Introducing the brain (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, May 15, 2018, 17:55 (2382 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Later you ask me to explain the dichotomy again. I can hardly make the two possibilities clearer than in the passages I have now bolded. However, you continually fudge the division with your formula of “the soul must use the brain to think”. In dualism the soul is one entity, as I have always maintained and you now acknowledge, and for those who believe in an afterlife, it is the thinking part of the duality of mind and body that survives the death of the body. Hence your dualistic analogies “software/hardware” and the brain as “receiver”, which are contradicted by your claim that the soul depends on the brain for its ability to THINK. Materialism means there is no such entity as an immaterial, thinking “soul” that can live on after death, and the brain does the thinking.

I repeat, I am not trained in philosophic dualism theory. You appear to be following definitions I know nothing about. I am following my own logic:

DAVID: The s/s/c must think using the brain networks and cannot think properly if the networks are sick.
dhw: That is materialism.
DAVID: No it isn't. As explained above. The soul must use the material brain to produce thought, by one of two mechanisms. Pure logic.

dhw: There are not two possible mechanisms in dualism! Either the soul does the thinking (dualism) or the brain does the thinking (materialism). If the brain’s sickness results in sick thought, then the brain is the thinker. You keep rejecting your other hypothesis that the dementia victim, the drunkard, the drug addict continue to think “properly” but the brain garbles their proper thoughts – and then it seems that you reinstate it as a possibility when you realize that the alternative is pure materialism.

I don't recognize your form of 'pure materialism'. The soul must work through the brain to produce thoughts we recognize. We do not connect with the soul without the brain. I accept the soul as the source of thought, but not separate from brain circuits. The soul using the brain circuits to generate its thoughts is the immaterial using the material. That is my dualism, from my logical thought.