Dualism versus materialism (Identity)

by dhw, Wednesday, July 19, 2017, 08:22 (2683 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: This was my statement: As long as my soul/me is in charge of this seamless mechanism, I'm OK with your statement. I view me, in life, as material with my soul onboard in my brain as immaterial.
This is a perfect dualistic statement that you have trouble accepting. I am, as I live, occupying a material body with a material brain, but that is working with an immaterial self/consciousness that is seamlessly interconnected, and the self/consciousness will disconnect at death and rejoin the universal consciousness.

dhw: I have no trouble with this dualistic statement. The trouble I have is that it directly contradicts your later statement that it is your material self that is currently in charge of running your immaterial self!

DAVID: No. I am currently a material living person, but at the same time I experience and use my immaterial self/consciousness. I am me controlling me in both states at the same time. Dualism.

As long as your soul/you is in control of the seamless mechanism, you accept my statement, but at the same time it is your body that is in control of you/your soul! That is not dualism. It is a contradiction, as exemplified by your next response:

DAVID: Of course, my body/brain responded in my earlier life to fright (adrenalin), pretty women (testosterone directed to my male parts with lust), etc. My material body is directly connected to my brain responses, but my thoughts, my intentions, etc. always appeared as immaterial concepts.

dhw: Once again you are ignoring the contradictions I keep pointing out. Was your material testosterone in charge, or your immaterial will?

DAVID: My mental (immaterial) response to a beautiful woman triggered my self (immaterial) through my brain's connection to my body to physically release testosterone which then created the immaterial thought and physical sensation of lust. It is all intertwined. Neither in charge but coordinated together at the two levels.

We are not talking about the link between the senses and the immaterial thought of lust, which of course are coordinated. I specifically referred to the will which, if you believe in dualism, I suggest to you is the part of your immaterial self that is in charge. Did your decision (to resist or to give in to your lust) depend on your immaterial will or not? If it did, does that not mean that the material self provided the information and the immaterial self took the decision (one way or the other), i.e. was in charge?

dhw: Your sentence beginning “That advanced degree of use…” is a complete fudge: in your dualistic world, whatever size brain you have will “allow” use by the immaterial self, but that does not make immaterial ideas dependent on the size of the material brain! You agreed before that it was the IMPLEMENTATION of the ideas that depended on the size of the brain. Now we are back to the simple question which you resisted answering for so long: do you believe that the material brain is the SOURCE of your ideas, thoughts, emotions, will etc. (materialism) or that these stem from your immaterial conscious self or “soul” (dualism)?

DAVID: They stem from my immaterial conscious self. I thought I'd been clear about that.

You had, but since your views change from day to day, I needed confirmation. If ideas etc. stem from your immaterial conscious self or “soul”, it is clearly contradictory to claim that beings could not come up with new ideas without an increase in the size of the brain. If you believe in dualism, it has to be the ideas first and the growth of the brain in response to the need for new actions to implement those ideas.