Simon Conway Morris on animal intelligence (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, January 21, 2017, 14:04 (2656 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I believe the main differences between ourselves and our fellow animals have arisen from our enhanced consciousness, but “I don’t know if the complexification of the brain triggered the enhanced awareness or resulted from it.” David’s response is that God gave us a large brain first, which “we used to develop new thoughts and concepts.” However, David believes NDEs show that our consciousness survives the death of the brain.
Materialists argue that consciousness cannot survive without the brain, which is its source. As a dualist, David argues that the brain is the receiver of consciousness, not the source.

Problems:
1) If the brain is the receiver of consciousness, how could it have triggered (enhanced) consciousness?

DAVID: Because the brain can manipulate itself to use more and more consciousness, by its plasticity.

You keep telling us that “you” tell your brain what to do. If your “you” is not your conscious mind, what is it? You have now done a complete U-turn, and instead of consciousness using the brain, you have the brain using consciousness!

dhw: 2) The use of “I” and “we” masks the question of what it is that uses the brain. I would suggest that it is the conscious mind and all its attributes (regardless of the influences that have shaped it). Materialists must ultimately argue that the brain uses the brain. NDEs suggest that the patient’s conscious mind/identity survives the death of the brain, and must therefore be independent of it (a clear form of dualism). But if “thoughts and concepts” could not have arisen without it (David’s idea of brain preceding thought), how can a conscious mind think and conceive when the brain is dead?
DAVID: Because the consciousness is used by the brain but separates at death to join the universal consciousness retaining its current body of information.

As above. Your after-death consciousness won't be able to think if it was just the tool of the brain!

dhw: 3) The argument that enhanced consciousness gave rise to the complexified brain (just as exercise expands muscles) is dualistic, but the dualist David rejects it in favour of the materialist argument that the more complex brain gave rise to our enhanced consciousness.
DAVID: Our more complex brain is built to handle automatically a more enhanced consciousness. Our brain, and its plasticity can work hand in hand with the consciousness instrument it is given.

“Handle” is ambiguous – I would say “respond automatically to”. Otherwise your first sentence is fine, and your second is also fine, except that crucially according to your dualism it is the brain that is the instrument. Its plasticity enables it to respond to the demands of consciousness. To clarify this once more in terms of the identity which you believe survives the death of the brain: if identity is the conscious mind, it is the user (consciousness) that survives, and not the instrument (the brain).
Materialists, however, will argue that the conscious mind is the brain and so it cannot survive death. Meanwhile, I myself still “don’t know if the complexification of the brain triggered the enhanced awareness or resulted from it” , and I remain surprised that you as a dualist appear to favour the first option.