A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two; addendum (Identity)

by dhw, Friday, July 13, 2018, 11:21 (2108 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Right, you’ve now dropped the idea of the brain as the transmitter of thought, except that you haven’t, because now the material brain sends out a load of gibberish electricity which the ions carry to the soul, and somehow the soul translates the gibberish into recognizable thought. What in your dualism initiates the thought? The soul or the brain? What sends the thought to what? Soul to brain or brain to soul? If the thought comes from electricity provided by the brain, then the brain is doing the thinking. That’s fine with me – it is the materialistic part one of my theory.

DAVID: In using 'wet ions' I am only describing the brain as it exists. And the soul contains a mechanism which uses the brain's networks to create thought from those ions, translate it into English for me and to transmit it to me. Thus the soul initiates thought, completes thought in the networks, and translates it from the material to the immaterial form.

You ARE your soul, and the ions ARE your brain. So now you have your soul using your brain to create a gibberish thought which is carried from your brain to your soul, which translates the thought into English for your soul to transmit to your soul. The weaverbird’s knots are nothing compared to yours.

Try this for a dualistic alternative: the soul thinks the thought in English, using the brain for information, and in an ongoing process of development uses the brain to give the thought material expression, thereby providing further information (e.g. through experiments in the making of a spear), until the thought is complete and ready for material expression through the brain (spear fit for action).

DAVID: Whenever I bring up the role of the brain in thought, you scream materialism. Well, welcome to the truth, the brain is used in thought.

Of course it is. To acquire information and to give thought material expression, though you tried above to manufacture an incomprehensible new function for the brain.

DAVID: I believe the soul contains a translation mechanism that changes the material representation of thought into understandable English I recognize in my head. That same mechanism is used in NDE's and death to transmit, translate to receive telepathic thought.

Dealt with above, except that the same mechanism cannot possibly be used in death, because there is no “material representation of thought” to be translated! In death it can only be the soul that thinks the thoughts! And that is regarded as evidence for dualism in life, i.e. that there is a soul that does the thinking!

DAVID: Your view seems to me to represent a form of separatism: the soul dictates thought to the brain and receives from the brain sensory information, and the brain expresses thought for the soul.

Yes – the soul is what you called the “separate consciousness mechanism”, but in life the soul and brain are interlocked as they perform their different functions.

DAVID Do you really recognize how the brain networks have to be in play throughout the whole process…

Yes, as described above.

DAVID: …but that does not imply the brain is totally in control which would be true materialism. I/soul control the brain. Control of the process is the real issue.

Of course the dualist’s soul is in control. It is the soul that initiates the thought, uses the brain to develop the thought, and continually issues instructions to what you call the passive, recipient brain, which gives them material expression. That is the nature of dualism. No disagreement.

DAVID: What consciousness looks like in the brain. Look at the illustrations:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23431290-400-brain-images-display-the-beauty-and...

DAVID’s comment: No sense of simplicity

Whoever said it was simple? Very beautiful. No mention of a soul in the text.