A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two; addendum (Identity)

by David Turell , Sunday, July 29, 2018, 19:07 (2308 days ago) @ dhw

> DAVID: I am me and my soul is me. No separation. When I think my soul thinks, because in life we are one and the same. You are the separatist. For you only the soul thinks.
[quote]
DAVID: In life I am a material me, and I run everything. I view the soul as recording all of me as I live and develop and producing the immaterial consciousness we cannot otherwise explain.

dhw: I am not separating me from my soul but am doing precisely what you have just done: distinguishing between the two parts of the dualist’s self (the “me”), which are the immaterial soul/mind and the material body/brain. So what “runs” what? You view the soul as producing the immaterial consciousness we cannot otherwise explain, and you define it as being part of your God’s consciousness, which by definition must be conscious, i.e. able to think. That would make perfect sense to me if I were a believer. And yet you go on to say that although your soul initiates thoughts (still part of your God’s consciousness, then), the thoughts are not thoughts until the soul has translated them into electrical brain waves which bring them back to the soul to be translated. I do not understand why this rigmarole is necessary. I can, however, understand why it is necessary for the soul’s thoughts to be translated into electrical waves in order for the brain to give them material expression.

So 1) please explain why your piece of God’s consciousness cannot think thoughts until its thoughts have been translated into electricity and then retranslated back into thoughts.

DAVID: My theory is that it [the soul] has two mechanisms of thought to fit two different mechanisms of existence in life and death.

dhw: 2) Please explain what is wrong with the hypothesis that if the source of the self’s immaterial consciousness, i.e. the ability to think, is a piece of your immaterial God’s consciousness, it will be the same immaterial consciousness, i.e. ability to think, in life as in death, and the only new “mechanisms” will be those used for observation and communication.[/quote]

Please read the bolded statements above. You have missed the critical essence of them. As usual you have pushed me to delve deeper into what I intuitively sense. We have to start with fact. Materially I think with my brain and I am conscious. Beyond fact I believe I have a soul which is within me immaterially in life and leaves me in an immaterial form when I die. But in life I am in command, I decide what to think, how to shape my personality and my life. I am me. So what is my soul? It is an immaterial recording immaterial reflection of me, much like a CD in my computer as I create a file of my thoughts. But unlike a material CD it is a living immaterial copy of me. My soul, inseparable from me, uses the brain networks in thought. My soul is never separate from me in life. And my soul is the immaterial source of consciousness as it resides within me since it is connected to God's universal consciousness to which it returns in death.

My view of my soul in afterlife is that it is still a copy of me. There is no newly original part of me that is invented. In heaven, as described by Eben Alexander my soul observes, learns and operates telepathically. I doubt there are one on one or group deeply philosophical discussions which require a complex thinking mechanism.

I hope this clears up your confusion about my thoughts.