A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two; addendum (Identity)

by David Turell , Wednesday, July 18, 2018, 19:25 (2319 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: I reject the – for me unintelligible – argument that the soul, which thinks in English, has to transfer its thoughts to wet ions before the wet ions bring them back to the soul to have them translated into English (first version), and I reject the idea that the English-speaking soul’s thoughts turn into wet ions, and the wet ions translate them into English so that the English-speaking soul can understand them (second version).

You keep forgetting there is a material and an immaterial side to this. I am describing what must happen on the material side: I/soul think with my brain. Somehow the wet ions (not really wet but surrounded by fat which keeps them dry) handle that thought and produce mental words I 'hear'. That must happen somehow, because if we study the brain all we see is EEG electric waves. I'm simply proposing that my immaterial doppelganger soul has a mechanism that does all that translating from thought to ions to thought. In death, which is certainly a change, the soul changes its mechanism to telepathy for handling thought. You keep seeing the soul as something totally separate in working with the brain.

dhw: Your second version has the soul thinking unintelligible thoughts (so it doesn’t speak English), which apparently the wet ions translate into English so that the soul can understand what it was thinking – which means that now the soul does speak English!

DAVID: Foolish response. Of course my soul thinks in English thru the agency of the wet ions.

dhw: What does “thru the agency” mean?

You are acting like the definition complaint Tony has. Agency means mechanism. The soul translates from the electrical waves.

dhw: Let’s start again. The dualistic process I propose to you is this: soul initiates thought in English using information provided by brain; sends message to brain to give material expression to thought; ongoing process whereby brain sends information to soul, and soul develops thought in English according to whatever information it is given to think about.

DAVID: Once again in your view a separate soul uses a distinctly separate brain. I view my soul as my immaterial doppelganger which uses the wet ions to process its thoughts and translate them as they are completed.

dhw: The dualist’s soul and brain are housed together and work together, each fulfilling its own functions. See below for the rest.

dhw: In death, English-speaking soul continues to think intelligible thoughts in English, but uses psychic means to gather information and uses telepathy instead of brain in order to communicate with others.

DAVID: That is the only part you have gotten correct about my views.

dhw: If you accept that the English-speaking soul continues to think intelligible thoughts in English, we can do away with the idea that in life it is incapable of thinking intelligible thoughts in English unless it puts them into wet ions which either translate them back into English (one version) or bring them back to the soul to get the soul to translate them back into English (the other version).

I/soul has to think with my material brain. The thoughts go into ions and come back as thoughts. We KNOW this. You know it. The soul simply arranges the translations. That is a simple theory to understand.

dhw: Materialism: the brain thinks. Mystery, as described in your post: we have no idea how electrical charges from within the brain create thought.

I’m sorry you didn’t comment on this, since you actually claim in one of your versions that “wet ions produce intelligible thought”.

By the working soul's translation.

dhw: Now without going through the wet ions/translation theory again, please simply tell me which of the above points you disagree with.

DAVID: Most of it.

dhw: So you reject the proposal that the dualist’s English-speaking soul uses information from the brain, initiates thoughts in English, and sends messages to the brain to give its thoughts material expression.

You won't accept my translation theory.