Introducing the brain (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, June 08, 2018, 13:08 (2358 days ago) @ David Turell

This post repeats one of the discussion points under “THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two", but in each section, David finds different ways of evading the conclusion that the dualist’s soul cannot depend on the brain for its ABILITY TO THINK unless the brain is the generator of the soul, as I propose in my theory.

DAVID: Why can't you accept the soul functions differently in life and death in its thought mechanisms? […]

dhw: I have accepted it over and over again, and have asked you over and over again what different “thought mechanisms” you are referring to, other than those of observation and communication. Why don’t you answer?

DAVID: I've answered over and over. What are you missing? The soul has a brain-use mode of thought in life and can think on its own in death because it has that ability to change its functional self. In death it rejoins the universal consciousness from whence it came.

The thinking soul uses the brain in life to provide information and to give its thoughts material expression and implementation, just as you have described in the theory post. In death (if it really does survive), the SAME thinking soul must use non-material psychic means to gather information and to communicate. Please tell us how else it “functions differently”? You have agreed that it retains its personal identity, so I don’t know what “rejoining” God has to do with the discussion.

dhw: [...] why do you keep insisting that in life it depends on the brain to THINK?

DAVID: Because it is interlocked with the brain in life and we know where thought takes place and where and how we reach ourselves. I can only work with my soul/ consciousness by using my brain.

You ARE your soul, if NDEs are anything to go by. I don’t know what you mean by your soul reaching or working with your soul. We have agreed that in dualism the soul lives in the body/brain, and they work together in life, but the soul retains its individual identity in death. If your soul can only be/reach/work with itself by using the brain, then it can’t be/reach/work with itself when the brain dies.

dhw: […] once more, please tell us what different forms of action you are referring to, if not observation and communication.

DAVID: Thought! The soul must think in life and also in death. It has two mechanisms of doing so because it is changeable, using the brain in life and rejoining the universal consciousness in death.

You keep agreeing that it is the SAME immaterial thinking self in life as in death! But in life it uses material means of observing and communicating, and in death it presumably uses psychic means. So what “two mechanisms” of THINKING does it have?