A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two (Identity)

by dhw, Wednesday, June 20, 2018, 13:14 (2350 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: do you agree that we cannot be conscious without being able to think?

DAVID: Thinking about purposeful action is not introspection. Animals are consciously purposeful, no more.

As I keep repeating, there are degrees of consciousness/awareness. Human introspection is at the peak. That doesn’t mean that a consciously purposeful animal doesn’t think about how to achieve its purpose. But that is not the issue here. To avoid confusion, we can confine our discussion to human self-awareness, which is your definition of consciousness. According to you, the soul is A SEPARATE consciousness mechanism.

dhw: I don’t even “know” if there is such a thing as a soul that survives death, let alone what form it has. In the context of dualism, I am asking why you think an already “SEPARATE consciousness mechanism” (soul) NEEDS to have two different forms, if we simply accept your analogy that the software soul does the thinking and the hardware brain does the expressing/implementing. You’ve never answered that point.

DAVID: Don't you read what I write? From yesterday your entry and mine:
dhw: If the ability to think is a “SEPARATE consciousness mechanism” (your expression), and survives the death of the brain (your belief), then clearly it does not NEED the brain to think.

DAVID: I have said it requires a different mechanism and gains that by rejoining the universal consciousness. How do you know the soul is only one rigid form? You've never answered that point.

You have juxtaposed my post from yesterday! The quote in bold above WAS my answer. Of course I don’t know. I don’t even know if there is such a thing as a separate soul. How do YOU know the soul has two different forms? In fact it is you who refuse to answer my straightforward question, which concerns the nature of dualism. You claim that in death the soul requires a different mechanism in order to be able to THINK. I have asked you why you believe it NEEDS a different mechanism if in life the soul is already what you call a “SEPARATE CONSCIOUSNESS MECHANISM”. This is exemplified by your dualistic image of software and hardware, in which as you specified on Monday: “the soul is the software that enables introspection and conceptualization”. If it enables thought in life, why can’t it go on enabling thought in death? WHY does the separate consciousness mechanism have to be different? Last Thursday you even bolded your agreement that it was the SAME separate consciousness mechanism in death as in life, but used different methods to acquire information and to express/implement its thoughts. On Monday you seemed to accept this again, because you only asked me where these different methods (the “hardware equivalent”) came from, and I gave you a detailed answer, which you have not commented on. So once more: if in life the soul is a separate consciousness mechanism enabling thought (e.g. introspection and conceptualization), why should it NEED to change in death, other than in its means of observation and expression?