A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two (Identity)

by David Turell , Tuesday, July 03, 2018, 17:49 (2117 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: I keep agreeing that the soul must use the brain’s networks to process new thought. You have simply left out the section of my answer that actually acknowledges and describes the ongoing process. Here it is again:

dhw: “Of course thought is ongoing, and the “separate consciousness mechanism” doesn’t stop using the brain to supply information and to implement/express its thoughts. The concept of the spear is initiated by the dualist’s soul. It doesn’t come complete. The soul goes on issuing instructions to the brain, which goes on supplying information and giving material expression to the developing concept until pre-sapiens has a spear that will actually kill the live chunk of meat."

What this leaves out is my thought that 'expression of developing concept' achieves the necessary level of complexity because of the available complexity of the brains networks with which to refine the thought.

DAVID: Think genius brain like Hawking or Einstein as obvious examples. The more complex computer producing a more complex output is a perfect example.

DAVID: I've bolded the incomplete part of your concept. Concentrate on 'David' just above. Clear thinking cannot avoid what our sapiens brains can allowed to be produced as modern artifacts. The soul has a much more complex computer with which to work, so the thought output is much more complex.

dhw: But you tell us that “the brain is the recipient of the working soul’s output”! The receiving, passive complex computer does not “allow” the working, active soul to think its complex thoughts – the complexity of thought comes from the soul, and the brain/computer receives the thoughts and gives them material expression. In your own words: the soul “drives the initiation of the thought and uses the brain networks to complete it. The brain does not initiate or contribute.”

What you refuse to see is that complex thought initiated by the soul must use complex brain networks to refine and complete the thought. The networks are passive recipients, but contribute much more than 'receive thought and give them material expression' which is all you accept.

dhw: The brain network has to be advanced enough to “allow” the material appearance (i.e. expression or implementation) of the thoughts initiated by the dualist’s soul. Your view of how thought develops might become clearer if only you would respond to my constant plea, which again you have ignored: “Please tell us what the separate consciousness mechanism (soul) uses the networks FOR, apart from gathering information and giving material expression to its thoughts.”

Explained above. Not just giving expression. The networks must be used to refine an initiated thought until it is completed and then expressed.

DAVID: And it not primarily expansion. Elephant brains are huge. Erectus brains are only 150 cc smaller, but the presumption is the Erectus frontal cortex did not have five layers of network as we do. And look at our artifacts compared to Erectus as evidence of what the physical state of brains allow in complex thought. My view is the complexity of the brain allows the degree of complexity of thought the soul can create.

dhw: Of course it’s not primarily expansion, since the modern brain has stopped expanding. But our starting point was your insistence that the pre-sapiens brain had to expand before he/she could think new thoughts. You are also insisting that the modern brain has to become more complex before we can think new thoughts (= materialism), even though you believe it is the active soul that initiates and develops thoughts (= dualism), using the passive brain for information and material expression. But perhaps you will now come up with other “uses” to bolster your materialism at the expense of your dualism.

Total confusion: Each stage of pre-sapiens could think to the level of its brain's complexity, no more. An immaterial soul can use a material brain for complex thought only so far as the complexity of that level of brain development allows. That is my dualism. I am not a materialist. You are inventing materialism where there is none, mostly because if you accepted my approach it would destroy your pet theories. Once again the immaterial soul initiates the start of thought but must continue to refine it by using the material brain networks to refine it and to reach its completion and then expression.