Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: Mind immaterial (General)

by David Turell , Tuesday, February 06, 2018, 18:40 (2480 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID’s comment: this is the essence of my dualism concept. Abstract though has no physical representation in my mind as my dog does. But I have both particular thought and abstract thought mediated by material neurons and their connections. My s/s/c must use my brain to do both types of thought. There has to be a material and an immaterial level, which is dualism.

dhw: I hate to be rude, but most of this article is a verbose statement of the blindingly obvious. Even a materialist will recognize the difference between concrete objects and abstract ideas! As Egnor says, your brain passes on images of concrete objects but not of abstract ideas. And once you start, for instance, analysing the behaviour of your dog, it is your s/s/c that does the thinking, based on the information delivered by the brain, and the thinking becomes an abstract idea. It is the dualist’s soul that thinks abstract ideas, no matter whether those ideas are based on concrete objects, sensory perceptions, or on other people’s ideas, or on past experiences, books, newspaper articles, TV programmes. The brain provides the information, the s/s/c thinks about it, and then uses the brain to express itself in material ways (implementation). THAT is dualism. But none of this sheds any light on the origin of consciousness. The materialist will simply argue that consciousness emerges from the interaction between cells - regardless of whether the ideas are based on concrete objects or abstract ideas.

Good analysis, but sensory information about real objects are vastly different than abstract thought which may have no relation to reality. As for materialists they have a right to invent consciousness from wet neurons, since none of know why we experience our level of self-awareness when no other living organism with a brain can do it.