Big brain evolution: changes in sapiens skull shape (Evolution)

by David Turell , Tuesday, February 06, 2018, 18:20 (2271 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: The s/s/c is the immaterial part that uses the material brain. Dualism. Your 'you may well be right' indicates you are not sure you think with your brain. Do you?

Yes, the immaterial s/s/c using the material brain is dualism. But the s/s/c “can’t think without a brain that is functional” is materialism. You try to use NDEs to prove that the immaterial s/s/c does NOT need the brain to think, remember etc., and then you tell us the immaterial s/s/c needs the brain to think, remember etc. But you cannot see the contradiction. As for my own approach, I am indeed unsure whether I need my brain to think (materialism) or I have a thinking soul that tells my brain what to do (dualism).

The functional brain uses the s/s/c to think. In NDE's the s/s/c separates from the brain and in an unknown separate form can experience events which it can express only when reattached to a functional brain. They must work together when in life. As for your confusion, don't you control your own newly created thoughts through your s/s/c, by using your brain?

DAVID: No! His s/s/c now able to use his brain which came out of a week of coma, transmitted the NDE information into his brain, which he then could interpret thought his active material brain using the returned s/s/c software (immaterial) which carried the new memories and now he could write the 20,000 words.

dhw: Do you think it is your brain or your soul that solves problems, thinks up answers to my questions, applies your knowledge of biochemistry to questions such as God’s existence and the mechanics of evolution?

The only way you can experience your s/s/c is with a living brain. They are inextricably connected. My s/s/c uses the brain to let me communicate with the thoughts I create. I=s s/s/c.

dhw: If his story his true, Alexander’s soul returned to his body with full knowledge of its experience, “transmitted the NDE information into his brain”, and his brain enabled him to transcribe his immaterial experience into material form: 20,000 words.

That fits his description. Note his s/s/c experienced the event, and Alexander interpreted it after his brain returned to functional state.

DAVID: 'Implementation' is only the physical use of the body to carry out ideas, as in typing my responses to you. I develop ideas using my s/s/c which uses my brain in the process of my recognizing my own new ideas. I have no idea what your use of the word 'implementation' implies in this context.

dhw: The s/s/c “…uses the brain in the process of my recognizing my own new ideas” is another of your weasel wordings. For you as a dualist, it is your soul that produces and also thinks about your ideas. Implementation in this context means giving material form to immaterial ideas.

I can agree to this.

dhw: And to return to the subject under discussion, you believe that NDEs prove we do NOT need the brain to think, and so the logical extension of this belief is that the brain is only required to give material form to immaterial thought, i.e. it is a complete contradiction to argue that you cannot think without a functional brain and that the hominin could not have thought up his concepts if his brain had not already expanded.

You are so confused. You keep forgetting the s/s/c is in two different states during an NDE, with an without a functional brain. In the NDE the s/s/c experiences and receives information (brain not functioning), which it only can transmit to a functional brain as function returns. Of course we need a functional brain to think.