Dualism versus materialism (Identity)

by dhw, Friday, June 30, 2017, 13:13 (2702 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You believe you have a material receiver brain and an immaterial conscious self. So do you believe your ideas come from your material receiver brain or from your immaterial conscious self?

DAVID: I create my own ideations using my material brain to employ my immaterial consciousness. A seamless arrangement.

dhw: “I” is your immaterial conscious self. "Employ" is a synonym of "use". So your immaterial conscious self creates its ideas by using your material brain to use your immaterial conscious self. Your seamless arrangement is one tangled knot as you struggle to avoid giving me a direct answer to a straightforward question.

DAVID: Perhaps I don't understand your question. My concept is quite clear to me, but perhaps the details (which don't exist) are what you want.

I don’t want details. I want a straight answer to a straight question. Since this whole discussion revolves around that one question, I am skipping the rest of your post, as you repeat your concept and I would only repeat my objections to it, as above. You have expressed your belief in an immaterial conscious self, which survives the death of brain and body. We all agree that we have a material brain. Under “Consciousness: a neurosurgeon’s observations” (thank you for this excellent essay) there is a quote from Francis Crick:
“A person’s mental activities are entirely due to the behaviour of nerve cells, glial cells, and the atoms, ions, and molecules that make them up and influenced them.” Do you accept this view?

If not, do you accept Aquinas’s view that our mental activities (e.g. ideas) are the product of an immaterial soul?