A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE chemical problems (Identity)

by dhw, Monday, August 06, 2018, 13:50 (2089 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: 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.
DAVID: 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!

I am my soul, I think with my brain, and so my soul thinks with my brain: this is as logical as saying a dog is an animal, an elephant is an animal, and therefore a dog is an elephant. First of all, I am my soul AND my brain, but this does not mean the soul and the brain do the same thing. Secondly, I am not asking what “is” the soul (it is the immaterial part of the self), but what do the soul and the brain DO. Thirdly, as I have complained ad nauseam, “thinks with the brain” (like your other mantra, “uses” the brain to think) has to be explained before you can talk of “logic”. Under “Egnor” you say explicitly that the brain produces thought; elsewhere you say explicitly that the soul initiates thought; and you also believe that the soul alone produces thought when there is no brain (after death). These contradictions lead to such absurdities as described at the very end of this post. But meanwhile, in answer to the question of what the soul and the brain DO, I keep repeating that the soul thinks (more below), and the brain provides it with information and material expression. And you still haven’t come up with any other function apart from those you appear to have jettisoned (translation, copy, representation, reflection). Why, then, do you still refuse to accept that in dualistic life you are your soul and brain, and your soul is the immaterial part of you responsible for all your immaterial attributes (consciousness, thought, will, emotion, memory etc.) while your brain provides the information it thinks about and the material expression necessary for life in a material world? I really don’t understand why you feel you have to keep scrabbling around with all the different theories you propose and then discard.

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!

DAVID: 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.

If we all share the same confusion, it is murky, and the only thing it has added to your theorizing is that instead of the afterlife you now talk of quantum reality.

dhw: …why can’t your separate piece of God’s consciousness be conscious in life as you think it is in death? For “using the brain” see above.

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

What do you mean by “supporting” consciousness? You keep telling us that the brain produces consciousness in the form of its electrical waves. Now the brain has to “have” consciousness (the conscious soul your God breathed into the body) before it can produce consciousness. Do you really find this logical? Might I suggest that if the soul is already conscious, it has to have the addition of a brain to give its consciousness material form? After all, if the soul is a piece of your God’s consciousness, it must have existed before the brain! (Don’t ask me how God pops it in – I’m only debating the meaning of dualism, not whether it’s true.)