Introducing the brain (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, June 13, 2018, 19:38 (2138 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: 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: This is not what I believe, but it is the essence of dualism, as exemplified by your own statement that the immaterial soul is a separate consciousness mechanism which interlocks with the material brain, whose function you acknowledge to be the provision of information and the material expression/implementation of the soul’s thoughts. And you keep acknowledging that this same separate consciousness mechanism is what survives the death of the brain.

There is your error in understanding my point in bold! I keep saying the soul has the ability to change its functional mechanism between life and death. It requires/uses the brain in life to generate thought, but works on its own in death.

dhw: Yes, in that sense, the separate consciousness mechanism is static, as it remains the same thinking, feeling, remembering self (which emphatically does NOT mean that it doesn’t learn and develop) . What is not static is the manner in which it observes and communicates without a brain in the immaterial world you believe in.

Your thoughts, never mine. Soul personality structure remains the same, but the thought ability is changed in death.

dhw: It is malleable in its function of observing and communicating. But it is the same separate immaterial, THINKING part of the self in life and in death.

This is your belief which you keep attempting to impose on me.

DAVID: 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.

dhw: Yes, that is the true dualism which you profess to believe in except that you insist that the soul (the thinking part of the self) depends on the brain for its ability to THINK, and that makes you a materialist.

In my theory the soul is an immaterial software working with the brain as hardware. I'm stating two parts, a true dualism. I don't see your materialism except when you have God making the soul arise from the brain.

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

dhw: I presume your God’s consciousness (which I would equate with the ability to think) doesn’t require a brain in order to do its thinking, so why does it need a brain to do its thinking when it easily automatically enters, but doesn’t need it when it easily automatically exits?

Explained above. Two states of soul mechanisms for thought. God is immaterial but He created material life. He had to have immaterial thought interface with the material brains that appeared, both the conscious ones and the ones with consciousness.