A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two; addendum (Identity)

by dhw, Tuesday, July 17, 2018, 12:13 (2110 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: I had no idea that your English-speaking thoughts were unintelligible to your English-speaking soul until your English-speaking soul had "initiated them into wet ions" (no chance then of the afterlife soul thinking intelligible thoughts), which then brought them back to your English-speaking soul to translate them back into the English in which they started (though since last week apparently the thoughts coming out of the wet ions are intelligible, in which case they don’t need to be translated after all).

DAVID: Finally. Welcome to my thinking for the first time. We know full well we think with our brain. The hard issue has always been how are wet ions running round between neurons translatable into understandable immaterial thought.

dhw: I’m flabbergasted and rather depressed that you regard the above as an accurate account of your thinking! And I’m astonished that someone who claims to be a dualist believes that thought is sent to the soul in electrical discharges by what used to be the passive recipient brain, and that what used to be the active thinking soul is now the passive receiver whose job is to translate the unintelligible thoughts electrically discharged from the now thinking brain into English. Why don’t you just have the brain thinking in English and forget about the soul? Ah, but then there’s your afterlife, as below…

DAVID: I've never changed my view. Of course I/soul think with my brain, and I/soul use those wet ions in the creation of thought. My brain doesn't tell me what to think, I/soul tell the brain what to think. We have no explanation how wet ions produce intelligible thought, which is why I think the soul provides the mechanism. I think the soul is a companion quantum representation of me. If the brain thought in English and not in electricity there would be no problem. You don't like my rubbing your nose into the real issue.

I’m afraid your view changes from one week to the next, and becomes ever more confusing. Look at what you are saying! “Me” = my soul. My brain doesn’t tell my soul what to think. My soul tells my brain what to think. But: “If the brain thought in English and not in electricity...” Stop there! You keep agreeing that the soul initiates thought in English. (Friday July 12 you wrote: Of course I/soul think in English). And don’t all the soul’s subsequent thoughts come in English? But all of a sudden we have the brain thinking unintelligibly in electricity, and it is wet ions – not the soul – that “produce INTELLIGIBLE thought”, although a few days ago the thoughts of the ions were UNINTELLIGIBLE and had to be carried back to the soul to be translated into English: “I view the soul as containing a mechanism to translate the wet charged ions…into recognizable thought in the words of my language.”

The concept of dualism itself is perfectly straightforward:

dhw: Dualism = the self consists of soul and body/brain.
DAVID: No the soul uses the brain. the soul is not the brain.

Why “no”? Of course the soul is not the brain. Dualism = the self which comprises soul and brain/body, and yes, the thinking soul uses the brain to provide information and material expression. Moving into the afterlife, I summarized your new theory as follows:
dhw: And in death the soul uses telepathy to translate into English the thoughts which the now non-existent wet ions carry from the now non-existent brain to the soul.

DAVID: Has to be if the brain is gone.

But where do the thoughts come from if there is no brain? The soul does the thinking in English. There is no translating. And that can be used as evidence that in life the soul does the thinking in English. Telepathy is the method by which the soul communicates with other souls.

DAVID: I/soul initiates a thought which ends up as wet ions, and must come back out to my mind as intelligible words.

If, as you have agreed, your soul speaks English, then it initiates thought in English. It doesn’t need to change it into wet ions which return to the soul to be translated into the English in which it originated (first version). Your second version has the soul thinking unintelligible thoughts (so it doesn’t speak English), which apparently the wet ions translate into English so that the soul can understand what it was thinking – which means that now the soul does speak English!

Let’s start again. The dualistic process I propose to you is this: soul initiates thought in English using information provided by brain; sends message to brain to give material expression to thought; ongoing process whereby brain sends information to soul, and soul develops thought in English according to whatever information it is given to think about. In death, English-speaking soul continues to think intelligible thoughts in English, but uses psychic means to gather information and uses telepathy instead of brain in order to communicate with others.

Materialism: the brain thinks. Mystery, as described in your post: we have no idea how electrical charges from within the brain create thought.

Now without going through the wet ions/translation theory again, please simply tell me which of the above points you disagree with.

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