Introducing the brain (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, June 12, 2018, 18:14 (2142 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: 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?

You keep accepting and then rejecting the WHOLE of the above description of dualism. It is the SAME “separate consciousness mechanism” (soul), but it “operates” – i.e. observes and expresses/implements its thoughts – differently in life and in death.

DAVID: 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.

dhw: Once more: You keep agreeing and then disagreeing that the dualist’s soul is “a separate conscious mechanism” which does the thinking and which remains itself after death, but which “uses the brain circuits in life” to acquire information and to express/implement its thoughts materially. This is not two forms of “ABILITY TO THINK”! There is one ability to think, and two different worlds in which it operates and therefore uses two different means of operation.

The difference between us, from this statement, is you believe the soul has an independent thinking core mechanism that is unchanged in life and in afterlife, and I think it has to use the brain during life to think. That is what I have called a 'static' form of soul, the basis of your theory in all of our discussions. And why I have used the AM/FM radio as an analogy for my theory.

dhw: Your argument results in you now having the SAME piece of your God’s consciousness (i.e. the SAME ability to think, i.e. the SAME “separate conscious mechanism”) – which even returns to your God – unable to think without a brain but able to think without a brain, not separate from the brain but separate from the brain, dependent on the brain but not dependent on the brain.

All part of being malleable in its function, which you don't accept.

DAVID: 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.

dhw: Thank you. That is the only way you can reconcile your dualism with your materialistic belief that the soul depends on the brain for its “more complex thought”.

But having God cause the brain to generate its own consciousness is pure materialism, no vestige of true dualism, in which I think the brain and the consciousness are two separate entities that work together in life.

DAVID: If He is reaching in that way, why not just gift part of His own universal consciousness when a new brain appears?

dhw: How do you think he “just gifts” it? Does he attend the birth of every brained organism? Or (theistic version of my proposal) is his gift of consciousness generated by the brain which, like every other part of the body, stems from material genetics, i.e. does not require any action on his part when a new brain appears?

If the universal consciousness pervades all of the universe, it could easily automatically enter each new brain that appears.