A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two; addendum (Identity)

by dhw, Sunday, July 29, 2018, 10:12 (2091 days ago) @ David Turell

We are going round in circles, so I will condense the argument to what seem to be the two main points on which we disagree.

DAVID: I am me and my soul is me. No separation. When I think my soul thinks, because in life we are one and the same. You are the separatist. For you only the soul thinks.

DAVID: In life I am a material me, and I run everything. I view the soul as recording all of me as I live and develop and producing the immaterial consciousness we cannot otherwise explain.

I am not separating me from my soul but am doing precisely what you have just done: distinguishing between the two parts of the dualist’s self (the “me”), which are the immaterial soul/mind and the material body/brain. So what “runs” what? You view the soul as producing the immaterial consciousness we cannot otherwise explain, and you define it as being part of your God’s consciousness, which by definition must be conscious, i.e. able to think. That would make perfect sense to me if I were a believer. And yet you go on to say that although your soul initiates thoughts (still part of your God’s consciousness, then), the thoughts are not thoughts until the soul has translated them into electrical brain waves which bring them back to the soul to be translated. I do not understand why this rigmarole is necessary. I can, however, understand why it is necessary for the soul’s thoughts to be translated into electrical waves in order for the brain to give them material expression.

So 1) please explain why your piece of God’s consciousness cannot think thoughts until its thoughts have been translated into electricity and then retranslated back into thoughts.

DAVID: My theory is that it [the soul] has two mechanisms of thought to fit two different mechanisms of existence in life and death.

2) Please explain what is wrong with the hypothesis that if the source of the self’s immaterial consciousness, i.e. the ability to think, is a piece of your immaterial God’s consciousness, it will be the same immaterial consciousness, i.e. ability to think, in life as in death, and the only new “mechanisms” will be those used for observation and communication.