Simon Conway Morris on animal intelligence (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, January 21, 2017, 15:47 (2656 days ago) @ dhw

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

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

dhw: 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!

Perhaps I've not been clear in the past. A plastic brain molds to use. We use our consciousness as we develop into our particular personality, by which term I imply our mental totality. I view consciousness as a mechanism the brain uses. Different parts of the brain do different things or use different parts of consciousness for different purposes. As I explained before this is how babies develop into conscious being, the interaction between brain and consciousness takes time and brain growth.

dhw: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!

Example: you die but your car still exists and can be driven. Still my strange form of dualism.

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.

dhw: “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.

The brain develops as the baby begins to have experiences. I view the arrangement between two entities, a material brain and an immaterial consciousness mechanism, which learn to work together.