A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE chemical problems (Identity)

by David Turell , Sunday, August 05, 2018, 19:21 (2091 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Doesn't conscious thought have a beginning? An analysis of the role of soul, if it exists, has to start by recognizing physical/material evidence. The material me thinks with the brain networks. Somehow conscious thought appears to me. Logically if the soul is the immaterial essence of me, the soul and material I initiate thought together.

dhw: There is no logic in this at all. Of course conscious thought has a beginning. Logically if the soul is the immaterial essence of you which survives the death of the brain, the soul must be the part of you that thinks, unless you believe that you stop thinking when you enter the afterlife.

Your presentation of logic starts from your view of what is the soul. As I wrote elsewhere, you are your soul. In material life which we know is real, we think with our brains. So your soul is doing the same!

dhw: I wondered how long it would be before you wandered back to the murky quantum world. Of course your soul, if it exists, gives its thought material expression in this reality through its use of the brain. As for the “wall of separation”, you believe that when the brain dies, the soul will enter another reality, but by now calling this a “quantum reality” you change nothing in the argument!

I'm simply adding back what must be considered. I'm sorry if you feel 'it murky'. We all share the same confusion about it, but it must be considered in theorizing.

DAVID: In this concept my soul is part of the quantum reality, which is the mind of God, which under girds the universe. When you follow this pattern thought, my view of what a soul might be makes sense. The immaterial quantum soul goes to the afterlife across the 'wall' to the quantum layer of reality where the afterlife exists.

dhw: Quantum this and quantum that tells us nothing about the role of the soul in life. On the assumption that your God’s mind is conscious, why can’t our part of his mind be conscious too? Why does it have to be a mechanism that works with the brain to produces electric waves before it can think? (Although you actually have it thinking with the brain in order to produce the waves, so it thinks before it can even produce thought!)

Once again separating soul from brain. You are your soul and you and your soul must think using the brain. Pure logic.

DAVID: I know your definition. It doesn't include my considerations of the quantum portion of reality….

dhw: As above, your considerations of the quantum portion of reality do not explain the role of the soul in life, or offer us one single brain function beyond those of information and expression.

Again ignoring that you/soul must think using the brain. The brain is used to create thought and express it.

DAVID: ……or of how the soul might be the mechanism that produces consciousness from electricity.

dhw: Also as above, why can’t the piece of your God’s mind be conscious, just as it is when apparently it hops over the “wall of uncertainty” to rejoin its source?

It is conscious considering that God 'breathes a soul into the body'.

DAVID: Note that Penrose has a theory about quantum activity intrinsic in the brain. Thought occurs only in the brain in reality. All analyses of the possible existence of a soul and how it functions must begin with that fact.

dhw: We have agreed that if the soul exists, it is situated “in the brain in reality”. That does not help us to understand its FUNCTION. The possible existence of a soul depends on your belief (a) that the brain is NOT a mechanism for consciousness, and (b) that there is an afterlife, or “quantum reality”, in which your immaterial, consciously thinking essence survives the death of the material you.

The brain is a basic material mechanism for supporting consciousness, but it has to have something added ( a soul) to have consciousness appear from the material side.