Introducing the brain (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, June 04, 2018, 23:07 (2363 days ago) @ dhw

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.

dhw: 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.

I've been quite clear in the past, as I was in the sentence that precedes your comment above. In life the soul uses the brain's networks to think. That is unchanged. In death the soul thinks on its own with a revised capability. Again the same position I keep stating. You call this incongruous because you think the soul has one static unchanging form, even though the two states of being are entirely different.

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

dhw: 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.

Difference not manufactured! Two mechanisms in two different realms. Same basic soul personality at the core.