Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example (General)

by David Turell , Saturday, August 18, 2018, 18:33 (2079 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: I have no idea what you mean by the electricity “representing” thought. The only explanation you have given me so far is that the English-speaking soul thinks gibberish which creates electricity in the brain and the electricity goes back to the English-speaking soul which translates the gibberish into English. Why the soul should be capable of translating the gibberish into English but not capable of thinking its thought in English is beyond me.

DAVID: My soul is me and we together initiate the thought/electricity in the brain. Your proposal separates you from your activity and your soul's activity, and you don't see the separation. Are you your soul or not?

dhw: Yes, I am my soul, and since my soul is me, the only “we” who do things “together” are my soul and my brain. That is dualism. It is you who repeatedly separate my soul from me! I am quite happy to agree with you that the dualist’s soul initiates thought and is situated in the brain, but I don’t know why you have to bracket thought and electricity together as if they were the same thing. That is the basis of your extraordinary translation theory above. My proposal at the head of this post could hardly be clearer, but I’ll look forward to hearing which statements you reject. Your objection that the soul needs the brain’s electric currents in order to produce a thought clashes with your acceptance that the electric currents are the brain’s response to the thoughts of the soul. How can the brain respond to thought if the thought has not yet been created?

See below. I view the brain as my and my soul's tool for thought creation.

David: But you've not accepted my view that I/soul use the brain in creation of thought.

dhw: I have accepted it a hundred times: in creating thought, the soul uses the brain for information and material expression. What I do not accept is your illogical translation theory, but perhaps you can answer my objections to it. Once more: either the brain’s electricity creates thought (materialism), or the soul’s thoughts cause electricity in the brain (dualism). Drugs/diseases suggest the former, and psychic experiences and experiments with learning suggest the latter. Hence the dichotomy we are trying to resolve. What is your objection to this statement?

One more time: as the soul and I, being the same, think, that process creates the electric waves in the brain which represent the thought. The brain on its own is only a tool for me and my soul. My soul and I process the thought by use of the electricity. How I 'hear' words in my head as I think is 'the hard problem' part of consciousness, and I have proposed that my soul provides the mechanism for the translation back from the electricity. Active thought is seen in fMRI's as increased blood flow, nothing more but it demonstrates the brain's activity in thought. If thought is electricity in the b rain, it must have a way of being translated back from electrical currents in living neurons and their connections. I'm simply trying to account for what we know about brain activity and conscious thought which is immaterial.