A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two (Identity)

by dhw, Thursday, May 03, 2018, 12:05 (2395 days ago) @ David Turell

I am telescoping posts from “Neanderthal” and “learning new tasks” into this one, to save repetition.

dhw: I understood you when you said the s/s/c thought normally but the sick brain garbled the thought, and also when you said the sick brain confused the s/s/c and made it think sick thoughts. Perhaps you can explain more clearly how you reconcile these two contradictory statements. (My bold)
DAVID: More reflection and explanation on my part. The s/s/c uses the brain to produce thought, but there are two parts to this process: first the s/s/c introduces a thought into the brain network.

If the s/s/c introduces a thought into the brain, then the thought has already been “produced”. That is why we say the brain is used to express/implement the thought.

DAVID: Second, the brain, if sick, or drugged will garble the entry of the thought so it is distorted from the beginning. Not the s/s/c's fault, but clear thought never appeared from the beginning; thus third stage thought is expressed in a garbled way.

The beginning was the s/s/c’s thought. If the s/s/c’s thought was garbled BEFORE it was “introduced” into the brain network then the disease infected the s/s/c, which therefore did not think normally, whereas earlier you told us that it did think normally. The contradiction is clear, so let’s drop this part of the discussion.

dhw: (under “big brain evolution”) I realize that you are much happier changing the subject from brain evolution to the pelvis of the mother […] So long as the baby is in the womb, it is physically joined to and totally dependent on the mother. What difference does all this make?
DAVID: Beautiful fudging. I've changed nothing in the discussion. The mother and the baby are to very different folks with different DNAs no matter where each resides! And the mother's pelvis must change as each baby head in each species enlarges.

The discussion concerns the brain, not the pelvis. Why did you omit the rest of my comment: “Whatever you think your God did to ensure that the cell communities cooperated successfully to accommodate the bigger head, could also have been achieved by your God giving the cell communities the ability to work out the necessary changes for themselves. Or do you think your God was incapable of such a design?” I suggest we drop the pelvis theme as well and focus on dualism versus materialism.

Dhw: Please clarify: what is sick, what is garbled, and is it the simple brain or the simple s/s/c that produces simple thought?

You then repeat your statement on the Neanderthal thread, which ignored my own statement, so I will repeat both. These get to the heart of the problem
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dhw: If medication fixes the brain, and this leads to “proper” thought, you have clear evidence that the brain is the source of thought – and that is a major problem for dualists. The fact that immaterial thoughts and emotions can change the brain is a major problem for materialists (as are psychic experiences like NDEs, for those open-minded enough to take them seriously). That is the dichotomy you refuse to recognize and which I am trying to resolve.

DAVID: You have twisted the meaning of my statements. My version of the theory is the s/s/c cannot create thought without using the brain during life. The s/s/c is an immaterial mechanism, which through use of the material brain produces immaterial mentation. This leads to my position that only a more complex brain network can produce more complex thought. I've told you that my form of dualism is not yours. Yours comes across as if the s/s/c sits aside at a distance and instructs the brain what to do, as if they are not connected intimately. The s/s/c mechanism resides completely within the brain structure. The dichotomy is ours.

There are two separate issues here: one is our definition of dualism, and the other is the dichotomy between dualism and materialism. In my post above, I have summed up the evidence for each approach. You have focused solely on your definition of dualism. This we agreed on long ago: the two (dual) elements are mind or “soul” and body (let’s confine this to brain). In life they are inseparable. The soul does the thinking and the brain does the expressing and implementing, as in your dualistic analogy of software and hardware.

We are in total agreement that “the s/s/c mechanism resides completely within the brain structure”. But there is no way of telling whether the s/s/c is the PRODUCT of the brain or is an immaterial something you call a piece of your God’s consciousness. That is the essence of the dichotomy. If we say the brain produces thought, we state the case for materialism, which is supported by one set of evidence, as above. If we say thought changes the brain, we state the case for dualism, which is supported by another set of evidence that also includes psychic experiences such as NDEs. With my “theory of intelligence” and my post on reconciling dualism and materialism, I have tried to resolve the dichotomy. And you still haven’t pointed out any flaws in the logic of these proposals. Please do so.