A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE chemical problems (Identity)

by David Turell , Sunday, August 12, 2018, 15:49 (2077 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: In my statements I am describing me within the material side of life, and I do not accept the premise that only the soul provides free will. In life I know I have choice in decision-making, and my soul as me does also. I/soul make choices all the time. We have identified a differences in our concepts of soul.

Now you are separating your soul from me! You’re saying “I” make choices and so does my soul! I didn’t ask you to choose between yourself and your soul as the source of free will. I proposed that it was the soul and not the body/brain that made the choices, and you opted for the body/brain.

I only pointed out the material side of the problem which you refuse to recognize.

DAVID: Again a difference in concept. My soul does not give me the ability to think. Soul/I use the brain to create thought in the electricity and the soul gives me consciousness to interpret the electricity.

dhw: Once again separating me from soul. “You” are your soul and your body/brain. Now you have your soul giving your soul and your brain consciousness. How does the soul give your soul and brain consciousness if it isn’t conscious? And how can your soul be conscious if it can’t think? (Electricity is dealt with under “Egnor”.) And omitted from all these convolutions is your belief that the soul is conscious and thoughtful when the brain is dead.

Dead is different realm from I/soul alive using brain to think .

DAVID: I am not a materialist. I do not believe the soul is created by the material brain. It comes from God.

dhw: A material brain that creates a soul could also come from your God. But if you wish to go back to your theory that the soul is a piece of God’s consciousness, then may I suggest that it makes sense for a piece of God’s consciousness to be conscious.

My consciousness is not God's consciousness, I think my soul provides a way to reach consciousness from a material brain. If I had as direct connection to ?God's consciousness faith in God would not be needed. I would have direct knowledge of God.

DAVID: I see no dichotomy in the way I view the material side and try to explain consciousness as a property of the soul.

dhw: Again, how can consciousness be a property of the soul if it doesn’t have the ability to think? Instead of it thinking, you have it interpreting the electric waves from the brain, although somehow it initiates the waves that are supposed to contain the thought which requires interpretation by a soul that can't think the thought it is interpreting! The weaverbird's knots are child's play compared to all this!

You and I have stated we think with our brains. Start your thinking about consciousness from that point. In life I/soul think by using the brains electric networks.

DAVID: You seem to separate the soul from the functions of the brain by having the soul separately create thought and then tell the brain what to think so I recognize what I am thinking! I/soul think as one using the brain as a processor of thought.

dhw: If the soul is the immaterial thinking self that survives the death of the brain, then of course it creates thought! And so it uses the brain for information and material expression, not for the actual process of thinking (just as in your afterlife it thinks without the brain). The “I” that recognizes what “I” am thinking is the dualist’s soul. It doesn’t tell the brain what to think; the soul does the thinking, and the brain responds. The brain doesn’t “process” thought – that is the work of the soul – but it implements thought (e.g. the illiterate women). But all this is countered by the fact that drugs and diseases change the brain and hence our behaviour (see the section of the Egnor post which you ignored), thus creating the dichotomy which you refuse to recognize, even though it is the cause of your own struggle in trying to reconcile the two conflicting sets of evidence.

I think the soul is immaterial and plays different roles in life and death, which are completely different, and require differences. If you are alive and your brain is dead, can you have thoughts? In an NDE the soul observes the afterlife and then when it comes back to a living brain, electricity appears which sre the thoughts the soul presents to you about the experience, and interprets the electricity as conscious thought. We know the presence of electricity must return.