A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two (Identity)

by dhw, Sunday, May 13, 2018, 13:48 (2168 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Your sentence "we are a material being whose materials have produced the consciousness of which he himself is composed" proports to claim that God caused our material brain to produce an immaterial consciousness in the same form as His own. This differs little from my thesis, in which I have God giving the consciousness. In my view the soul must interface with specific areas of the brain. In your view each area of the brain contributes to forming the soul, so the relationship of brain to soul is the same interlock I describe.

You’ve got it! My theory incorporates your thesis by inverting the process, thereby removing all the contradictions I keep pointing out in your arguments (see the post under “Introducing the brain” for several examples). This is how we can reconcile materialism with dualism: yes, materials are the source of the thinking self (materialism), but what they produce is an immaterial self (dualism) as a form of energy which may survive the death of the materials (just as light waves preserve the image of past events) or may not, depending on your faith or lack of faith. I have stuck to the theistic approach that your God designed the “machine” that produces consciousness like his own, because (a) as an agnostic, I regard that as possible, and (b) a theistic approach is the only one you will accept. Clearly an atheist would say that the mechanism put itself together by chance, or that there is a form of panpsychism through which materials gradually but consciously assemble its components. But the focus here should be on the mechanism itself, and I would still like to know of any flaws in the reasoning.