A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two; addendum (Identity)

by dhw, Friday, July 20, 2018, 10:53 (2317 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

DAVID: Soul/I thoughts become electrical in the brain and then come out as thoughts again.

They only “come out” if they are given material expression! Otherwise they remain within the dualist’s soul. And when the dualist dies, they “come out” through telepathy.

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.

DAVID: 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.

Nobody has solved the hard problem of consciousness, and of course I accept its complexity! Why do you think I made the effort to work out the theory that forms the subject of this thread? The fact that the brain is operative in electric ions is not an explanation! Materialists believe that the brain and its ions are the SOURCE of consciousness. According to you, though, our consciousness in life is a piece of your God’s consciousness, and in death it remains a piece of your God’s consciousness. Or had you forgotten that? It doesn’t need ions, except for information gathering and material expression.

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.

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

If there is such a thing as a soul, the soul originates the thought, both in life and in death. In life the soul uses the brain in order to express its thought to others, and in death it uses telepathy. It does not use telepathy to originate its thought.

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.

DAVID: 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.

It is not an answer to the hard problem of consciousness (see above), and there is no need for thought to become electricity and then become thought again. Thought can use electricity so that it can be communicated to others. In death, it doesn’t use electricity, but telepathy. However, if electrical activity in the brain is the source of thought, we are back to materialism, and in my own theory I have attempted to reconcile the two hypotheses.

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?

DAVID: 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.

Which means the soul thinks in English, translates its thoughts into electricity, and then translates the electricity back into English. So why does it bother to translate its thoughts into electricity?

DAVID: You and I think with our brains.

Welcome to materialism.

DAVID: Our souls are the immaterial partner in the process.

According to your latest theory, all they do is translate the brain’s thoughts ("wet ions produce intelligible thought") into English. In the good old days, a week or two ago, the English-speaking soul was the initiator of thought and the brain did not contribute.