Introducing the brain (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, May 20, 2018, 10:28 (2377 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: […] If in life the soul depends on the brain for its ability to THINK (as opposed to its ability to express/implement its thoughts materially, which we agree on), then how is it possible for the SAME thinking you to live on after death?

DAVID: I understand your objection, but you should remember that I always say that the soul acts somewhat differently in death by changing its mechanism. We do not know that it is rigidly the same in each state.

dhw: You understand the split in your logic, but once again you gloss it over. I have given you a list of the attributes retained by NDE patients. Do you or don’t you accept it? If you do, the soul has the same identity in death as it has in life: it is the thinking you. As regards “mechanism”, I wrote: ”I accept different “mechanisms”, because obviously ways of perceiving and communicating will be different if you don’t have eyes, ears and vocal chords.” What “mechanisms” do you have in mind that might prevent you from being the same thinking you?

DAVID: The frontal cortex is the seat of consciousness. It receives all sensory information from elsewhere in the brain, those you have listed, but also smell, proprioception, touch, and internal sensations, etc. In NDE's the memories do not need any of those areas of perception.They do see and learn. You insist thinking remains the same in both states.

You are repeating my argument as if somehow it supports you! I keep saying that in life the dualist’s brain supplies information and implements the thoughts of the dualist’s “soul”. Now you tell us the brain supplies information. In NDEs there is no brain, and yet the “soul” learns, remembers, feels, thinks, takes decisions etc. So why would it not have the same function in life?

DAVID: In life the soul may have to use the brain networks to think or it may not.

If the “soul” is a piece of God’s consciousness, as you believe, and if there are TWO parts of the self, is not reasonable to assume that the role of God’s consciousness is to be the conscious part of the self, which then retains its consciousness when the material part dies?

DAVID: In your theory of God having the brain create a soul like His, the soul might very well have to use brain networks.

Of course it does. My theory advocates the very indivisibility that you keep advocating: the soul emerges from the interplay between the different sections of the brain, and all the sections use one another. (This is materialism which may engender dualism. See “Reconciling materialism and dualism”.)

DAVID: You are the one who demands an unchanging soul from life to death.

I don’t demand it. If there is such a thing as a “soul” that survives death, NDEs show that it is the SAME person in death as in life.

DAVID: If God gifts it as brain software in a quantum pure form, the weirdness of quantum mechanism might solve the transition easily. The quantum facet of my entries is to make the point that quantum mechanism is the basis of all we understand nd don't understand.

Whether you call the “soul” a “quantum” this, that and the other, or “a piece of God’s consciousness”, makes no difference. The “soul”, according to NDEs, is still the same thinking person. That is why it is illogical to claim that the soul depends on the brain for its ability to think, UNLESS you accept that the brain is the source of thought and might produce a form of energy that can survive its own death (again, see “Reconciling materialism and dualism”).

DAVID: I repeat: it is more likely to me that God supplies a software to the brain which must use the hardware to think. I've simply made a logical choice of two possibilities. And you say that is my dualism.

You also believe that the software can do its thinking without the hardware when there isn’t any hardware. You have acknowledged this logical split in your thinking, but you call your choice logical.