A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two (Identity)

by dhw, Monday, April 30, 2018, 12:59 (2178 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: If the brain expresses the s/s/c thoughts as it does, if diseased it does it in garbled fashion, obviously.

dhw: So when the addict or drunkard bashes his beloved wife’s brains out, is his s/s/c telling him to kiss her but the message gets garbled? And when the demented mother asks: “Who is that man?” is her soul saying: “There’s my son”?

DAVID: The s/s/c is not separate from the brain, as you obviously like to imagine it. A sick brain will give rise to deranged thought and nothing else.

dhw: Your first comment distinguishes between thought and expression, and tells us the thought has obviously been “garbled”, which means it was different from what the brain expressed. Your answer now is that a sick brain gives rise to “deranged” thought, which means that the brain produces thought, and not that the s/s/c produces thought which is expressed by the brain. But later you also say: “A diseased brain always can change the expression of the s/s/c thoughts.” Within two posts you switch from being a dualist to being a materialist to being a dualist.

DAVID: You are a stickler for exactitude and completeness in all of my written English. You know full well that I accept the s/s/c expresses thoughts through the brain. Why waste time and typing?

This has nothing to do with inexact English. You are continually switching from dualism to materialism every time you insist that the s/s/c depends on the brain for its ability to THINK. This whole discussion goes back to your belief that your God had to expand pre-sapiens’ brain BEFORE he could come up with new thoughts. But that means that the ability to THINK depends on the brain (= materialism). The argument that drugs and diseases can change the way a person thinks is evidence for materialism, and the article on psychedelic drugs leads even you to admit that “the issue of dualism is never simple”. I have offered you a possible explanation, but you prefer to go on using language as a means of blurring the issue. You do it again repeatedly in the following comments.

DAVID: […] A sick brain or a drugged brain will produce thoughts from the s/s/c in a sick or imperfect fashion, so what appears will not represent the original intent.

What do you mean by the brain will “produce thoughts” from the s/s/c? It does not produce them imperfectly. According to your version of dualism, the s/s/c produces them perfectly, and the brain expresses them imperfectly (confirmed in the second part of your sentence).

DAVID: Now I am picking apart your English. The point is a material brain is subject to the condition it is in at any given time, and can only produce a copy of the original thought that it is capable of producing. It is a two step process: creating of thought and then its expression. Garbling can occur in either stage or both.

Fine until the last sentence. Why is the s/s/c’s CREATION of the thought “garbled” if disease only garbles the brain’s EXPRESSION of the thought?

DAVID: And don't scurry back to materialism making thought! 'I' try to make thought with 'my' brain which may or may not do it properly. Ask any schizophrenic about the problem.

In dualism, the ‘I’ is the s/s/c that “makes” the thought. According to one of your beliefs, your brain does not “do” it properly or improperly; the brain expresses it properly or improperly. I have no idea what causes schizophrenia, but when you write “a sick brain will give rise to deranged thought”, you switch to your other belief and tell us explicitly that the brain causes the thoughts – not that the s/s/c causes them and the brain misinterprets them. That may well be so, but it is the exact opposite of the dualism you profess to believe in. This is not a matter of linguistic incompetence. It is symptomatic of the dichotomy in your thinking, which reflects the general dichotomy which you keep refusing to recognize and which I have tried to resolve on this thread.