Free Will, Consciousness, Identity (Identity)

by David Turell , Wednesday, August 22, 2012, 15:24 (4475 days ago) @ dhw
edited by unknown, Wednesday, August 22, 2012, 15:38

I struggle to make sense of your suggestion that the material brain somehow creates an immaterial mind that acts independently of the material brain and controls it. But I'm no less confused than you, since I find materialism and dualism equally unconvincing! However, what really surprises me is that you are so reluctant to embrace mind/body dualism when your own faith is rooted in just such an immaterial form of will and consciousness ... namely, God.-I'll admit I'm as confused as you are and as you make me sound in your analysis of what I have written. I agree that the brain is material and the mind is immaterial. I believe I have free will, that the biochemical/ electrical impulses generated between brain cells are run by me, not the other way around. So there are two dual parts, but my free will allows me to exert control over the immaterial part. From my readings of van Lommel's research, I think his idea of a receiver brain may have some merit based on quantum duality. Just how all of it works is in the stage of a fuzzy concept. The dualism I accept is what I have written, nothing more. My mind is not fully separate from me or my control. But it is not material, it is of this reality and I control it. It can separate from me in an NDE during 'clinical' death but it can be retained by a non-functional brain as a memory afterward, so it is never fully separate. It is important to remember that memory is a whole brain process, not just one identifiable spot of the brain. I keep coming back to a quantum hologram concept. My concept of dualism is material/immaterial intertwined, never entirely separate. Total separation makes no sense. God is all mind, no body, a quantum cloud of energy, which my brain allows me to mimic somehow. And the key is still hidden in quantum theory, that portion which is not yet understood, and may never be. It creates the ghost in the machine.-Philosophic slicing and dicing is where my eyes glaze over. Its angels dancing on the pinhead again, for it leads to nothing. I can go only so far as I can go. I suspect it may never be fully explained, and we will have to accept only what we can know, not keep chewing at it like a dog with a bone, or as Scarlet O'Hara said, "I'll worry about that tomorrow".-To see how our frontal lobes control thought:-http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120821144128.htm