Simon Conway Morris on animal intelligence (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, January 22, 2017, 13:07 (2655 days ago) @ David Turell

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!
DAVID: Perhaps I've not been clear in the past. A plastic brain molds to use.

I presume you mean that the brain takes its shape according to the use consciousness makes of it. OK, that fits in with your dualism.

DAVID: We use our consciousness as we develop into our particular personality, by which term I imply our mental totality.

Our mental totality is what I have called our conscious mind. According to you, our conscious mind uses our material brain, not the other way round, and our conscious mind is the “we” that survives the death of the brain.

DAVID: I view consciousness as a mechanism the brain uses.

But you keep telling us that immaterial consciousness uses the material mechanism of the brain!

DAVID: 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.

Yes, different parts of the brain do different things, but the whole point of dualism is that it is consciousness that uses those different parts, not the parts that use consciousness! The interaction, according to you, is that the brain does what the conscious mind tells it to do.

Dhw: Your after-death consciousness won't be able to think if it was just the tool of the brain!
DAVID: Example: you die but your car still exists and can be driven. Still my strange form of dualism.

But the car cannot be driven by the dead you! According to your dualistic beliefs, “you” survive, and “you” (= your conscious mind) leave your wretched car (your body, which obeyed the instructions of your conscious mind) behind. Your new form of dualism is not just strange, it is impossible.

Dhw: 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.

DAVID: 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.

Yes of course they work together. And according to your dualism, it is consciousness that controls the brain, so there is absolutely no logic to your argument that the brain gives rise to consciousness or enhanced consciousness. That is materialism. I flounder because I do not know which theory is true. You flounder because your “strange form of dualism” is totally illogical.