A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two; addendum (Identity)

by dhw, Sunday, July 22, 2018, 09:06 (2105 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I think with my brain in material life, and the soul think right along with me ( because it is me!) using the brain…

dhw: So why do you keep distinguishing between your soul and you? You keep agreeing that the soul part of “you” initiates thought. You keep saying it uses the brain, and I keep repeating that it uses the brain to acquire information and give thought material expression. You have never found any other functions it performs, except for this new “translation” idea, as below.

DAVID: You seem surprised as what happens in the brain when thought occurs! It is represented by electric waves running around the networks!

Delighted to see you slide away from the “translation” theme. Now we have a new term. What do you mean by thought is “represented”? We know that thought is accompanied by electrical waves in the brain. If you believe in an immaterial soul that thinks in English, you are a dualist. The electrical waves in the brain must therefore be a material RESPONSE to the thought. If you believe the thoughts are ENGENDERED by electrical waves in the brain, you are a materialist.

DAVID: ….except in my view the soul solves the problem of translating thought into electrical pulses over networks of neurons from thought into electricity and back to thought, and it does this because it is part of universal consciousness.

dhw: What problem? If the English-speaking soul is the initiator of thought, and thinks its thought in English, why must it translate it into neurons, and then translate the neurons back into the English of the thought it initiated “because it is part of universal consciousness”?

DAVID: Because we all know that on the material side all thought is represented by ions.

Again your new term “represented”. What does it mean? We know that there are electrical waves in the brain when we think. Your belief in an afterlife has your soul thinking without electrical waves. The clear inference for a dualist is that electrical waves are a material response to thought.

DAVID: My soul contains my immaterial memories, my knowledge, my ego defense mechanisms in exactly the way that in my material life those attributes of consciousness exist as immaterial yet in words material descriptions of who I am.

dhw: Yes, your soul contains all those attributes of consciousness, and you agree that it thinks in English. The material expression is what it uses the brain for.

DAVID: And I say as me, the soul uses the brain just as I do, for creation of thought.

But you cannot come up with any “use” other than the provision of information and of material expression, other than translating English thought into ions which have to be translated into English.

dhw: In dualistic life it is the body and brain that observe and pass the information to the soul, which initiates and develops thought and which uses the brain to express thought materially. In death there is no dualism, and the soul uses psychic means to observe and communicate. You have agreed to all of this in the past.

DAVID: Forget the past. What I present has always been my view.

If I am to forget what you have agreed to in the past, I might as well forget what you are telling me now, since that will also become past.

DAVID: I've brought out the ions because of what I think of your garbled view of the role of the soul. The soul is me and we both use the brain to think as one.

The ions don’t make the slightest difference, since they are part of the brain’s activity. And yes, in dualism you/your soul and you/your brain are one in life, but they have different functions, as supported by NDEs in which the patient is able to remain his/her thinking, remembering, feeling, decision-making self without a brain.

dhw: I can find no logic in your repeated acknowledgement that the soul initiates thoughts in English and yet has to translate them into wet ions so that it can translate them back again into English.

DAVID: I might ask: is your soul an exact representation of your mind, personality structure and consciousness?

“Representation” again. No, in dualism it is not a representation. It IS your mind etc. And I still can’t find any logic in the above “translation” theory.

DAVID: I view my soul as just that, an immaterial me which I contain in life. and since I contain it, it works just like me with the brain because it is me, and the brain is where thoughts originate when I put them there. In other words my soul is me, just as you have pointed out.

Yes, it is you, so why do you keep trying to make it a representation of you, or making it just like you? Yes, it works with the brain, and since you believe it is housed in the brain, of course the brain is the location in which thoughts originate. But it is the soul that originates them. DUALISM = two things (soul and brain/body) and NDEs are used as evidence that when the location disappears, only one thing is left: the thinking, feeling etc. soul. Therefore it must be the soul does the thinking and feeling etc.