Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, November 14, 2015, 15:32 (3084 days ago) @ dhw


> Agreed. ....However, hidden in this account is an assumption which is absolutely wide open to dispute and ultimately leads to far more questions than it answers:-Only if you allow yourself to get tied up in knots over the presence of consciousness and free will. 
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> dhw: I agree again about abstract thinking, but what grounds does he have for claiming that our intellect and will are wholly immaterial? Has he magically stumbled upon the source of consciousness?-Consciousness and abstract thought are not immaterial? Really? Then what are they?-> dhw Strangely, he includes imagination among the material attributes. The imagination is as “abstract” a faculty as the will and the intellect, so why can't abstract reasoning also be a "material power"? I'm not saying it is - I'm saying nobody knows the source. But this article treats dualism as a fact, and it is not.-It is to me. The brain is the substrate for consciousness. I still accept: 'I think therefore I am'.
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> dhw: What, then, is the point of it? Let us all agree that we are humans and not apes. But do we therefore have an immaterial identity whereas apes do not? ..... Perhaps I am doing the author an injustice, but belief in dualism is usually connected to some kind of religious agenda, and if so we should hear it together with all its unproven and unprovable assumptions.... I would argue that our mental superiority denotes absolutely nothing except that we are mentally superior.-Spoken like a true agnostic. Egnor and I are both physicians and view humans from a different perspective than you do. And Adler obviously accepted dualism