A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Three (Identity)

by David Turell , Thursday, May 24, 2018, 23:52 (2166 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: My Part Three was specifically written for theists like yourself, so you needn’t bother with chance. The question I asked was whether you thought your God used magic or science to create life and consciousness. You have given a straight answer concerning life: it “emerges” from the biochemistry. You acknowledge that the same may be true of consciousness. I don’t understand your reasoning after that. As you never tire of telling us, the human brain has many similarities to the animal brain, but has certain significant differences, so why shouldn’t that mean that human and animal forms of consciousness have both emerged, like life, from the manner in which your God has assembled the materials? Any flaws in the logic?

DAVID: That is pure materialism and logical from that standpoint. Life and living matter are pure materialism. Consciousness is not material in any way as I stated above, and is related to the conscious universe or part of universal consciousness.

dhw: If consciousness is not material in any way, why do you keep insisting that the soul cannot think without the brain (except when it hasn’t got a brain to think with)?

Because that arrangement is entirely possible, based on what we know how the soul must interlock with definitive areas of the brain. The two possibilities, yours and mine exist. You insist an independent soul dictates to the brain, and what is seen in brain research doesn't show that. Yours is pure theory which you want to like as it seems to challenge my thought about God enlarging the brain. I view my interlocking thoughts As entirely logical from my starting point.

dhw: Of course living matter is material, but if I were a dualist I would say life is as immaterial as consciousness. No human has yet been able to create it, and even Darwin talked of the Creator “breathing” life into a few forms or one. Do you think your immaterial soul in heaven is dead? I thought it was integral to your form of dualism that although the body dies, “you” live on and, more relevant to this context, “you” think on. And so if your God made immaterial life emerge from materials, would you not agree that he might also have made immaterial consciousness emerge from materials? That doesn’t stop it from being “related to the conscious universe”, and if you believe in theistic panpsychism it will also be part of universal consciousness.

You are invoking God's unlimited powers to do anything He wants. That could be. I just view it differently. I feel God's consciousness pervades the universe but I doubt the strict tenets of panpsychism.