Free Will, Consciousness, Identity (Identity)

by dhw, Thursday, August 23, 2012, 17:09 (4474 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: 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 round. So there are dual parts, but my free will allows me to exert control over the immaterial part.-You need to keep differentiating. When you say "run by me", I presume "me" = your immaterial part. Your free will (if you have it) has to be immaterial, and if it runs the impulses between brain cells, it exerts control over the material part, within given constraints, as well as the immaterial part, though also within given constraints (see my last paragraph). -DAVID: It [the mind] 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...-This is confusing. In NDEs, the brain-dead patient retains his/her identity, and recognizes people from his/her past. This entails memory, which means the memory is also part of the immaterial mind/identity. -DAVID: 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.-So long as we are physically alive, of course the two must be intertwined. The immaterial mind ... as you said in the first quote ... controls the material brain, and as physical beings we cannot function without this interaction. But if you believe that the mind can separate from the body in an NDE, total separation does make sense. The patients return to their bodies and to material-immaterial interaction, but their NDE has been one of total separation, and this is essential to your concept of God, who is all mind and no body. With this concept, it is not the brain "allowing" you to mimic God: your immaterial self IS an echo of God's immaterialism, but he has designed your body/brain as a temporary physical container for your immaterial self (the "ghost in the machine"). That, as I see it (but seeing is not believing!), is the essence of mind-body or so-called "substance" dualism.-Your confusion is different from mine, which arises firstly from the fact that I am faced with a stark choice between materialism and dualism, but remain unconvinced by both theories. There is no way that I shall ever be able to understand how material cells can produce consciousness with all its hugely complex manifestations. Nor, however, can I conceive of any form of non-physical energy that is aware of itself and somehow gets into my skull to exercise control over my brain. It is the same dilemma as with unbelievable chance versus an unimaginable, immaterial, self-generated designer. Secondly, if I were to opt for dualism, I would have no way of knowing the extent to which my immaterial will is directed by factors beyond its own control (heredity, upbringing, past events etc.). And so, as usual, I perch on my picket fence. "My" free choice, the choice of my material brain cells, or the choice of unconscious influences that control my immaterial identlty? Who knows? -I like your conclusion: "I suspect it may never be fully explained, and we will have to accept only what we can know." Yep, that's agnosticism for you.