Introducing the brain (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, May 22, 2018, 12:50 (2166 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: 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: How do you know the afterlife soul does all those things? We have no evidence other that NDE’s descriptions.

dhw: You use NDEs as evidence that you will still survive as your own good self after death. Now you want to discount the evidence of NDEs!
[…]
dhw: You claim to be a dualist, which = having a material self and an immaterial self, and you claim that the “soul” is a piece of God’s consciousness which separates from the body at material death. And yet you keep saying that in life the brain and soul are inseparable, because the soul can’t think without the brain. Now apparently the brain is NOT part of the soul, which can only mean they ARE separate entities (as in dualism – though of course they work together in life). And so to complete the confusion, your “soul” can’t think without a material brain, but it can think when there is no material brain. Or maybe it can’t (see above and welcome to zombie heaven) because NDEs are the only evidence we have that it CAN.

DAVID: Iv have fully thought about your approach to the soul, and that is why I have always stated the soul operates by different mechanism in life and in death. In life it is within the body, and there is no body in death. You want a static soul but it must alter itself in an afterlife.

I have never denied the blatantly obvious fact that an immaterial soul which uses the material self to express and implement its thoughts materially in a material world, would have to operate differently if it had no material self and had entered an immaterial world. (I suggested telepathy as one possible mechanism). This doesn’t alter the fact that you believe the immaterial thinking “you” of life (your piece of God’s consciousness) will survive as the immaterial thinking “you” after life. The soul is the same, as you keep agreeing and then disagreeing, but the means of observation and communication have to be different.

DAVID: I've gone to quantum mechanics, which no one understands. I can go no further to answer your obviously impossible demands. I have always proposed that soul is based in quantum mechanics, which is the basis of the universe and the basis of a seemingly intelligent universe. You must take all of these factors in analysis of how soul might work. A soul that lives in a living body obviously works with that body. In afterlife there is no body. For me it must operate differently, and not just by your aspect of telepathy.

Yes, even though it’s the same thinking you, it must operate differently, as agreed above. We don’t know how a bodiless soul observes and communicates, but if you think it has something to do with quantum mechanics, which nobody understands, that’s fine with me. It doesn’t resolve the total confusion I have summarized above, in which you have the same “piece of God’s consciousness” unable to think without a brain until it has no brain to think with, or maybe it doesn’t even think at all (zombies in heaven).

DAVID; If the soul arises from the brain that is pure materialism no matter how you try to alter the concept.

I have said so many times, and have pointed out to you many times that if you can't think without your brain, as you keep insisting, that also means materialism, which you reject because you then go on to say that you CAN think without your brain, i.e. when you haven't got a brain. If we are to reconcile materialism and dualism, and if I stick rigidly to the theistic version of the theory, we have God using materials to create life and consciousness, so life and consciousness are produced by materials. The reconciliation with dualism – still in theistic mode – would be that the conscious energy thus produced mirrors his own (just as humans are striving to create a consciousness that will mirror their own) and may even live on after the death of the machine that produced it (just as images live on after the disappearance of the materials that produced them). You still haven’t offered a single objection to the logic of this proposal, which resolves the logical split (summarized above) which you have acknowledged in your own thinking. You prefer to focus on the obvious fact that immaterial observation and communication must be different from material observation and communication.