A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two (Identity)

by dhw, Tuesday, May 01, 2018, 14:16 (2186 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: It is a two step process: creating of thought and then its expression. Garbling can occur in either stage or both.
dhw: Why is the s/s/c’s CREATION of the thought “garbled” if disease only garbles the brain’s EXPRESSION of the thought?
DAVID: I stand by my last sentence. You want to keep separate the brain and the s/s/c. They are not. The s/s/c mechanism is inextricably bound in the brain and must use it during life. We do not know if the s/s/c can have proper initial thought if the brain cannot handle it *(step one of my sentence above). My dualism is not your dualism in any sense.

I’d love to know your criteria for “proper” or “normal” thought. I keep agreeing that in dualistic life the brain and s/s/c are not separate but, as you keep agreeing and then trying to ignore, they perform separate functions: the s/s/c does the thinking and the brain does the expressing/implementing. Now you are saying we don’t know if the s/s/c can think its “proper” thoughts if the brain cannot express its thoughts, whereas previously you had the s/s/c thinking its “proper” thoughts and the brain “garbling” them. (See below.)

DAVID: Just because you cannot recognize my view of how tightly the s/s/c mechanism must rely on the brains expression mechanism we will remain apart.

As above, I totally agree that the s/s/c relies “tightly” on the brain to express and implement its thoughts. We remain apart because you keep vacillating between materialism and dualism, as you do yet again in your next comment:

DAVID: Schizophrenia is due to a sick brain and the patient has trouble expressing normal thought. When you hear a paranoid tell you he is being spied on though the light bulbs, you can see the consequence of the brain damage. His s/s/c is obviously confused because his brain is sick. That is in life. When his s/s/c goes to heaven my guess is that it may well think normally. No need for the brain there.

Previously you had your s/s/c thinking normally, and the sick brain unable to express the s/s/c’s normal thoughts, i.e. garbling them. Now you have the sick brain confusing the s/s/c so that its thoughts are not “normal”. The sick brain as the cause of sick thought is a fundamental element of materialism. Your form of dualism changes day by day, as you try to resolve the dichotomy that arises out of the interplay between material and immaterial. This dichotomy is a problem for all of us, but we can’t even begin to discuss it if you refuse to recognize it!

Nevertheless, let me try once more to resolve it. You believe that the s/s/c makes its “home” in different parts of the brain. The brain consists of many cell communities. And so the s/s/c has its “home” in the cell communities. You regard the material “home” and the immaterial s/s/c as inseparable during life. I assume you regard the s/s/c as “intelligent” (the subject of this thread). So we both propose the same structure: intelligence within the cell communities directing the cell communities to implement its thoughts. But you say the intelligence is part of God’s consciousness, and I propose (theistically) that your God invented a material mechanism that generates intelligence as well as implements the thoughts of that intelligence. There is no way in which we can tell the difference (as you keep emphasizing in relation to cellular intelligence generally). But my hypothesis explains why drugs and diseases can change the thoughts as well as the expression and implementation of those thoughts. Yours creates all the contradictions I have been pointing out. Mine also leaves open the possibility that the s/s/c generated by the materials can survive the death of the brain (see my post of 5 January under “Reconciling materialism and dualism”) and does not in any way exclude your God. So what logical flaws can you find in my hypothesis?