A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two; addendum (Identity)

by David Turell , Friday, July 27, 2018, 18:59 (2310 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I have always thought the brain contributes its networks for I/soul to use to create/form thoughts, despite how you have tried to interpret what I write.

Back you go to “use”, and back I go to asking, as above: what other uses?

The brain supplies stored memories and sensory information. You know that. To use means to employ. I am my soul. I know I think materially consciously with brain electrical networks. So does my soul which is my immaterial me, because it is me. I don't understand why you don't understand that thought of mine.

dhw: A moment ago you accused me of separating “me” and the soul. Now you have your soul “receiving” your soul (a piece of God’s consciousness) thanks to the brain networks.

DAVID: That doesn't separate the soul from me.

dhw: If you are your soul, and your God’s consciousness is your soul, how can your soul receive your soul? Or are you now separating your soul from your God’s consciousness?

I have only one soul which appears through God's activity when I am created by embryogenesis. It is an immaterial part of my material brain and it acts as a mechanism to translate thought into electricity and back again, just as I do in material life.

dhw: And you haven’t answered my question. Why can’t God’s consciousness be conscious in life and death? Also see below.

DAVID: I don't see why it can't be.

dhw: Thank you. So if the soul is conscious in life and in death, why do we need all this rigmarole about it having to translate its thoughts into electrical waves and then translate them back again into English in order to be conscious in life?

It is not rigmarole. It is what you and I do in material life as we think. I'm simply proposing the soul creates the conscious translation of the electric waves.

dhw: Why are you comparing what your soul does to what you do? You ARE your soul, as you keep forgetting and then remembering.

I've ignored your constant misinterpretation of me. I never forget that I am my soul and we both use the brain networks to think. My soul does not think without me initiating the thought. It is not separate from me as you keep implying. And I use my brain to think.

DAVID: Because the soul, coming from God, contains the mechanism that creates consciousness from electricity in the brain networks.

dhw: So the piece of God’s consciousness, which you agree is conscious, has a mechanism which creates consciousness from electricity. Why does consciousness need a mechanism to create consciousness? Of course it makes perfect sense that your God might invent a mechanism of brain networks and electricity which produces consciousness. But that is the theistic theory you reject.

I think that God-given mechanism is the immaterial soul, which embodies my entire personality structure and thought capacity. But in life I have to recognize how the brain plays its role in materially producing thought, and how the I/soul ties to the brain and then when released from the brain ends up functionally in the afterlife still thinking and observing. Therefore, in my view the soul has two mechanisms of thought, using the brain in life as I do and able to think without the brain in afterlife. A perfectly reasonable theory. Once again, I am my soul. It is not as separate as you seem to want it to be.