A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE chemical problems (Identity)

by dhw, Tuesday, August 07, 2018, 09:52 (2086 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: …why can’t your separate piece of God’s consciousness be conscious in life as you think it is in death?

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.

dhw" 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.)

DAVID: Your paragraph above is the nubbin of our difference. We know that when we think the brain is producing electric waves that contain the thought. We don't know how consciousness appears from this material presentation of it.

How can consciousness appear from the material presentation of consciousness? The material presentation of consciousness is its expression, not its source! That is why in the good old days you told us that the soul was the initiator of thought, which has now abruptly changed into the brain being the initiator of thought (“a sick brain produces sick thought”, “the immaterial output from the brain is thought”).

DAVID: We both seem to agree the soul is somehow related to the physical appearance of consciousness. In life I do not think the soul, which is my essence, can develop thought without using the brain to accomplish it as I know I do.

And back you go to the same old mantra: the soul uses the brain. And I keep asking you what use it makes of the brain other than to acquire information and to give its thoughts material expression. And you keep coming up with theories about translation and copy and representation, which you then discard. What other use does the soul make of the brain?

DAVID: This is my version of dualism. I know it is not yours because you have a theory of dualism I do not recognize.

What don’t you recognize? Do you reject the version of dualism that has the soul using the brain for information and material expression? Do you reject the version in which the soul contains all our immaterial attributes, such as consciousness, the ability to think, will, emotion, memory – all of which live on after the death of the brain?

DAVID: As for my soul I don't think it appeared until I was born and developed conscious use of the brain as I developed.

Agreed. Now once more we have a soul consciously using the brain. Not a conscious soul that can’t be conscious until the brain has produced electrical waves that contain consciousness.

DAVID: Remember I think we start as a blank slate and develop our personage over a lifetime as a material person and as a soul. I see me as a material me and an immaterial soul, but I experience material me as in change of me which is then represented by my immaterial soul.

Blank slate is debatable in the light of heredity, but that is not the point here. Dualism does indeed mean that you are a material body/brain and an immaterial soul, but I don’t understand the last part of your comment. Both your body and your soul experience change all through life, and it is your soul that is conscious of the changes, because your soul is your conscious mind (let’s forget your “trialism” theory). I don’t know why your “me” is “represented” by your soul. You soul IS your “me”. Apart from that, I see no difference between your concept of dualism and my own.