A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two (Identity)

by David Turell , Tuesday, June 19, 2018, 18:21 (2132 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I disagree insofar as you confuse being conscious and consciousness. We came from conscious animals, but we can be introspective about every decision we make. They can't. The difference is the presence of our big brain. That creates the difference. There is no other explanation.

dhw: I asked you several times to explain the difference between being conscious and having consciousness, and it now turns out that by consciousness you mean human introspection!

Your surprise is confusing. I've made that difference over and over for years.

dhw: do you agree that we cannot be conscious without being able to think?

Thinking about purposeful action is not introspection. Animals are consciously purposeful, no more.

dhw: I don’t even “know” if there is such a thing as a soul that survives death, let alone what form it has. In the context of dualism, I am asking why you think an already “SEPARATE consciousness mechanism” (soul) NEEDS to have two different forms, if we simply accept your analogy that the software soul does the thinking and the hardware brain does the expressing/implementing. You’ve never answered that point.

Don't you read what I write? From yesterday your entry and mine:

dhw: If the ability to think is a “SEPARATE consciousness mechanism” (your expression), and survives the death of the brain (your belief), then clearly it does not NEED the brain to think.

David: I have said it requires a different mechanism and gains that by rejoining the universal consciousness. How do you know the soul is only one rigid form? You've never answered that point.

dhw: ...if bigger brains produce more complex thoughts, this means the brain is the producer of thought, and that is the materialistic opposite of dualism, in which it is the soul that produces thought. A divine dabble can explain the expansion. So can the process of new thoughts requiring new cells and connections for their implementation. My reconciliation theory allows for the brain to produce thought, to expand itself, and to produce a form of energy (soul) that might possibly survive the death of the brain; it also allows for your God as the possible inventor of the whole system, and even for him to do a dabble. I am still waiting for you to find a flaw in it.

DAVID: What I agree with ONLY, is God produces the big brain or dabbles to give the brain the ability to do it. The soul is the software that enables introspection and conceptualization.

dhw: You last comment is the essence of dualism: the soul does the thinking. And in that case, the hardware brain does the implementing. I have not asked you to agree with my theory. A few days ago you accepted that it was possible, and you have not yet offered a single argument to explain why it is not possible.

Of course yours is possible. So is mine. I see more reason to choose mine.