Big brain evolution: changes in sapiens skull shape (Evolution)

by dhw, Wednesday, February 07, 2018, 13:28 (2479 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The functional brain uses the s/s/c to think.

For a dualist, it is the s/s/c that thinks, and it uses the brain to implement its thoughts, as you explain in your next statement.

DAVID: In NDE's the s/s/c separates from the brain and in an unknown separate form can experience events which it can express only when reattached to a functional brain.

Precisely. Expression is the material implementation of the s/s/c’s immaterial thoughts/memories/interpretations, and implementation depends on the brain.

DAVID: They must work together when in life. As for your confusion, don't you control your own newly created thoughts through your s/s/c, by using your brain?

Yes, they work together: the s/s/c does the THINKING, and the brain provides information and does the implementing. You’ve got it! So don’t keep saying the s/s/c can’t THINK without a functional brain. Control entails the conscious will. If you think the conscious will is a product of the brain and not of the soul, so be it. That is materialism. I have an open mind on the subject. Open-mindedness is not the same as “confusion”. It simply means that one sees both sides, and cannot make a decision either way.

DAVID: The only way you can experience your s/s/c is with a living brain. They are inextricably connected. My s/s/c uses the brain to let me communicate with the thoughts I create. I=s s/s/c.

And yet you believe that NDE patients experience their s/s/c without a living brain. In life they are indeed inextricably connected: the one does the thinking and the other does the implementing. If I=the s/s/c, YOU don’t need to “communicate” with YOU or your thoughts! You know what your thoughts are! You use the brain to give material expression to your thoughts, as you inadvertently agreed earlier in this post.

dhw: If his story his true, Alexander’s soul returned to his body with full knowledge of its experience, “transmitted the NDE information into his brain”, and his brain enabled him to transcribe his immaterial experience into material form: 20,000 words.
DAVID: That fits his description. Note his s/s/c experienced the event, and Alexander interpreted it after his brain returned to functional state.

Alexander IS his s/s/c! And his s/s/c remembered and interpreted the experience, and used his functioning brain to give material expression to his recollections and his interpretations. Of course it could only do this after the brain returned to its functional state. (NB I continue to adopt the dualist approach in order to point out the contradictory nature of your arguments.)

dhw: ...you believe that NDEs prove we do NOT need the brain to think, and so the logical extension of this belief is that the brain is only required to give material form to immaterial thought, i.e. it is a complete contradiction to argue that you cannot think without a functional brain and that the hominin could not have thought up his concepts if his brain had not already expanded.
DAVID: You are so confused. You keep forgetting the s/s/c is in two different states during an NDE, with an without a functional brain.

You are so confused. During an NDE (and an OBE) the s/s/c – according to all the doctors – is without a functional brain. That is why NDEs (and OBEs) are regarded as evidence for dualism.

DAVID: In the NDE the s/s/c experiences and receives information (brain not functioning), which it only can transmit to a functional brain as function returns.

Correct. As above, the s/s/c informs the resuscitated brain of its experiences so that the brain can give material expression to the s/s/c’s experience and interpretation of that experience.

DAVID: Of course we need a functional brain to think.

Welcome back to materialism. But dualists believe that the s/s/c does the thinking – as appears to be demonstrated by NDEs. We need a functional brain to express or implement our thoughts.

Apologies for all the repetition, but if you keep repeating your contradictions, I have no choice but to keep pointing them out.