Big brain evolution: brain size and intelligence (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, April 12, 2018, 13:53 (2415 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: But you wrote: “…what I am describing is a proposed material quantum mechanism in the brain which facilitates the brain to have consciousness and produce thought. That mechanism is a gift from God's universal consciousness. This is dualism in a different form from yours.” (My bold) Prior to the entry I have reproduced above, I asked if this meant God gave us a material quantum mechanism (which might just as well be called the brain), and if God’s own consciousness was also a material quantum mechanism. It now appears that you are only referring to an immaterial quantum mechanism in both cases, which I’m afraid takes us straight back to Square One. You believe in an immaterial self which resides within and interacts with the material brain in life and leaves it in death. I suggest to you that in a dualist’s life this immaterial self (or “pure quantum energy”) does the thinking, while the material self provides the information and material expression and implementation of those thoughts. You keep agreeing and then disagreeing, so may I ask which it is now?

DAVID: Think back to our discussion about what was in the beginning before the Big Bang: God as pure energy with no material form was my opinion. That is what I view now as God's universal consciousness, of which we have a portion to interface with our brain to produce immaterial thought. Our personality/s/s/c is a construct built from birth in that interface. Both this consciousness mechanism and brain must work together to produce thought in life. The immaterial self cannot by itself produce or even drive immaterial thought unless interlocked with the material brain during life. I can control my consciousness only by employing my brain, typing these words which are a material implementation of immaterial response thoughts.

So let’s clear up the first anomaly: when you wrote that you were proposing a material quantum mechanism which enabled the brain to think, you meant an immaterial mechanism. The rest of your post simply reiterates your belief that you have an immaterial self, but in life it cannot think without being interlocked with the material brain. Only when the material brain stops functioning (NDEs) is it able to think without being interlocked with the brain. I find this illogical. I asked, as I frequently do, whether you accepted the dualistic view that in life the immaterial self (the s/s/c) does the thinking and the material self (body/brain) provides information and implements the thoughts of the immaterial self (soul). You have not answered. Your last sentence separates “I” from your consciousness, but these are united in the concept of the self/soul/consciousness which = the immaterial self, so now you have your immaterial self controlling your immaterial self, but you then go on to give an example of your brain enabling you to give material implementation to your immaterial thoughts. I will therefore try once more to get a direct answer from you: did these immaterial thoughts come from your s/s/c (the immaterial self), or from your brain?