&gt;4. Therefore, the intellect is not material. QED.<p>That is face-palmingly bad logic.  Can we pretend that famous ancient sages weren&#x27;t so blindingly, obviously dumb as to believe one piece of stuff can&#x27;t do multiple things?<p>&gt;The general problem here can be related to the problem of qualia (and intensionality) and thus the mind-body problem introduced by Descartes&#x27; metaphysics and haunting much of philosophical discourse since (even when the mind is dropped and the body endowed with the powers attributed to the mind).<p>I don&#x27;t see how the acquisition of abstract knowledge has anything to do with qualia or the mind-body problem.  Abstract knowledge is just hierarchical modeling.