A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two (Identity)

by dhw, Sunday, July 01, 2018, 13:56 (2336 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You keep ignoring or missing the main thrust of my theory. The soul/consciousness/I initiate a thought, but the start of a thought is never a complete thought. To initiate is to begin. The soul then refines the thought using the brain networks Which are passively used in the process. The completed thought is then announced through the brain. To repeat, initiation is only part of the process of thought.

The “main thrust” of your theory changes from week to week, but the starting point of this whole discussion was your insistence that only after your God had enlarged the brain was pre-sapiens capable of thinking new thoughts. Of course thought is ongoing, and the “separate consciousness mechanism” doesn’t stop using the brain to supply information and to implement/express its thoughts. The concept of the spear is initiated by the dualist’s soul. It doesn’t come complete. The soul goes on issuing instructions to the brain, which goes on supplying information and giving material expression to the developing concept until pre-sapiens has a spear that will actually kill the live chunk of meat. (I have suggested that this process is what actually caused the expansion of the brain.) None of this even remotely changes the dualist’s contention that the soul does the thinking and the brain does the information-gathering and the expressing/implementing. And it doesn’t remotely unravel the tangled logic of your insistence that the soul initiates new thoughts but new thoughts are only possible once the brain has already been enlarged.

DAVID: When I type on my computer I initiate all thoughts, and the computer is passive. Same with soul and brain, but the more complex the computer the more complex operations I can perform on it. Same with soul and brain.

dhw: Precisely. Your dualist’s soul initiates your thoughts and dictates them to your computer/brain, which expresses them materially. If your computer/brain is already equipped to express your thoughts, it doesn’t need to change. If your soul has new thoughts which are beyond the capacity of your existing computer/brain to express, you need a more complex or, in the good old days, a larger computer/brain. The initiation of your thoughts does not depend on the complexity/capacity of your computer/brain. The computer/brain has to increase its complexity/capacity in order to accommodate the thoughts initiated by your soul. Thank you for this clear example.

DAVID: Refinement and completion must have a more complex network for more complex thought, and can not have that complexity without a more complex network available.

Refinement and completion of thought are carried out by the dualist’s soul, which uses the information and means of material expression provided by the brain. Your computer example illustrates dualism perfectly, as above: the soul provides the thought, and if the computer can’t express it, you need a more complex computer.

DAVID: Think genius brain like Hawking or Einstein as obvious examples. The more complex computer producing a more complex output is a perfect example.

According to dualists, the complex computer/brain produces the material expression of the complex thoughts of the soul. If you believe the complex thoughts are the “output” of the complex computer/genius brain, you are a materialist, which is fine, but is the cause of all the contradictions I keep pointing out to you.

DAVID: You keep missing the points I've made above about the soul brain relationship. My thoughts are unchanged. Since no brain is present in death, the soul uses telepathy by being joined to the universal consciousness of God.

dhw: That is what I keep telling you! Your “separate consciousness mechanism” remains unchanged, but without a brain the soul has to use psychic powers (e.g. telepathy) in order to observe and communicate.

DAVID: The use of brain's networks to initiate and refine thought is not the same as initiating a refining thought by psychic mechanisms.

I don’t know what you mean by “initiating a refining thought”, but of course vibrating my vocal chords is different from passing on my thoughts by telepathy. That doesn’t mean the thoughts are generated by a different “separate consciousness mechanism”.

DAVID: I do not view the soul as to be a complete thought mechanism in life: it needs the brain networks….

What does the SEPARATE consciousness mechanism need them for? For the provision of information and the means of expression.

DAVID:… in death it needs God's universal consciousness for complete operation. But since the soul is the initiator at all times it has free will.

According to you, the soul IS part of God’s universal consciousness. Free will is a different subject altogether. Since you keep agreeing and then disagreeing on what dualism means, please make a decision:
1) In life the soul (“piece of God’s consciousness”, “separate consciousness mechanism”) conducts the thinking process while the brain provides information and means of material expression/implementation. Yes or no?
2) In death the same soul (“piece of God's consciousness”, “separate consciousness mechanism”) conducts the thinking process, while information and means of expression are provided by psychic powers such as telepathy? Yes or no?