A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two (Identity)

by dhw, Thursday, June 07, 2018, 13:51 (2143 days ago) @ dhw

I have transferred this from “...where the spiritual happens/appendix”, as it comments on the “theory” itself, and I have linked it to Part Two for further clarification.

dhw: Light is energy, and theoretically the visual image generated by a material event goes on for ever. The source is material (the actual crucifixion), but the image in the form of energy is not. It survives the death of the material source.
DAVID: Problem: there is no image until a consciousness sees it. It is all a potential image before that, photons which carry information.

This of course is your quantum theory. I believe the photons carrying the image, just like the sun and stars, are there, but we are not aware of them until we are aware of them. However, if you believe that reality is nothing but a potential until “a consciousness sees it”, and since the only consciousness we know is our own, then until you “saw” him, there was no God, and until you “saw” me, there was no me, and – a neat twist of subjectivity for you to ponder – until little Mary Jane “saw” them, there were no fairies at the bottom of her garden. Perhaps we should also mention the bus which the quantum philosopher never "saw". Lucky him, only to be killed by a potential reality.

dhw: Once we think of consciousness in terms of energy produced by materials, and we link it to the analogy of the image produced by light, it seems to me that we have a reconciliation between materialism (materials are the source of consciousness) and dualism (the energy exists independently of the source).
DAVID: The energy of the brain which allows us to see the image is ions generated by the brain. No dualism in your statement. I view dualism as requiring a separate consciousness mechanism which is malleable and operates by a different form in life and death.

You now see consciousness as a separate mechanism, whereas previously you have insisted that it is NOT separate, because you say the soul in life is incapable of thinking without the brain. (Please remember that there is no dualism in death.) You have even rebuked me for separating the two, although I have never done so. And I have agreed over and over again that if the soul exists and survives death, it must operate (observe and communicate) differently. (See "Introducing the brain".)

dhw: My “energy”, Penrose’s “quantum information”, and Sheldrake’s “morphic field” are all immaterial products of the material being, and they may survive the death of the individual body in the sense that their already formed information can be accessed by others (like the image of the crucifixion). But that does not necessarily mean that the immaterial information/ energy/ morphic field is capable of undergoing any change once its source is extinguished.
DAVID: But you don't know that. The soul appears to be active, operative, in NDE's when information is added.

Of course I don’t know. My theory allows for all possibilities. Meanwhile, you are still stuck with your contradictory belief that the soul depends on the brain for its active, operative ability to think, feel, learn, remember etc., but the same active, operative soul does not depend on the brain for the same ability when there is no brain. (It just needs different modes of observation and communication.)The only way that I can see for you to remove this illogicality is if the soul depends on the brain for its generation, as described in my “theory”, but can go on existing independently of its source, just as the image survives the disappearance of the materials that gave rise to it.