A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two (Identity)

by dhw, Tuesday, July 03, 2018, 11:14 (2334 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: As usual you have ignored my statement that the soul MUST use the brain's networks to process new thought. If you accepted that, your whole position would fall apart. Continue your non-recognition if you wish, but I haven't changed, ever, in this view.

dhw: I keep agreeing that the soul must use the brain’s networks to process new thought. You have simply left out the section of my answer that actually acknowledges and describes the ongoing process. Here it is again:

“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."

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

DAVID: I've bolded the incomplete part of your concept. Concentrate on 'David' just above. Clear thinking cannot avoid what our sapiens brains can allowed to be produced as modern artifacts. The soul has a much more complex computer with which to work, so the thought output is much more complex.

But you tell us that “the brain is the recipient of the working soul’s output”! The receiving, passive complex computer does not “allow” the working, active soul to think its complex thoughts – the complexity of thought comes from the soul, and the brain/computer receives the thoughts and gives them material expression. In your own words: the soul “drives the initiation of the thought and uses the brain networks to complete it. The brain does not initiate or contribute.” The sapiens soul has a vastly increased amount of information with which to work, and each new modern artefact is the product (output) resulting from the process that you have described above: active soul initiates and develops thought, and uses passive brain for information and expression. Furthermore, modern science has demonstrated that the initiation of thought changes the brain, not vice versa. However, many modern scientists are convinced that it is the brain that produces the thought. Hence the dichotomy between the two theories of materialism and dualism, and my attempt to reconcile them.

dhw: And so you are right. I am confused by the theory that the soul, or "SEPARATE consciousness mechanism", which initiates ideas using existing information (it can hardly use information it doesn’t have), cannot initiate ideas until the brain, which does not initiate ideas, has already expanded.

DAVID: Progress. Simple, and repeated over and over. In being required to use the brain, the soul cannot develop advanced thinking unless the brain network is advanced enough to allow the appearance of advanced thought.

The brain network has to be advanced enough to “allow” the material appearance (i.e. expression or implementation) of the thoughts initiated by the dualist’s soul. Your view of how thought develops might become clearer if only you would respond to my constant plea, which again you have ignored: “Please tell us what the separate consciousness mechanism (soul) uses the networks FOR, apart from gathering information and giving material expression to its thoughts.”

DAVID: And it not primarily expansion. Elephant brains are huge. Erectus brains are only 150 cc smaller, but the presumption is the Erectus frontal cortex did not have five layers of network as we do. And look at our artifacts compared to Erectus as evidence of what the physical state of brains allow in complex thought. My view is the complexity of the brain allows the degree of complexity of thought the soul can create.

Of course it’s not primarily expansion, since the modern brain has stopped expanding. But our starting point was your insistence that the pre-sapiens brain had to expand before he/she could think new thoughts. You are also insisting that the modern brain has to become more complex before we can think new thoughts (= materialism), even though you believe it is the active soul that initiates and develops thoughts (= dualism), using the passive brain for information and material expression. But perhaps you will now come up with other “uses” to bolster your materialism at the expense of your dualism.