A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two (Identity)

by dhw, Sunday, June 17, 2018, 12:22 (2350 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: All you are presenting is pure materialism, not a reconciliation.

dhw: I’ll stick to the theistic version of my theory: if your God has created a material mechanism which produces a soul, i.e. a form of consciousness like his own, and this soul survives the material mechanism that produced it, maintaining its individual identity while “returning to God” (the scenario you envisage), would you call that “pure materialism”?

DAVID: I've admitted that this is a possible theory. I've never rejected it out of hand. Note my entry from yesterday describing the gap between Lucy and Erectus. If that is a real gap, and no intermediate fossils are ever found, it is good evidence for your thought. My thought is Lucy was conscious but Erectus had consciousness, following the idea that bigger brains had deeper thought.

dhw: Thank you. Yes, all our theories are “possible”, but some are more cohesive than others. You have never explained the difference between being conscious and having consciousness. I would say Lucy had a lesser degree of consciousness than Erectus. The idea that bigger brains have deeper thought is outright materialism, and again fits in with my reconciliation theory but contradicts the theory that there is a separate, immaterial consciousness mechanism (soul) which your God somehow inserts into the brain. Why would something immaterial (a piece of your God’s consciousness) require more spacious accommodation to THINK? But it would certainly require more material cells to express/implement its deeper thoughts materially.

DAVID: You are again skipping over my explanations of how consciousness might work as software/hardware, and my contention that the soul is interlocked in the initial creation thought and uses the brain to develop thought and implement it.

I accept that in dualistic life the software soul uses the information provided by the brain to develop its thoughts, and uses the hardware brain to express/implement the thoughts. But I do not know the difference between being conscious and having consciousness, and I do not know why an immaterial “SEPARATE consciousness mechanism” should depend on the size of the brain to do its thinking. The size of the brain would only be relevant if the ability to think depended on the brain (= materialism) – which is part of the reconciliation theory you have admitted is possible.