A comment on a video by Dr Feser

I originally made a comment on a talk by Dr. Ed Feser - The Immateriality of the Intellect.

Unfortunately, the comments have now been disabled deleting my comment and one other person's comment in the process since 2 days ago (and perhaps deleted other comments if any were published since then).  So I shall repeat my comment here:

I do not understand Dr. Feser's answer to the first question. He claims that the intellect is intimately tied to the brain; that our intellect needs the assistance of the brain. Hence, we wouldn't be able to think when in a disembodied state.

I'm unclear as to how this conclusion is reached. I do not believe the mind-body correlations establish any such thing. To use a quick analogy. When a man is in a house, in order to see the sky the house has to have windows, the windows need to be clean, the curtains open etc. So the house needs to be in a certain state in order to make it possible for the man to see the sky. However, the house plays no role in creating the man's vision. After all, the man can simply go outside and have a unrestricted view of the sky.

So it needs to be established that the mind-brain relationship is unlike this analogy; that the brain somehow plays a crucial role in actually creating our ability to think, not merely either allowing or suppressing such an ability.

His argument appears to be parasitic on the notion that psi (telepathy etc) doesn't exist -- hence we need our bodies to sense anything. I think though this is question-begging. In order to have a disembodied existence it seems to me that we all have to have a psi ability, but the brain suppresses this faculty in a comparable manner to how the state of the house might suppress the man's ability to see the sky. He provides no reasons for supposing the non-existence of psi and the rejection of it runs counter to the collective experience of humankind across virtually all cultures and throughout history, as well as the parapsychological research. Indeed, the outright rejection of any psi or or other "supernatural" aspects of reality appear to be more or less an aberration of modern western culture.