A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two; addendum (Identity)

by David Turell , Tuesday, July 31, 2018, 17:33 (2306 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: God's consciousness is also me when I use it to create conscious thought. Your theory makes God consciousness gift to me independent of the brain. It is inconsistent.

dhw: Your piece of God’s consciousness, according to you, is your soul, which is "you". Your soul doesn’t use your soul to create conscious thought. Your soul creates conscious thought. In life it is not “independent” of the brain, because it needs the brain to provide information and material expression, and you have offered no other “use” except a translation theory, which mercifully keeps disappearing.

Haven't you noticed I've changed my approach to the problem? I'm starting from recognizing the material side of the problem. I know with free will I initiate thought. And I now view my living soul as a immaterial portion of me that is a recording reflection of me which will move on to the afterlife.

DAVID: The living "me" initiates all thought, as I have free will and my soul reflects it.

dhw: Your living “me” consists of your soul and your brain/body. Now all of a sudden both your soul and your brain/body initiate thought, whereas previously the soul initiated thought. What does “reflects” mean? If the soul IS you, what does it “reflect”?

Me, as above.

DAVID: You are fighting an old concept of mine. I've changed my theory to better express how I feel about how my soul represents me.

dhw: You change your theory from day to day. My soul represents my soul and my brain/body, instead of processing information, feeling emotions etc. Meaning?

DAVID: 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.

dhw: Thank you for this. Yes, the soul is the dualist’s source of consciousness, which is what I keep telling you.

DAVID: Don't thank me. I view the soul as creating consciousness for me from electricity I create as I think.

dhw: So now this representation or reflection of you creates consciousness. Why can’t the piece of God’s consciousness (your soul) simply BE conscious? And once again, you are separating your dualistic “I” from your soul. If the soul is the immaterial source of consciousness, then it is the immaterial source of thought. If the soul creates electricity as the soul thinks, the soul is already thinking, and so the electricity must be the product of the dualist’s conscious thought, not its creator.

The electricity in the brain is the living material mechanism for thought formation. I am material and I produce thought in the brain . My proposal remains my immaterial soul has a way of creating consciousness out of electricity.

dhw:… [the soul] is the immaterial thinking, feeling, decision-making you, which in life works together with the material information-gathering, materially expressing you.

DAVID: Not if it is just a reflection of me, my new view.

dhw: You keep saying your soul IS you, just as your material self is the other part of you – see the start of this post. But now your soul is not you, it’s a reflection of your soul and your body/brain. So it doesn’t actually do anything, but reflects what it is doing. Meaning?

DAVID: In life I am in charge. In death the soul exists as a representation of me.

dhw: So in life your soul and your brain are in charge, except that your soul only reflects your soul and your brain, and in death it represents the reflection of your soul and your brain. It doesn’t think, feel, remember…it just represents thinking, feeling, remembering. Meaning?

In life I am in charge and my soul reflects immaterially. My soul provides the essence of the homeostasis of life's molecules activities including consciousness. Those molecules don't think and are constantly in action to maintain life which though the soul emerges as a living me..

DAVID: Our criticism of each other does produce deeper and perhaps more important considerations. We are still not close.

dhw: I like the ambiguity of your last comment! Your theories leave us far apart, except that you keep confirming every statement I make about dualism. But then, as I noted last time, you scrabble around with theory after theory to find ways of reconciling or ignoring the dichotomy between dualism and materialism. On the other hand, we are still not “close” to solving the great mystery. However, at least my “theory of intelligence” offers an explanation in which you have so far failed to find any logical flaws.

And I keep digging deeper into what I know on the material side to find a consistent definition of what the soul is and does from its immaterial side.