A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two (Identity)

by dhw, Friday, June 22, 2018, 13:20 (2345 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

DAVID: 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.

It is not a misinterpretation of your theory, but an argument against the logic of your theory, which purports to be dualistic but in fact is materialistic! (I remain neutral on the subject, but have offered a form of reconciliation.) I use your own quotes to point out how you contradict yourself. And so I keep asking you WHY a “separate consciousness mechanism” REQUIRES or NEEDS the brain to perform its function of thinking, and your only answer is that it does! I have no problem with the software/soul entering the computer/brain, but you know as well as I do that the transistors do not CREATE the programme/thought: they help to give it material implementation/expression. Hence the relevance of software/hardware as an analogy to the dualist concept of mind/body.

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?

DAVID: Because in death the soul has lost its necessary connection to the brain's networks to produce thought.

Once again you simply reiterate your fixed belief that the “separate conscious mechanism” is not separate at all, and necessarily depends on the material brain to produce its thoughts.

DAVID: 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.

Of course the new thought doesn’t exist until it is thought. And the creation and expression of thought are two different processes. If there is such a thing as a soul or “separate consciousness mechanism” or “piece of your God’s consciousness” (your terms) which he has inserted into the brain, WHY do you believe it is NECESSARY for it to be connected to the brain before it can think (as opposed to absorbing information and expressing thought materially, which DOES require connection to the brain)? WHY do you deem it impossible for the dualist’s soul to do the thinking in life, while the dualist’s brain does the expressing/implementing, and then for the same dualist’s soul to go on thinking in death (though changing its mode of observation and communication)?