A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE Part Two; addendum (Identity)

by dhw, Saturday, August 04, 2018, 09:54 (2302 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: My mind is produced by my soul using my brain to think.

dhw: Presumably then it is the conscious mind and not the soul that goes into the afterlife. I hereby christen this new form of dualism “trialism”.

DAVID: Not what I've proposed at all. My soul is immaterially conscious and produces consciousness for me from the electricity I create when I think.

You keep accusing me of separating the soul from "me", whereas this is precisely what you keep doing! If the soul IS you, you now have the soul BEING conscious and yet producing consciousness for the soul from the electricity the soul creates when the soul thinks? How can the soul think before consciousness has been produced?

dhw: Why must your immaterial essence be a copy? If your soul IS you – containing the immaterial essence of you – why can’t it survive as itself rather than being a copy?

DAVID: Because I have free will to form myself. Again you want my soul to dictate to me. I (material me) dictate to my soul.

Your dualist’s soul IS you and can’t be separated from you. Remember? I view the soul (the essential, immaterial me) as instructing the brain (the material me), but now you have your body/brain dictating to your soul, which can only mean it’s your brain that does the thinking! Your computer now tells you what to write! And you still haven’t explained why the surviving soul has to be a copy instead of just being itself.

DAVID: I/soul cannot think without the brain during life.

dhw: Of course you can’t. The brain provides the information and material expression that are absolutely necessary for our thoughts during and about material life.

DAVID: Again back to your rigid definition of dualism. Doesn't fit mine.

So are you denying that the brain provides information and material expression? What exactly is your definition of dualism? At the moment, we have a division into soul, mind, and brain (= 3, not 2). The brain now dictates to the soul, the conscious soul actually isn’t conscious but creates consciousness (= the mind and not the soul, which is just a mechanism for creating consciousness) by using the brain to make electric waves, and the mind makes a copy of itself which goes into the afterlife. I find this confusing.

DAVID: Can't you come up with your own independent definition of soul without Longman, although I generally agree with his description of what a soul is, but that doesn't imply possible mechanisms of soul actions, which is what I am thinking about.

And I’m sorry but the result of your thinking about possible mechanisms is that you lurch from one theory to another, the latest of which I’m afraid I find just as confused and confusing as the others.

DAVID: My immaterial soul is also the mechanism that creates consciousness as the soul/I think with the brain.

dhw: Separation between soul and mind not mentioned here. If my soul thinks with the brain thereby creating consciousness, then the soul itself is not conscious although it thinks with the brain. What sort of thinking can it do if it’s not conscious?

DAVID: You keep separating my soul from me.

I don't. See above for some fine examples of your doing just that.

dhw: […]your new concept of trialism, with an unconscious soul thinking together with an unconscious brain to produce a conscious mind is certainly not my concept of dualism!

DAVID: I'm glad you have your own concept. My conscious soul thinks using my brain.

A moment ago it was your soul and your brain that CREATED consciousness: "My soul is the mechanism that creates mind/consciousness from the electric networks."

DAVID: Tell us your concept and we can critically study it. How do you view your essence acting?

I’m surprised that you can’t remember my concept of dualism (not to be taken as belief in dualism). The self consists of two components: the immaterial soul and the material body/brain. The soul, or the “essence” of me, comprises all my immaterial attributes such as consciousness, thought, emotion, will, memory etc. In life it acts by using the body/brain to gather information and to give its thoughts material expression. When the body/brain dies, it survives as the same immaterial “essence” of me, but it uses psychic means to gather information and to communicate.

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