A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two; addendum (Identity)

by dhw, Tuesday, July 24, 2018, 13:49 (2313 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Again your new term “represented”. What does it mean? We know that there are electrical waves in the brain when we think.

DAVID: They are creating thought.

dhw: I’ve kept this in, just to confirm your conversion to materialism. The soul no longer creates thought. It is created by the brain.

DAVID: You are unrealistic. In life I know I think with my brain. That is the material side of dualism. But I am my soul and if I think with my brain my soul (an immaterial twin image of me) does also.

You are your soul, and so if your soul thinks with your brain, your soul thinks with your brain, but that is an “if”, and you have just said that it is your brain that creates the thoughts. So it is not your soul. That didn’t get us very far. But now let’s welcome another astonishing new idea, to match that of the English-speaking soul which is there to translate the ions’ thoughts into English, or maybe to translate its own English thoughts into ions and then back again into English. Now your soul is apparently not you but a twin image of you, although it IS you, and although the brain creates the thought, so does the twin image. I have no more understanding of what this theory means than I have of your “representation” and “translation” theories. Dualism quite simply divides your self into body/brain and soul. Not into your body/brain and you and a twin image of “you” which is you. There is no need for all this twisting and turning. You have stated explicitly that it is the brain that creates thought. That’s fine. You have espoused materialism.

dhw: You really are embracing the theory I offered you in the first place: that the brain is the source of thought and is also the means of material expression. Pure materialism. I then go on to suggest that the form of energy created by the brain may live on (hence psychic phenomena such as ghosts and déjà vu), just as we can view the immaterial image of real events that happened long ago, but whether it can live on as an independent source of thought is a matter of faith.

DAVID: I don't think the brain produces the soul, which is a strict interpretation of your theory. The soul is a gift from God at birth, and is my immaterial twin image.

The follow-up to the materialistic section of my theory is a “may”. It allows for the possibility. The sudden arrival of your mysterious twin image is dealt with above.

DAVID: I view my soul as just that, an immaterial me which I contain in life. and since I contain it, it works just like me with the brain because it is me, and the brain is where thoughts originate when I put them there. In other words my soul is me, just as you have pointed out.

dhw: Yes, it is you, so why do you keep trying to make it a representation of you [to which we must now add a “twin image” of you!], or making it just like you? Yes, it works with the brain, and since you believe it is housed in the brain, of course the brain is the location in which thoughts originate. But it is the soul that originates them. DUALISM = two things (soul and brain/body) and NDEs are used as evidence that when the location disappears, only one thing is left: the thinking, feeling etc. soul. Therefore it must be the soul does the thinking and feeling etc.

DAVID: Once again you are separating yourself from your soul. My soul is me. Dualism = two things (soul/me and brain/body). My soul is the God-given mechanism that creates consciousness from electrical activity and is my immaterial image that enters the afterlife.

dhw: Firstly, it is you who keep separating yourself from your soul, and secondly you have repeated the theistic version of my theory: that your God created a mechanism whereby the brain produces consciousness (materialism). See above for the continuation. Thank you for supporting my theory.

DAVID: No support. See above. And I am not separated from my soul. It is me, but has the ability to leave me in death and remain mentally active.

A God-given mechanism that creates consciousness from the electrical activity of the brain is precisely what I have suggested in the theistic version of my theory. The mechanism IS the brain and its ions, since you say they create thought, and so why do you need a soul (apart from your half-baked idea of it being a translator)? The dualist’s faith that the soul remains “mentally active” in death without the brain is regarded as evidence that in life there is such a thing as a “mentally active” soul, which means that the brain is NOT the source of thought. Hence dualism. However, now that you have insisted that the brain creates thought, I challenge you to find an alternative to my proposed way of reconciling your materialism with your dualism.