A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two; addendum (Identity)

by dhw, Saturday, July 14, 2018, 12:10 (2112 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: I didn't say the soul/brain relationship was not very complex. […]

I didn’t say you said it wasn’t complex. I’m suggesting that the complexities you have introduced above make no sense!

DAVID: Where does gibberish fit in?

If the ions bring material thoughts from your material brain to your immaterial soul (which is supposed to have initiated them in English anyway!), and the soul has to translate them into English before your soul can understand the material thoughts in order to make them immaterial, the thoughts carried by the ions must be gibberish, i.e. incomprehensible in their wet “material” form. If I were a dualist, I would believe that the soul thinks its immaterial thoughts in English and sends them to the brain in order to give them material expression.

DAVID: Of course I/soul think in English. My brain is trained that way! You still have the soul separated from the brain. Can you tell me where you think it is kept?

YOU have the soul separated from the brain! You called it a “separate consciousness mechanism”. We have long since agreed that if there is such a thing as a soul, it is housed in the brain and is “interlocked” with it. But the soul and the brain perform different functions - that is the sense in which they are separate.

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.

dhw: 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: No, I said telepathic. I've told you my form of dualism includes dual forms of soul in life and death, but maintaining the same me/personality. You keep forgetting this, because you only like your view of dualism.

You have said that your soul thinks in English. So when your soul passes into the Great Beyond, why does it need the SAME translation mechanism? The English-speaking soul will think its thoughts in English and will transmit and receive thoughts telepathically. There is nothing to translate. (I don't what NDE patients do, though, if they communicate with non-English speaking souls.)

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.

dhw: 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: Do you really mean the 'soul uses the brain to develop thought', that means it uses the networks to construct/form thought, or will you scurry back to 'express' thought, your usual refuge. Thought I'd use your debate terminology.

I have spelt this out a hundred times in analysing YOUR terminology. The dualist’s soul uses the brain to provide the information it thinks about (why have you left that out?). Example of information provided by brain: me hungry, me see living meat. The soul initiates the concept of a spear. It therefore uses the brain and body to construct a spear, but then the brain supplies more information (spear no kill living meat; something wrong with concept), and so the soul does some more thinking (i.e. develops the thought: need sharper stone, longer shaft, better aim) and sends more instructions to the brain to do more implementing, and so on until the thought or concept is complete and the material implementation is complete (spear kill animal). That is how the dualist’s soul “uses the dualist’s brain to develop thought”: two parts of the self – the thinking part (soul) and the information-gathering, expressing/implementing part (brain) working in harmony.