Free Will, Consciousness, Identity (Identity)

by David Turell , Thursday, August 23, 2012, 22:06 (4474 days ago) @ dhw

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.
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> 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.-Agreed. -> 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.-How much ghost is there in a newborn? The brain has to develop enough to create a mind, or to receive it. But I experienced creating myself. I did not feel that it was radioed to me to acccept. 
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> 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.-I agree-> 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.-Exactly. You are separating the two, the material brain and the mind too much. They are intertwined. You create the 'non-physical energy' and you control it. Mind and brain do separate in an NDE, which strenghtens the concept of afterlife, a gathering of quantum souls in a giant herd in heaven.-At Bates College came the following story. A prof, while visiting Asia, was told that giant worms could be chopped into ten parts, and each part would create a new worm. He was also told that each worm, as well as all other animals had souls. His question, of course, was did the original soul get chopped into ten parts, or were there nine soul-less worms. He never got a straight answer.