A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE chemical problems (Identity)

by dhw, Saturday, August 11, 2018, 09:40 (2077 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: But I've said all along my soul and I are the same and work as the same entity.

dhw: So now we have a copy of you, which is on the quantum side of reality, being the same as you and working as one, except that the copy of you doesn’t have free will, because it is your body/brain that has free will.

DAVID: More confused interpretation of what I write. Free will decisions are made by me/soul using the brain to think.

The confusion arises from your constant changes of mind. Here is the exchange:

DAVID: I am in charge.
dhw: In charge means free will, and if I believed in dualism I’d say that free will is an attribute of the immaterial soul, not of the material body. Do you agree?
DAVID: I think my material body/brain has free will.

I then expressed my surprise, and continue to do so.

dhw: The problem is straightforward! Dualism divides us into soul and body/brain, with the soul comprising all our immaterial attributes (including consciousness and the ability to think), and for those who believe in an afterlife, the soul lives on with all those attributes. But against this are the findings of materialists who seize on the indisputable influence of the body/brain on those immaterial attributes and believe that eventually they will be able to prove that the body/brain are responsible for all those attributes. I don’t know why you refuse to consider the possibility that the materialists are right, but the material mechanisms may be (it is only a hypothesis) capable of producing the immaterial self that dualists believe in. This hypothesis allows for whatever faith you wish to embrace.

DAVID: The electricity in the brain is the problem I am trying to solve.

Yet another shift of focus. The problem we have been trying to solve for months and months on this thread and several others is the dichotomy between your own dualism and your own materialism, and for some reason you refuse (a) to acknowledge it and (b) to consider the solution that I have proposed. I have responded to the electricity question on the Egnor thread about dualism.