Dualism (Identity)

by dhw, Wednesday, March 11, 2015, 18:04 (3544 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I am sure the extreme complexity of our brain, as compared to lower animals, results in a much more complex form of consciousness, which we certainly have.
dhw: This seems contradictory. If consciousness is independent of the living brain, how can the complexity of the brain RESULT in complex consciousness?
DAVID: By being a more complex receiver, receiving more complex 'wave lengths'-But a receiver receives; it doesn't produce. The production comes from elsewhere. What you are saying makes the brain passive, and a passive “consciousness” would put humans in precisely the situation you want to impose on bacteria: namely, that they receive instructions and do not initiate them.
 
DAVID: Under this thought, there is a universal consciousness ‘put there' with lower and higher levels that can be ‘received' by the brain at its current level of complexity (or ‘receivingness').
dhw: Vaguer and vaguer. Why does there have to be a universal consciousness just because each of us has a complex consciousness of our own? Why not zillions of individual consciousnesses? What you have written actually suggests that we are not thinking our own thoughts at all, but thinking (“receiving”) God's thoughts. Exit free will.
DAVID: Not at all. I make my own thoughts. My consciousness is simply using part of the universal consciousness which allows me to do that. [...] In other words I download part of the UC to use until I pass on. No more unreasonable than all the other theories.-So what is the universal consciousness transmitting to your receiver brain? Clearly not thought, if you are thinking your own thoughts. If you mean the universal consciousness has given you the means to think your own thoughts, but that means is not the brain (which is only a receiver), what is it? A blank blob of God's consciousness for you to shape as you will (because you think your own thoughts)? What then is “you”, if your God has given “you” a blob to shape? (You will notice that I opened this thread under the category of “Identity”.) These are the sort of questions that, as Tony says, make our heads hurt, but that is the point of such a forum - to consider, articulate, question the various theories, in the hope that eventually something might make sense. 
 
As for using part of the UC until you pass on, this sounds as if you lose your particular blob when you die - which is the exact opposite of the NDE. Could you perhaps be a little more explicit? -xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
 
TONY: These conversations kind of make my head hurt because we start swinging all over the map, partly because no one really sets up any definitions and sticks with them throughout the conversation.-The problem of consciousness makes most heads hurt! The framework you've given us is very stimulating, although as a non-technical ignoramus, I'm never at ease with computer analogies. I need to give it some more thought, but perhaps you could start me on my way by explaining what your “external user” and “third party independent interpreter” are analogous to in the two sentences below:-TONY: To use my old computer analogy, the hardware is one requirement, but without some form of external power and external user, the hardware is useless. [...] Yet, without any of these components, along with a third party independent interpreter, all of the energy, hardware, and information are useless.