A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two (Identity)

by David Turell , Sunday, April 29, 2018, 20:40 (2191 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Sunday, April 29, 2018, 20:49

DAVID: If the brain expresses the s/s/c thoughts as it does, if diseased it does it in garbled fashion, obviously.

dhw: So when the addict or drunkard bashes his beloved wife’s brains out, is his s/s/c telling him to kiss her but the message gets garbled? And when the demented mother asks: “Who is that man?” is her soul saying: “There’s my son”?

DAVID: The s/s/c is not separate from the brain, as you obviously like to imagine it. A sick brain will give rise to deranged thought and nothing else.

dhw: Your first comment distinguishes between thought and expression, and tells us the thought has obviously been “garbled”, which means it was different from what the brain expressed. Your answer now is that a sick brain gives rise to “deranged” thought, which means that the brain produces thought, and not that the s/s/c produces thought which is expressed by the brain. But later you also say: “A diseased brain always can change the expression of the s/s/c thoughts.” Within two posts you switch from being a dualist to being a materialist to being a dualist.

You are a stickler for exactitude and completeness in all of my written English. You know full well that I accept the s/s/c expresses thoughts through the brain. Why waste time and typing?

dhw: My limit here is to resolve the apparent dichotomy between dualism and materialism. […] Purely for the sake of argument, I am quite happy to say “God did it”, because the matter under discussion is “WHAT was done?” In this case, did your God inject a bit of his s/s/c into each of us, or did he invent a material machine which could produce its own s/s/c? Now please tell me what flaws you find in the logic of the latter proposal.

DAVID: I agree with you that God could have made a material brain that could produce immaterial thoughts on its own or He gave us a bit of His own s/s/c. I prefer the latter since I think the universe exists in His universal consciousness. And the NDE's solidify my position. I accept them as real.

dhw: Thank you. I am only asking you to accept the logic behind my hypothesis, which apparently you now do, but of course you don’t have to believe it.

Thank you for the article on psychedelic drugs. Clearly chemicals can change the s/s/c, and your comment could hardly be more appropriate: “The issue of dualism is never simple.” It is certainly not simple if you think the s/s/c is a bit of God’s own s/s/c. But it is perfectly simple if you accept the hypothesis that the s/s/c is produced by materials. And you can still believe in an immortal soul, as I attempted to show in my post of 5 January under "Reconciling materialism and dualism".

I fully disagree with your first sentence. A sick brain or a drugged brain will produce thoughts from the s/s/c in a sick or imperfect fashion, so what appears will not represent the original intent. Now I am picking apart your English. The point is a material brain is subject to the condition it is in at any given time, and can only produce a copy of the original thought that it is capable of producing. It is a two step process: creating of thought and then its expression. Garbling can occur in either stage or both. And don't scurry back to materialism making thought! 'I' try to make thought with 'my' brain which may or may not do it properly. Ask any schizophrenic about the problem.