A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two; addendum (Identity)

by dhw, Monday, July 23, 2018, 09:49 (2103 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: We know that thought is accompanied by electrical waves in the brain.

DAVID: Accompanied? In material life thought is created by electric activity in the brain.

A week or so ago it was the soul that initiated thought. I am of course pleased to hear that you have now been converted to the materialism that forms the first part of my “theory”.

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

dhw: Again your new term “represented”. What does it mean? We know that there are electrical waves in the brain when we think.

DAVID: They are creating thought.

I’ve kept this in, just to confirm your conversion to materialism. The soul no longer creates thought. It is created by the brain.

dhw: 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: Your separatist view that the soul dictates to the brain. i know as I/soul use the brain to create thought. I view my soul as translating into ions and back out from the ions the thought I/soul created using the ions.

Above, it was the electrical waves of the brain that created thought. But now we have the English-speaking soul translating thought into electrical waves, and then translating them back again into English. Bewildering.

DAVID We can't have thoughts without the ions. But what you hear in your mind is English words. Somehow the thought created electricity is translated back into English. I say the soul provides that immaterial mechanism.

First we had the soul creating thought,and now the electrical waves from the brain create it, but apparently the brain doesn’t think in English. So why do you say the thought is translated BACK into English (in which case it must have been in English originally). This is getting silly. Either our soul (dualism) or our brain (materialism) creates the thought, and whichever it is will create the thought in English, because that is what you and I think in.

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

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Isn't that 'use' enough, to think/have consciousness because of the complexity of the ions in the brain's networks? That is material initiation and expression. And we can't explain it.

Wonderful. You really are embracing the theory I offered you in the first place: that the brain is the source of thought and is also the means of material expression. Pure materialism. I then go on to suggest that the form of energy created by the brain may live on (hence psychic phenomena such as ghosts and déjà vu), just as we can view the immaterial image of real events that happened long ago, but whether it can live on as an independent source of thought is a matter of faith.

dhw: […] 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.

DAVID: You seem to be accepting my view that the soul functions differently in life and in death.

The dualist’s soul and brain have different functions in life, the soul being the source and container of thoughts, feelings etc., just as it is in death. However, in death it clearly cannot gather information or express itself by using the material brain, and so it uses psychic means.

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Once again you are separating yourself from your soul. My soul is me. Dualism = two things (soul/me and brain/body). My soul is the God-given mechanism that creates consciousness from electrical activity and is my immaterial image that enters the afterlife.

Firstly, it is you who keep separating yourself from your soul, and secondly you have repeated the theistic version of my theory: that your God created a mechanism whereby the brain produces consciousness (materialism). See above for the continuation. Thank you for supporting my theory.