Introducing the brain (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, June 04, 2018, 13:14 (2362 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: […] life and death are two different states in which the soul exists, another form of dualism…

dhw: There is absolutely no difference between us here, except that there is no dualism in death! There is only soul.

DAVID: Of course, in one of two realms the soul exists.

Just to clarify: according to you the soul exists in both realms. Dualism only refers to life, when the self is composed of two parts, the material body and the immaterial soul.

DAVID: Your separatism is in stating the soul seems to sit off in mid-air and fires thoughts at the brain which it then accepts, when it is obvious the soul is working with the brain's circuits. I/soul can only communicate by using the brain circuits.

dhw: Where on earth do you get this “mid-air” from? If there is such a thing as a soul in life, it has to be within the brain/body, and I keep agreeing that the two work together. And I keep emphasizing that they have different functions, and the soul has to use the brain in order to express (communicate) its thoughts materially. You are manufacturing differences between us that simply don’t exist.

DAVID: We do differ. In life I think the soul uses the brain networks to think. You don't.

First you manufacture a “mid-air” difference, and then you scurry back to the ambiguity of “uses...to think”. So let’s try to pin this difference down. I say that the dualist's soul is the thinking part of the self that uses the brain to gather the information it thinks about, and then instructs the brain to give material expression and implementation to its thoughts through the brain’s network of connections with the rest of the body. Please tell me what you disagree with in this version of dualism. I’ll omit the following section of your post, as it revolves round the same question.

dhw: You are welcome to speculate on what happens to you in the afterlife you believe in. Our disagreement concerns the role of the brain and the soul in life. The afterlife is only relevant in so far as you believe the soul cannot think without the brain except when there is no brain for it to think with. I have offered you a solution to this conundrum.

DAVID: Only you have the conundrum, I don't. I see quantum soul with two modes of action in two different realms.

What do you mean by “action”? We have agreed that the soul (if it exists) must use different modes of observation and communication in the two different realms. Again you are manufacturing a difference between us. The conundrum you refuse to recognize is your insistence that the same soul is incapable of THINKING without the brain except when there is no brain to think with.