A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two; addendum (Identity)

by dhw, Monday, July 30, 2018, 10:05 (2091 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

dhw: 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 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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Please read the bolded statements above. You have missed the critical essence of them. As usual you have pushed me to delve deeper into what I intuitively sense.

But sadly I have not pushed you into giving direct responses to two straightforward requests. You go on to ignore your translation theory, and to ignore the proposal that your piece of God’s consciousness will be the same thinking mechanism in life as in death. Instead you go back to another jumbled-up theory:

DAVID: ….in life I am in command, I decide what to think, how to shape my personality and my life. I am me.

And what does this dualist’s “me” consist of? The soul and the brain/body. Which of them decides what to think etc.?

DAVID: So what is my soul? It is an immaterial recording immaterial reflection of me, much like a CD in my computer as I create a file of my thoughts. But unlike a material CD it is a living immaterial copy of me.

But you keep telling us that your soul IS you. Why does it have now to be a copy of you? Yes, it records what it and your material body experience in life. That is called memory. But doesn’t it also process information, feel emotions, make decisions? No, back we go to the same old mantra: “My soul, inseparable from me, uses the brain networks in thought.” And I ask you what these uses are, other than providing information and giving material expression to thought, and all you come up with is the translation theory which you have not even commented on here.

DAVID: And my soul is the immaterial source of consciousness as it resides within me since it is connected to God's universal consciousness to which it returns in death.

Thank you for this. Yes, the soul is the dualist’s source of consciousness, which is what I keep telling you. And there is no reason why it should have to translate its thoughts into electrical brain waves which bring the thoughts back for it to translate so that the soul can understand its own thought! If the soul is the source of consciousness, it is the source of thought: it is the immaterial thinking, feeling, decision-making you, which in life works together with the material information-gathering, materially expressing you.

DAVID: My view of my soul in afterlife is that it is still a copy of me. There is no newly original part of me that is invented.

I don’t understand why it has to be a copy of you. In life and in death it IS you. And I’m glad you agree that nothing new has to be invented. There is no new mechanism for thought. The soul continues to be the thinking, feeling you.

DAVID: In heaven, as described by Eben Alexander my soul observes, learns and operates telepathically.

Exactly. The thinking, feeling, remembering soul uses psychic means to replace the material means by which in life it gathered information and communicated.

DAVID: I hope this clears up your confusion about my thoughts.

I am pushing you to delve deeper because it seems to me that not only are your thoughts confused but, more importantly, that your intuition leads you to precisely the same concept of dualism as my own. These weird theories about “translation” and “copy” are very recent, and I think they have popped up because just like me, you are torn between the tenets of dualism and of materialism and are scrabbling around to find ways of reconciling them (or in your case, of ignoring the dichotomy). I don’t mean this to sound offensive. I think we are both struggling, and my criticism of your latest theories is made in the same spirit as your criticism of my own theory. We are looking for clarification of something that is anything but clear.