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

by dhw, Thursday, November 19, 2015, 19:58 (3292 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by dhw, Thursday, November 19, 2015, 20:13

dhw: You say the brain helps “you”, but the brain is just as capable of hindering “you” - through age, disease, drugs.
DAVID: Of course we age and have diseases. it is not the brain's fault, as you imply. We are built to age, just as the brain is built to adapt itself to my mental demands on it as I learn new things to do or remember.-I am not blaming the brain! I am saying that the condition of the brain clearly affects the condition of what you call “you”. The point lies in the next observation:
 
dhw: If it can help, hinder or change “you”, how can we be sure that it does not actually make “you”? Do "you" command it, or does it command “you”? Materialists will claim it's the latter.-DAVID: And they are fools. I never sense the brain is controlling me and I feel fully in control, but I am normal. The schizophrenic cannot say that, and it is here the materialist has a point. Again, a normally functional brain is controlled by the person.-And that is my point. If an aged, diseased or drugged brain can change “you”, how can we say with any conviction that the “you” is an immaterial being that controls the brain? If the brain is “normal”, it may control the person “normally”. -dhw: And so once again your admission that “we do not know how it works” may be turned into “we do not know what is at work.” 
DAVID: Here I agree.-Thank you. This means that neither you nor materialists are fools. We simply do not know what makes “you”, regardless of the fact that you “feel” fully in control.
 
dhw: Perhaps, after all this discussion, you could remind us just why “kind” rather than “degree” is so important to you.
DAVID: Just following Adler's approach: Difference in Kind means we are specially created. His book explains all of this.
dhw: I am sure you are perfectly capable of defending your own beliefs without constantly referring to Adler. .....- DAVID: His point which I have fully accepted, is the gulf between animals and us is so vast that we are different in kind. I use his name with you as you use Shapiro and others with me. Have you read their books for a full interpretive understanding of their positions?-The original post and your comment that our fellow animals have “a degree of immaterial thought” make it plain that our degree is (vastly) greater than theirs, and if you believe that we and apes had a common ancestor, “specially created” sounds like a contradiction in terms. As for reading the books, when scientists state in interviews quite categorically that cells are sentient, cognitive, decision-making beings, and that those who believe the contrary do so out of “large organisms chauvinism”, I can't believe that they really mean cells are automatons. I then feel free to speculate on the possible implications of their observations.