
of universals requires an ontological realm of spirituality where those abstractions
would dwell like angels.26 His argument relies on the fact of reflection. The
intellect relates to objects provided by the senses, and nevertheless can reflect
upon itself, think discursively, and comprehend universals, which organic and
extended [i.e., bodily] powers cannot do at all.27 Unmistakably Pomponazzi
employs quite similar strategies as Searle does: he makes the mind dependent
on body in its ontological status but still acknowledges irreducibility. Thus, he
comes to his deliberately paradoxical conclusion that the mind is halfway material
and spiritual. The act of the organic body in Pomponazzis philosophy is quite
close to Searles comparison between consciousness and brain as being something
23
Searle wondered (How to Study Consciousness Scientifically, Philosophical Transactions: Biological
Sciences 353, no. 1377 (1998): 1937) that between the 17th century and the present, the objective-subjective
distinction rolled over in bed: it started with the debate over the place where to locate perception and
intellection in which Pomponazzi participated.
24
Pomponazzi, Tractatus de immortalitate animae, chapter 9, fol. 44va; On the Immortality of the
Soul, in Renaissance Philosophy of Man, ed. Ernst Cassirer et al. (Chicago: University Press, 1948), 315.
25
Pomponazzi, On the Immortality of the Soul, chapter 10, 316.
26
Cf. W. Schmidt-Biggemann, Philosophia Perennis: Historical Outlines of Western Spirituality in
Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Thought (Dordrecht: Springer, 2004).
27
Pomponazzi, On the Immortality of the Soul, chapter 10, 319; De immortalitate animae, fol. 45rb.

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like the liquidity of water28thats how water is, thats how mind in brain is,
and thats how Pomponazzis human intellect is. Intelligent is as intelligent does.
The point is: activity, not state. Hence, the Renaissance philosopher would argue
that Searle, granted the right intention, is getting it backwards: for Searle, the
objects are immaterial and the subject (where the mind is active) is material.
Following Aristotles doctrine that the human intellect never cognizes with-
out some phantasm,29 Pomponazzi says that, even though the human intellect
is not in the body in aquantitative and corporeal manner, it still is cooined
to it insofar as it operates with sense data. Therefore, the human intellect oper-
ates immaterially when it reflects upon itself, but it happens to depend on the
senses and can never be totally separated om matter and quantity. For it can
understand universals not absolutely, but only as they are in particular things;
that is to say, abstractive cognition processes always abodily image (idolum).30
Pomponazzi can do without aspiritual realm because all abstractions and ideas
remain tainted by the sensual experience om which they were obtained. Even
more, the human intellect does not know itself immediately but only as aresult
of asynthetic discourse, which is bound to space and time.31
I hope the similarity with Searles Background is convincing. Pomponazzi
fully endorses the otherness of mental operations while also emphasizing their
dependence on the physical reality and its network of relations. With regard to
his scholastic context, Pomponazzi had to reassess the ontological status of the
abstract notion,32 namely, if the human intellect cognizes universals only in close
connection with concrete particulars, it cannot make any statement as to the
transcendence of such auniversal. Consequently, the abstract ideas remain de-
pendent on the mind that actually thinks; and, contrary to both Neoplatonic and
Thomist interpretations, cognition of universals was not agateway to immaterial,
mind-independent realities and thus to immortality.33 In modern parlance, the
ontological status of thought is in jeopardy. It is ironic that the time-space con-
28
Searle, Minds, Brains, and Science, 22.
29
Aristotle, De anima III, 7, 431a1617.
30
Pomponazzi, Tractatus de immortalitate animae, chapter 9, fol. 45ra.
31
Ibid., chapter 9, fol. 45ra: humanus intellectus primo et directe non intelligit se: componitque et
discurrit: quare suum intelligere est cum continuo et tempore.
32
Ibid., chapter 10, fol. 46rb.
33
Ibid., chapter 10, fol. 47ra. It would be interesting to compare Pomponazzis stance on the two
intellects, the active and the passive/potential (cf. Blum, The immortality of the soul, 221 f.), with Searle
and other authors concerning the bottom-up vs. top-down causation of mental states; but that would
be too long for this paper.

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nectivity allows argumentative moves in opposite directions, yet along the same
lines; Pomponazzi employs it in order to align mind to the body, thus opening
the prospect of physicalism, while Searle needs it for the sake of defending the
existence of mind in some independency om the sheer physical.
In modern philosophy of mind, there is no room for ontology of thoughts,
comparable to the theory of abstraction. This is obvious and explainable through
the decision not to admit some ontology of mind. However, we can see in
Pomponazzi that even in amaterialist interpretation of cognition and thinking
there had to be an intellect that was able to process sense data and to produce
universals. But more importantly for our question about the ontological and/
or epistemological aspect of the existence of amind and whether it is or is not
distinct om body, Pomponazzi addresses the problem om the point of view
of the activity of cognition. It was his claim that the mind cannot work without
body that made him deny the minds immortal existence. On the other hand,
operation, that is, the activity of sensing, thinking, and having consciousness
did require in his view the existence of such soul. At least we may observe that
Pomponazzi and Searle are both manipulating the same theory components be-
cause they both try to give abiological-organic interpretation of the mind. One
major dierence is striking: while Pomponazzi interprets understanding om
the perspective of activity, and therefore endangers the minds ontological status,
he makes no claim in terms of causality, for the mind is not caused by body in
any sense. Mind and body are in arelation of operation, or perhaps function in
modern language. On the other hand, Searle seems to be enveloped in the pattern
of causality because it is even harder to make thought an operation or function
of physical statesunless one would revert to some animist notion of matter.
Now let us turn perspective.

5. Marsilio Ficino: The universal canopy and the feather

If we imagine intelligence, animation, life, and natural existence to be ahier-
archy such that intelligence would be the highest overarching level of everything,
then we would understand all lower levels as included and protected by all higher
levels. According to the principle that lower levels cannot bring forward the
higher ones,34 there must be something like permeability om top to bottom.
This principle is not warranted by experience, it even may sound counterintuitive,
34
For instance M. Polanyi, Personal Knowledge. Towards aPost-Critical Philosophy (Chicago:
University Press, 1974), part 4.

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because sense experience and life experience seem to suggest that higher forms
spring o lower conditions, like flowers om branches or bulbs, for instance. On
the other hand, the same life experience will always admit want of explanation
of how something beautiful, something highly organized, in short: anything
that appeals to aesthetics and understanding, could be brought about om raw
material. Yet, given the fact that the higher levels are less and less tangible, it
remains equally unfathomable how they can sustain the lower levels upon which
they seem to rest. It is therefore time for metaphors.
The human soul has sometimes been depicted as awanderer between the
worlds. It could well be depicted as afeather that ever so slowly falls floating
down om the highest intelligence through life into anything natural it hap-
pens to touch. This feather would be the principle of permeability that not only
metaphysically connects the various strata, but that would also be the condi-
tion for the existence of the strata as ontologically coherent. This stratification
would not solve but appropriately illustrate the paradox of quasi causation om
the lower level up and om the upper level down. Therefore, the metaphor has
avery convincing bonus: it allows us to describe the existence of beauty on all
levels and even self reference, that is, consciousness in the strict sense of the
term. Beauty, as we have said, is an add-on that is not explainable starting
om the object that is beautiful, therefore to describe it as areflection of the
beautiful object is not inappropriate supposing we do not want to take recourse
to subjectivist sensation. Asubjectivist interpretation of beauty is not asolution
to the problem set out here, because then subjectivity would be an add-on or
supervenient to the subjectively beautiful object. Subjectivity, however, be-
longs to the realm of animation and intelligence; hence it cannot serve explaining
beauty further than just by transposing the problem. The feather is asimile for
the possibility of transition om higher levels to lower levels and up; and perme-
ability is acondition for the possibility of the existence of avariety of levels. If
the various levels would not be connected and tied together in some way so that
they lacked the possibility of transitioning om one to the other, each of those
levels would be aclosed world in and of itself. The existence of levels, be that an
onion-world, arainbow, aset of turtles one on top of the other, is ametaphor
for the fact that one world alone (the material world, for instance, or spirit) is not
what humans experience. What remains to be explained is the claim that even
consciousness can be illustrated by the the metaphor of the feather that floats
between the spheres. Each of the levels, being sustained by the higher ones and
the underlying ones, is related to them; it exists in arelation. Every relation has

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 Paul Richard Blum
The Epistemology of Immortality: Searle,Pomponazzi,andFicino

at least two poles, therefore every level of being is reflected at least in one other
level. If consciousness is avariant of reflection, then the degrees of beingthe
hierarchy of levels om intelligence down to the material worldhave some kind
of consciousness, the degree of which has to be spelled out.
It is obvious that the preceding two paragraphs describe the basic patterns of
Neoplatonic epistemology and metaphysics, of which Marsilio Ficino (14331499)
was the most prominent advocate in early modernity. His epistemology set
the tone for Descartes defense of immortality; for he endeavored to solve the
problem of mind-body relation disguised as adefense of the immortality of the
individual soul.35 His main tenets were:36
Truth is nourishment of the soul. Nourishment is the exchange of
substance toward the accretion of what is nourished. Therefore food
and the body nourished must be similar.
Bodily things are nourished bodily - incorporeal things in an incor-
poreal way.
There is no evidence that incorporeal and corporeal things can mi-
grate or transform om one into the other. For the third man argu-
ment would apply; there had to be amatter that would sustain such
transmutation.
If there were abody-mind dualism, there would have to be amatter
that can migrate between the two substances or amedium that medi-
ates between them.
Ficino describes the paradox into which we would run if we believed in an
exchange between body and mind:
If the soul did feed on any corporeal foods, it would most likely be on the
same foods as its body does. For since that body is most closely suited to the
soul, its foods would be the most suitable among corporeal foods, provided of
course that the foods were so refined and purified as to make them suitable for
the rarified little body the soul is popularly supposed to be.37
Ficino clearly alludes to the solution that the soul/mind might be something
like aparticularly subtle body (animal spirits), but body nevertheless. Since this

35
Blum, The Immortality of the Soul.
36
M. Ficino, Platonic Theology, ed. James Hankins (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press,
20012006), vol. II, book 8, chapter 2, section 1, 273275.
37
Ibid., section 2, 275.

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 Paul Richard Blum
The Epistemology of Immortality: Searle,Pomponazzi,andFicino

is not aserious epistemological option38 in so far as it only shis the problem

rather than solving it,39 he transposes the weight of the body-mind-mediation
to the mind:
[T]he power or virtue of the rational soul is asort of symmetry [aequalitas
quaedam] through which the soul keeps in tune both with itself and with the
true and the good. If in some way aquadrangular line is made circular, it be-
comes more perfect, not as it becomes longer, but as it becomes more round-
ed.40 So too when ayoung man increases in virtue, his soul is not increasing
in quantity but acquiring acertain spiritual symmetry and harmony.41

Equality is the key to understanding: equality is aproperty that is incorpo-

real, and even when equality (being square) is aproperty of bodies it is not itself
corporeal. The whole argument depends upon the view that the soul is not an
ospring of the body, but rather the governing force of it. Therefore,
when the body is sick or ailing, the soul is so preoccupied with looking
aer it and keeping it in order that it cannot concentrate on the search for
truth. However, when the body is at peace, the mind can let its thoughts
range without hindrance, and it is then that it most feeds on its proper foods.42

One feature of these pronouncements is that the soul is indeed the unity of
the various functions of the body, including the healing and nourishing power.
While modern philosophers of mind mostly concentrate on pain and metabolism,
they reveal precisely that they are aaid to admit the ontological peculiarity of
mind. Ficino describes acontinuity between the mind, the sensations, and the
vegetative functions that keep abody alive. Please note that he has no empirical
data whatsoever to back up his argument, but so does Searle, when he describes
his biological naturalism. When talking about life, and afortiori when analyzing
38
When Ficino discusses the contribution of abodily spirit as avehicle, he expressly excludes any
impact on the mind: book 9, chapter 5. Why and how he believed in demons etc. is another topic;
much depends on the meaning of spirit in the medical tradition, for which see M. Putscher, Pneuma,
Spiritus, Geist. Vorstellungen vom Lebensantrieb in ihren geschichtlichen Wandlungen (Wiesbaden: Steiner,
1973), on Ficino p. 43.
39
This last point explains why in Cartesianism, that is, in body-mind dualism, animal spirits were
employed: they are the means of mediation. Consequently, the question is: what is the role of the
mediator in mind-bodydualism today? If modern philosophy of mind is asubstance monism and still
afunctional dualism, where is the mediation? It could be argued that Searles biological naturalism and
similar negations of mind-body-dualism, leave out the second component of the dualism, and reduce
the dualism to the one pole (body) and the mediator: animal spirits or substitutes for that.
40
I translate aequalior (which takes up aequalitas) as more rounded to keep within the image of
acircle; the translator has squarerer which makes think of aquadrangle.
41
Ficino, Platonic Theology, vol. II, book 8, chapter 2, section 5, 277.
42
Ibid., section 6, 279.

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The Epistemology of Immortality: Searle,Pomponazzi,andFicino

thought, crude empiricism is not amethod to pursue. Experience in the sense

of observing the way life works and contriving atheory that convincingly ties
together the tangible body and those functionsincluding thoughtthat qua
functions are non-bodies, that is the method followed by Searle, Pomponazzi,
and Ficino.
Aer the comparison of thinking and nutrition, which resulted in integrating
functionality into the system of corporeal being, Ficino emphasizes the dierence
between bodily nutrition and spiritual movement. Hunger and thirst are for the
mind the opposite of what they mean for the body: for the body it is deficiency,
for the mind it is the natural state. Now we could forego that as some kind of
religious and mythological remnants. In reality Ficino is about to pinpoint the
ontological dierence between afunction and an object that functions. Function
(in this metaphorical and empirical language: life and thought) is movement,
dynamism, and instability, whereas the things that function tend towards rest
and stability. In the section describing equality and perfection Ficino quoted
Heraclitus: If you tune alyre, it would be more perfect not because it is bigger
but because it is more harmonious.43 Harmony is the tune of the lyre, it is the
incorporeal tension that makes alyre.
The power of the soul in Ficino is non-dualist in the sense that it is the func-
tion of the body that operates best when released om body. Searles biological
naturalism tries to quirt mind out of bodily conditions. He encounters the same
paradoxes that troubled Pomponazzi: the dierence between functionality and
bodily existence and with that the paradox of the immateriality of matter-bound
cognition. On the other hand, Ficino saw the interface of the intellect with the
body as the major challenge to anon-dualist understanding of the mind. All
three aim at avoiding dualism and end up describing the theoretical components
of the mind-body paradox: the unavoidability of body, the peculiar metaphysical
situation of thought, and the interaction of both, if mind is anything that may
be thought.

43
Ibid., 277.

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The Epistemology of Immortality: Searle,Pomponazzi,andFicino

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aristotle. De anima. Edited by W. D. Ross. Oxford: Oxford Univerity Press, 1974.
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Summa theologiae. Edited by Robertus Busa and Enrique Alarcn. Fundacin
Toms de Aquino, 2011. Corpus Thomisticum. Online, url = http://www.corpustho-
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Clayton, Philip, and Zachary Simpson (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Religion and
Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Ficino, Marsilio. Platonic Theology. Edited by James Hankins. 6 vols. Cambridge, Mass:
Harvard University Press, 20012006.
Kraye, Jill. Pietro Pomponazzi (14621525): Secular Aristotelianism in the Renais-
sance. In Philosophers of the Renaissance, edited by Paul Richard Blum, 92115. Wash-
ington: Catholic University of America Press, 2010.
Novotn, Daniel D. Searle on the Unity of the World. Axiomathes 17 (2007): 4151.
Pasnau, Robert. The Mind-Soul Problem. In Mind, Cognition and Representation:
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and Johannes Thssen, 319. Aldershot: Ashgate (2007).
Polanyi, Michael. Personal Knowledge. Towards aPost-Critical Philosophy. Chicago:
University Press, 1974.
Pomponazzi, Pietro. On the Immortality of the Soul. In Renaissance Philosophy of Man,
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Tractatus de immortalitate animae. In his Tractatus acutissimi, utillimi et mere
peripatetici. Venice: Scotus, 1525. Reprint, Casarano: Eurocart 1995.
Putscher, Marielene. Pneuma, Spiritus, Geist. Vorstellungen vom Lebensantrieb in ihren
geschichtlichen Wandlungen. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1973.
Reimarus, Hermann Samuel. Abhandlungen von den vornehmsten Wahrheiten der natrli-
chen Religion. 5th edition. Edited by Joh. Alb. Hinr. Reimarus. Hamburg: Bohn, 1781.
Ryle, Gilbert. The Concept of Mind. London: Hutchinson, 1949.
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The Epistemology of Immortality: Searle,Pomponazzi,andFicino

Searle, John R. Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge: Cam-

bridge University Press, 1983.
Minds, Brains, and Science. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1984.
The Rediscovery of the Mind. Representation and Mind. Cambridge, Mass: MIT
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mus. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1966.

Paul Richard Blum is T. J. Higgins, S.J., Chair in Philosophy at Loyola

University Maryland (Baltimore, USA), and currently visiting professor at Palack
University Olomouc. His latest books are Philosophy of Religion in the Renaissance
(Ashgate, 2010) and Studies on Early Modern Aristotelianism (Brill, 2012).
Address: Dr. Paul Richard Blum, Loyola University Maryland,
4501 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21210
E-mail: prblum@loyola.edu
Web: http://www.loyola.edu/academic/philosophy/faculty/blum/information.aspx

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The Epistemology of Immortality: Searle,Pomponazzi,andFicino

SUMMARIUM
Epistemologia immortalitatis: Searle, Pomponatius, Ficinus
Relatio, quae inter animam et corpus intercedit, per modum quaestionis de immortalitate
intellectus tractari solebat, quia immaterialitas conditio sine qua non immortalitatis spiritus
reputabatur. Haec tractatio ad metaphysicam vel religionem spectare videbatur. Secundum
tamen scholasticos medii aevi atque humanistas essentia spiritus est cogitatio, quod est aliquid
epistemologicum. Tractatione praesenti auctor primo dicultates nonnulas circa mentis con-
scientiam, quas J. Searle movet, exponit, deinde analogias quasdam erga P. Pomponatium
(14621525) Aristotelicum clarissimum adumbrat, deinceps Neoplatonicum huius quaestionis
tractandae modum, qui apud Marsilium Ficinum (14331499) invenitur, prae oculis ponit,
quaestione unica tamen semper ductus: scil. quomodo congitio ex notionibus corporeitatis ac
incorporeitatis philosophice explicari possit? Searle docet vere dari spiritum, licet is a basi bio-
logica essentialiter pendeat. In hoc auctoribus praedictis assimilatur, quandoquidem de actione
mutua corporis spiritusque non reductive tractat.

ABSTRACT
The Epistemology of Immortality: Searle, Pomponazzi, and Ficino
The relationship between body and mind was traditionally discussed in terms of immortality of
the intellect, because immateriality was one necessary condition for the mind to be immortal.
This appeared to be an issue of metaphysics and religion. But to the medieval and Renaissance
thinkers, the essence of mind is thinking activity and hence an epistemological feature. Starting
with John Searles worries about the existence of consciousness, I try to show some parallels
with the Aristotelian Pietro Pomponazzi (14621525), and eventually show the Neoplatonic
approach in Marsilio Ficino (14331499). The guiding question is: how can one philosophically
address the problem of cognition in terms of corporeality and incorporeality? Searle maintains
there is mind, although essentially related to a biological basis, and he is comparable to the
Renaissance thinkers for his taking the interaction of the mental and the corporeal seriously.

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