A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two; addendum (Identity)

by David Turell , Thursday, July 19, 2018, 18:47 (2318 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: You keep agreeing that your soul thinks in English, but now it is incapable of thinking in English and it is the electrical charges from your brain that “somehow” translate (“produce mental words”) the thought into English.

Soul/I thoughts become electrical in the brain and then come out as thoughts again. Please read carefully: I am proposing a soul mechanism which does all of that working with the brain.

DAVID: 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.

dhw: Simply? The electric waves take place in the brain. If an immaterial soul exists, then it does the thinking in English and the electric waves are the brain’s response to the thought. If it doesn’t exist, then the electric waves are the product of the brain’s English-speaking thinking activity. I’d call that “simple”, and there is no need for any “somehow” translation process.

Why won't you accept the complexity of the hard problem of consciousness? I'm offering an explanation. We know the brain is operative in electric ions in the process.

DAVID: In death, which is certainly a change, the soul changes its mechanism to telepathy for handling thought.

dhw: Telepathy doesn’t “handle” thought. It sends thought from one person to another. On Tuesday you agreed with this:
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.
It’s all change on a Wednesday.

Telepathy has to come from a thought that is originated. You've ignored that process in your comment.

DAVID: 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: I don’t know any such thing. I only know that there is a link between thought and electric waves. You believe you have a soul which in death is able to think without a brain. NDEs are regarded as evidence for this. Hence the belief that in life the soul does the thinking and uses the brain for information and material expression. THAT is a simple theory to understand.

You are simply repeating your desired understanding of thought processes. I don't view it that way.

dhw: Now in your new theory you have the soul incapable of thinking without the brain, and so we have the various convolutions in which the soul thinks its thought in English, the thought becomes ions, and the ions become thought, which the soul translates into the English in which it started.

Because as you think that is exactly what happens. it is not a new theory to me because it is exactly know I view the process to work. All I've added is an answer to the hard problem of consciousness in how immaterial thought becomes electricity and then again becomes thought.

dhW: Why don’t you go back to the simple process we began with: the dualist’s English-speaking soul (which lives inside the brain) thinks its English thought, and activates the brain (electrical waves) so that the brain can give the thought material expression? But if you believe that “wet ions produce intelligible thought” (your exact words), then you are a materialist.

Because the process is not simple and I had to point it out to you.

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.
DAVID: You won't accept my translation theory.

dhw: Neither version of your translation theory makes any sense at all to me. Meanwhile, do you reject the above proposal?

All correct except you persist in not noting the whole process has to enter neurons, be represented as electricity and come out at the other end to be recognizable thought. I'm simply noting that the soul provides the translation mechanism into and from ions to recognizable English. You and I think with our brains. Our souls are the immaterial partner in the process.