A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two (Identity)

by David Turell , Thursday, June 21, 2018, 15:45 (2346 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: 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?

DAVID: I still think you do not read what I write. It is my belief that the soul uses the brain networks in developing its thoughts during life following my software/hardware analogy.

dhw: I keep quoting your own remarks about the software/hardware analogy, e.g. that the soul is a "separate consciousness mechanism" and “is the software that enables introspection and conceptualization”. The hardware expresses/implements those thoughts as exemplified by your image of your mind using the computer to give them a material form. Dualism therefore = thinking software soul and expressing/implementing hardware brain. Perhaps you prefer not to read what you write.

What you quote includes your persistent misinterpretation of my theory. I view the soul in life as interfaced with the brain's networks and REQUIRED to use those networks in developing thought, just as the software of a computer enters the actual transistors to produce its work.

DAVID: Since the brain is not present in death or functional in NDE's, it uses another method, presumably by attaching to the universal consciousness which would permit the 'telepathy' described by NDE'rs. I'll ask you a question just as you question me: is not that a coherent theory? I'm not asking you to accept it.

dhw: Here is what I see as a “coherent theory” (theistic version): your God gave us a separate consciousness mechanism with which to think. As you keep acknowledging and then forgetting, the SAME separate consciousness mechanism survives the death of the brain and continues to think, but using psychic instead of material powers to observe and communicate. And so yet again I ask you: if your God supplied us with a “separate consciousness mechanism” which creates thought (“enables introspection and conceptualization”), why do you then NEED a different mechanism to create thought?

Because in death the soul has lost its necessary connection to the brain's networks to produce thought. Before a fresh new thought appears, where is it? It doesn't exist. It has to be created and expressed. I view my soul as an immaterial mirror image of the real me. In Death that image of me joins the universal consciousness which gives me the ability to actually think in the afterlife. Two different thought mechanisms for the soul