A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two (Identity)

by David Turell , Friday, June 08, 2018, 18:02 (2148 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: 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. […]

DAVID: This is why we have consciousness. We can review facts and decide on theories to explain them. I don't have to see God to understand that He is the best explanation for our reality.

dhw: The question is whether things exist independently of our consciousness. Your quantum theory maintains that they do not. If the image doesn’t exist without my seeing it, then your God, you and the bus don’t exist either without my seeing them.

Of course the photons exist, and are real. But it takes reception of them to interpret their carried information.

DAVID: You are still wedded to a static unchanging consciousness in life and in death. The soul receives observations, sensations, facts; it then must analyze and order responses. This is the thinking part of the process in life which uses the brain circuits. In death the soul does all of that without the brain circuits. In life it is dual: material brain and immaterial soul. Why won't you let me have that theory? We can only theorize. I have mine, you have yours.

dhw: That is precisely the theory of dualism that I have been trying to put across to you! The dualist’s soul is the THINKING part of the duality in life. It receives information from the brain, processes (analyzes) it, and “uses the brain circuits” to express or implement its thoughts materially (“order responses”). And it continues to be the same thinking self (“does all of that”) when the brain dies. It does not depend on the brain for its ability to THINK (to “analyze and order responses”). Consequently, to go back to the starting point of this whole discussion, the claim that pre-sapiens’ THINKING soul was unable to THINK new thoughts until your God had expanded his brain only makes sense if you accept the idea that the thinking soul is produced by the cooperating cell communities of the brain (materialism) which create a form of energy (dualism) that survives its material source, just as images survive theirs. (Discussion continued under “Introducing the brain”.) NB This theory does not in any way exclude the possibility that your God invented the means of production!

You are simply back to a static soul mechanism. I see the soul in two forms for thinking. One is life using the brain and a diffeernt one in death.

DAVID: How do you explain the appearance 'autonomous intelligence' appearing in an inorganic universe? How do you explain life appearing? There must be an initiating force to create them.

dhw: Your question does not in any way invalidate the theory that organisms have autonomous intelligence. How often do you want me to repeat the three alternative explanations for the origin of life and consciousness: 1) top-down God, 2) chance, 3) atheistic, bottom-up panpsychism – all of which I find equally difficult to believe in.

I am fully aware of your difficulties.