Simon Conway Morris on animal intelligence (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, January 24, 2017, 14:51 (2652 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: If “me” is your personally shaped consciousness, or "mental totality", that is what controls the brain and survives the death of the brain. And yet you say “consciousness does not control the brain” but is “a mechanism the brain uses”, and – the starting point of our discussion – enhanced consciousness, which I regard as the springboard for all the differences between our fellow animals and ourselves, is to be attributed to your God providing our mental totality (us) with an enlarged brain. And so our mental totality (= we) controls the brain, but the brain uses and has given rise to our enhanced consciousness. This would only make sense if you separated your (enhanced) consciousness from your “mental totality”, and that simply doesn’t make sense!

DAVID: I cannot separate 'me' from my consciousness. My consciousness is me from what I experience. I control what my consciousness does….

You don’t need this attempted distinction! If you cannot separate yourself from your consciousness, and if your consciousness is you, and if you control your consciousness, that means you control you, or your consciousness controls your consciousness. Keep them together as what you call your “mental totality” and then you can move on to the real issue:

DAVID: ...and my brain responds to what I make my consciousness do, by altering its connections, adding new neurons.

Thank you. It is your “total mentality” that controls your brain, and consciousness is not “a mechanism the brain uses”, but the brain is a mechanism used by consciousness. Enhanced consciousness is not the product of an enlarged brain, but mental totality uses the brain, which grows to meet the requirements of an enhanced consciousness. Now at last you have your dualism.

Whether it’s true or not is another question.