In Depth: The Immateriality of the Intellect

“Anything that is in potency with respect to an object, and able to receive it into itself, is, as such, without that object; thus the pupil of the eye, being potential to colors and able to receive them, is itself colorless. … Since then (the intellect) naturally understands all bodily things, it must be lacking in every bodily nature; just as the sense of sight, being able to know color, lacks all color.” 
(St. Thomas, Commentary on the De Anima, Bk. III, Lect. 7, no. 680).

Recently Edward Feser gave a paper explaining the reasons for the claim that the intellect is immaterial. This claim is as old as metaphysics.

An overly short and summarized argument runs like this. Forms are immaterial because the material world cannot explain its own order towards form, and immaterial forms are the only option left to explain that order. Plato thought these forms subsist elsewhere, while Aristotle thought they are “in” material things. But either way, the intellect knows these immaterial forms.

The mind must be immaterial because only an immaterial thing can possess another immaterial thing.

Let’s have a listen to the full paper.