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

by dhw, Wednesday, March 21, 2018, 12:58 (2437 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You continually ignore the fact that I am alive and can only reach my s/s/c, to act on it or alter its thought pattern, is by working through my brain. I change conclusions by using my brain. My s/s/c never tells me what to do. I have free will and have modified me all of my life by thinking with my brain.

As you have agreed time and time again, your dualist’s soul/self/consciousness IS yourself. Your free will is part of your self/soul/consciousness; it is not part of your brain unless you are a materialist and do not believe in an immaterial s/s/c. A dualist’s s/s/c thinks and uses the brain.

DAVID: In implementing my new original thoughts my brain is modifying the personality construct of me, the s/s/c. This is my relationship with my s/s/c in life. Again, in death, the entire situation is different. My s/s/c is static, observing, but never creating any new facet of my personality. You keep trying to join life and death as a single entity for the s/s/c in which to act.

Our discussion concerns what happens in life, because you keep insisting that the s/s/c depends on the brain for its ability to think. NDEs are only relevant to this discussion in so far as you use them to prove that the s/s/c is a separate entity from the brain (although of course they work together in life), which is the core of dualism. If you consist of an immaterial thinking you and a material implementing you, and the immaterial thinking you continues to be the immaterial thinking you when there is no brain, it is a clear contradiction to say that the thinking you cannot think without a brain. WHAT you think about in death is a different subject.

DAVID: I cannot think clearly if my brain is damaged.
You have ignored the comprehensive answer I gave yesterday: I have repeatedly pointed out to you that disease, accident, drugs, alcohol are evidence AGAINST dualism, but you are a dualist, and it is you who insist that the s/s/c is the THINKING self which survives death and therefore does NOT depend on the brain. In this discussion, if I remember rightly, we reached a dead end with the extreme case of dementia, in which you suggested that the “vegetable” was really still his/her normal self, knew what was going on, but couldn’t communicate properly. If so, of course, that too would mean the s/s/c does all the thinking and the brain only does the implementing.

DAVID: You are still ignoring the point that the brain is in a sense a computer, and only more complex computers can do more complex operations (implementations).

Agreed a thousand times. In dualism the hardware (brain) does the complex implementing and the software (s/s/c) does the complex thinking.