A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two (Identity)

by dhw, Thursday, July 12, 2018, 13:17 (2325 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: In dualism, the soul USES the brain to acquire information and to give its thoughts material expression. That is the brain’s contribution, and you still haven’t come up with any other “contributions”, despite my repeated request for you to do so.

DAVID: I keep repeating the brain contributes its networks which the soul uses to process/create thought. The soul is me. The soul is you. Without question We use our brain networks to produce thought. I view the soul as containing a mechanism to translate the wet charged ions running around those networks into recognizable thought in the words of my language. It is from this viewpoint that I debate you. You seem to view it differently. Explain please.

The wet charged ions are a very recent addition to your vocabulary in this discussion (like your use of “transmit!” below), and simply add another convolution to the discussion. You have acknowledged repeatedly that the soul initiates and develops thoughts, using the brain. I have pointed out to you that it uses the brain for information and expression. Now you have the soul translating the ions into “recognizable thought”. That makes the ions into the carriers of the thought (presumably carrying it from the brain since they must be carrying it TO the soul), and the soul is merely the receiver and translator, because the ions don’t speak English but your soul does. Curiouser and curiouser. May I suggest that in an ongoing process, your dualist’s soul uses the information it gets from the brain, thinks about it,and transmits its thoughts to the brain, which then sends its messengers all over the place to ensure that the soul’s thoughts are given material expression by the voice speaking, the fingers typing etc.

dhw: According to you the brain is a passive receiver. Why have you suddenly introduced the word “transmit”? Until now the difference has been clear. The soul thinks the thought and transmits it to the receiver brain, which then gives it material expression or implementation. If the sick brain results in sick thought, you have evidence for materialism.

DAVID: Yes the brain receives the thoughts the soul/I create, but as above the soul/I contains an ability (no understood) to create immaterial thought out of wet electricity, which is the material brain.

Right, you’ve now dropped the idea of the brain as the transmitter of thought, except that you haven’t, because now the material brain sends out a load of gibberish electricity which the ions carry to the soul, and somehow the soul translates the gibberish into recognizable thought. What in your dualism initiates the thought? The soul or the brain? What sends the thought to what? Soul to brain or brain to soul? If the thought comes from electricity provided by the brain, then the brain is doing the thinking. That’s fine with me – it is the materialistic part one of my theory.