A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two; addendum (Identity)

by dhw, Saturday, July 28, 2018, 12:27 (2309 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

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

DAVID: 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.

Yes, if the soul exists, it uses the information supplied by the brain. That is my use number one. What do you mean by “materially consciously”? Consciousness and thought are immaterial. (Remember your definition of the soul as a piece of God’s consciousness?) Material consciousness is the material expression of consciousness – my use number two. “I think…” and “so does my soul”. Why are you separating your soul from “I”? Yes, your dualist's immaterial soul does the thinking. I don’t understand why you don’t understand this.

DAVID: My brain networks allow me to receive God’s consciousness. It is his gift to us.

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?

DAVID: 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.

Why “just as I do”? Your soul is you, remember? And we are only talking about material life, since there is no brain in the afterlife you believe in. So once again we have the English-speaking soul initiating a thought, the English-speaking soul translates its thought into electricity, and then it translates it back again into English. What for? Do you mean your soul can’t understand its own English thought without this rigmarole? There are two possibilities: either the brain and its electric waves produce the thought (materialism), or there is a soul whose thoughts direct the brain through electricity, using the brain to acquire information or to give thought material expression (dualism).

DAVID: 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.

I keep emphasizing that your soul IS you. And once again you are the one who keeps separating the two: “my soul does not think without me initiating the thought”. Don’t you mean your soul does not think without your soul initiating the thought, i.e. your soul (and not your brain) initiates the thought? And see above and below for your own confirmation of how the dualist’s thinking soul uses the brain (for information, material expression, plus a translation theory which I still find totally confusing). What has been misinterpreted?

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.

DAVID: 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…

I agree with your description of the dualist’s soul, and I agree that the soul uses the brain to “materially produce”, i.e. give material expression to its immaterial thought. Thank you for confirming what I keep repeating.

DAVID: ...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.

How can the soul have two “mechanisms of THOUGHT”? It thinks in life as in death, because according to you the soul is a piece of God’s consciousness, and consciousness is conscious, i.e. it thinks. But as you have agreed in this post, in life it uses the mechanism of the brain to observe (gather information) and to “materially produce” its thoughts, whereas in death it must use psychic means (“mechanisms”) to gather information and to communicate its thoughts. Apart from your strange translation theory, everything in your post seems to confirm my interpretation of dualism, but of course it still leaves wide open the question of whether the brain is or is not the source of consciousness and thought.