Introducing the brain (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, May 13, 2018, 14:02 (2172 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Once again, all the basic areas exist in apes. The homo frontal lobes enlarged and you are correct more connective axons would go to the implmentation areas, but those fibers don't take up much room. you can't escape that the frontal lobers are the maim enlargement and created a base for consciousness.

dhw: Once again you have missed the point. If the frontal lobes are the “base”, they are the control centre, which means that the connections start there. ALL of them. Any new concept requires new connections, but these will join up with existing connections in the implementation areas. So it is the control centre that has to expand the most.

DAVID: To my way of interpreting you, you have simply repeated me. Of course it is the frontal control area that has to enlarged to be capable of advanced thought and to drive implementation.

I have offered a different explanation from yours for the expansion of the frontal lobe. You keep on emphasizing that it does the thinking, which is why your God expanded it, so that pre-sapiens would be ”capable of advanced thought”. That is pure materialism, which contradicts your claim to be a dualist. I say that in dualism, it is the soul that does the thinking, and so the frontal lobe has to expand when it needs new connections in order to organize material expression/implementation of the immaterial soul’s new thoughts. My “theory of intelligence” is an attempt to reconcile your materialism with the tenets of your dualism.

DAVID: It is not clear whether the soul thinks in garbled fashion because of a damaged brain, or the brain mishandles proper original thought from the soul. One is correct. This is how I see dualism.

dhw: A few days ago you dismissed your idea of the soul thinking “proper thoughts”, in favour of the first of these options (the soul’s thoughts are garbled). But of course this option supports materialism, so back you go to “it is not clear whether….”

DAVID: I have always described the two possibilties about garbled thought: either the soul can think straight but the brain cannot translate straight, or the soul, using the brain to think while in life, cannot formulate correct thoughts, because I think the immaterial soul must use the brain networks during life.

Here is the exchange (leaving out remarks concerning interdependence, which would apply to both hypotheses), culminating on Sunday May 6, where you categorically state that the s/s/c cannot think properly if the networks are sick. That eliminates the possibility of the soul “thinking straight” and then having its thoughts garbled by the brain.

dhw: Which of your statements do you now stand by? That the s/s/c’s thought is proper, but the diseased brain does not express it properly (garbles it), or the diseased brain causes the s/s/c to think improperly?

DAVID: The s/s/c must use the brain to think during life, so it is likely the s/s/c cannot produce a proper thought with a damaged brain, and may not be able to even form a proper initial thought.

dhw: Thank you. We can now forget the idea that the s/s/c thinks properly but the brain can’t express the thoughts properly...I find it difficult to understand how a piece of your God's immaterial consciousness can be damaged by material disease, but I can fully understand how consciousness that emerges from a material source can be damaged if the source is damaged.

DAVID: You have agreed that the s/s/c and brain are interlocked to work together. The point remains the same. The s/s/c must think using the brain networks and cannot think properly if the networks are sick.

I’m afraid it’s another case of x one day and y the next.

dhw: You say the soul has “two mechanism forms”. This needs clarification. If the soul is a separate entity (which you now claim in your answer to my THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE, though elsewhere you insist that in life it is not, contradicting your own software/hardware analogy), it remains the same in an afterlife as in life. It is the thinking/feeling immaterial section of identity which interacts with the material information-gathering, thought-implementing body in material life, and then lives on as itself, but in a different immaterial world.

DAVID: You operate under a different premise as to how the soul and brain relate. The soul has two forms interlocking with the brain in life and in a different form not requiring the brain in death.

I can see no difference between us on this, except that you want to give the immaterial soul different “forms” (what different "forms" can you give to something immaterial?), whereas I say it’s the same soul operating in different worlds.

dhw:I would like to think that all your contradictions, which mirror the great dichotomy between dualism and materialism, are resolved by my theory, which inverts the usual basis of dualism, thereby reconciling it with materialism. But I would welcome the pinpointing of any flaws in its logic.

DAVID: I don't see contradictions because you keep insisting only your view of brain/ soul relationship is true.

There are at least three examples of your self-contradictions above. These are inevitable so long as you see yourself as a dualist and yet continue to insist that the soul depends on the brain for its ability to think.