Introducing the brain (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, June 11, 2018, 16:03 (2144 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: The point I am making is the consciousness mechanism is interlocked with the brain and through the brain I use it to develop thoughts and concepts.

dhw: If you have a "separate consciousness mechanism" which continues to think after the death of the brain, then clearly your consciousness does not use the brain for thinking: it uses your brain to gather the information it thinks about, and then to express or implement the thoughts and concepts it has developed. Hence “DUALism”, as described below.

You still insist on a static consciousness mechanism, and I see it having two forms.

dhw: Dualists like yourself normally believe that the two entities perform different FUNCTIONS in life, the soul being a “separate consciousness mechanism” which works with your body (brain), using the information your body supplies, and using the body (brain) to express or implement your thoughts. In death this same “separate consciousness mechanism” – your soul which has created the thoughts – survives and continues to create its thoughts, but now uses different methods (“operates by a different form”) to acquire information and to express/implement those thoughts. In life and in death the dualist’s soul remains the same “you”, performing the same function of thinking, feeling, remembering etc. That is the “static” element – you remain you.

DAVID: I can accept this.

Then why do you keep rejecting it? (See above and below).

But what I accept is your statement: (“operates by a different form”), which I state is saying it operates one way in life and different way in death. Do you mean what I mean?

dhw: However, I should repeat that our disagreement here concerns the nature of what we might call “pure” dualism. I am not defending or attacking this concept. The theory I have proposed is an attempt to reconcile the two apparently contradictory approaches of materialism and dualism. It was all sparked off by your insistence that new THOUGHTS depend on the enlargement of the brain (materialism), which is a direct contradiction of your dualistic belief in an immaterial soul which continues to think even when there is no brain.

DAVID: You agree to two mechanisms in life and death and then disagree!

dhw: The two mechanisms concern the mode of observing and of expressing/implementing, not of THINKING!

There is our difference! The soul uses the brain circuits in life but can think on its own in death (from NDE evidence). Two forms of ability to think.

DAVID: The larger brain allows a much higher level of conceptualization and shown by the artifacts produced by each level of homo in evolution. There is no denying the relationship. Put another way a more complex network of neurons allows a much deeper level of mental development.

dhw: And back you go from the dualism you have accepted to the materialism you have rejected – though materialism may very well be true. Above, you agree that in dualism the immaterial soul and material brain interlock (= the relationship, which I do not deny) but perform different functions – respectively thinking, and supplying information plus expressing/implementing the thoughts – and now you say that if the material brain doesn’t get larger, the “consciousness mechanism” (soul) can’t think new thoughts. If your form of dualism is true, the larger brain “allows” the implementation of the soul’s new thoughts, as shown by the artefacts produced by pre-sapiens. You believe your God reaches down to enlarge everyone’s brain so that it can think deeper thoughts, although the brain doesn’t do the thinking, and yet you refuse to consider the possibility (theistic version) that he might have designed a “separate consciousness mechanism” called the brain to generate a form of immaterial consciousness like his own.

We remain apart. A larger brain allows the soul to have more complex thought. It is possible God had the brain generate its own consciousness. If He is reaching in that way, why not just gift part of His own universal consciousness when a new brain appears?