A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE chemical problems (Identity)

by dhw, Wednesday, August 08, 2018, 09:46 (2298 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: We know that when we think the brain is producing electric waves that contain the thought. We don't know how consciousness appears from this material presentation of it.

dhw: How can consciousness appear from the material presentation of consciousness? The material presentation of consciousness is its expression, not its source! That is why in the good old days you told us that the soul was the initiator of thought, which has now abruptly changed into the brain being the initiator of thought (“a sick brain produces sick thought”, “the immaterial output from the brain is thought”).

DAVID: I/soul think with my brain, but there is no thought that can be recognized until the electricity runs it course and a complete thought appears to me/soul. This is simply a recognition of the material side of the problem of consciousness.

Same old mantra: my soul thinks with (or “uses”) my brain, but you won’t tell us what the use is, other than for information and material expression. Or you come up with new theories which you quickly abandon. What do you mean by thought being “recognized” and appearing to my soul? Is your translation theory making a comeback? (The conscious English-speaking soul thinks its thought but doesn’t know what it’s thinking until it’s been translated into electrical waves which the soul translates back into English.) If you believe the brain is the source of thought – as you keep saying, but then denying – then you have materialism. If you believe there is a soul which produces thoughts (and goes on doing so when there is no brain), you have dualism.

DAVID: What you've missed is the sick brain is producing what it can do for me, even if I preferred it wouldn't do that. I'm/soul stuck with what the brain can do.

This makes your soul into a helpless observer and not a producer. The addict or drunkard kills his wife, and the soul is standing by thinking, “Don’t do it!” And you accuse me of separating the soul from “me”!

DAVID: This is my version of dualism. I know it is not yours because you have a theory of dualism I do not recognize.

dhw: What don’t you recognize? Do you reject the version of dualism that has the soul using the brain for information and material expression? Do you reject the version in which the soul contains all our immaterial attributes, such as consciousness, the ability to think, will, emotion, memory – all of which live on after the death of the brain?

DAVID: I don't recognize that your version of material expression of thought. I add create and express thought under an impetus from me/soul.

Material expression of thought is the translation of thought into the spoken or written word, or into the material implementation of a concept. I can hardly disagree with you that in dualism you/your soul add, create and express thought under an impetus from you/your soul. The disagreement arises when you claim that in dualism the soul is a helpless observer (today’s theory), or the brain is the source of thought (a theory that comes and goes), or the soul is a piece of God’s consciousness that is not conscious until the brain creates consciousness with the use of electric waves, or the soul thinks but doesn’t know what its thoughts are until the brain translates them and/or sends them back to the soul to translate.

dhw: I don’t know why your “me” is “represented” by your soul. You soul IS your “me”. Apart from that, I see no difference between your concept of dualism and my own.

DAVID: Well, we do have differences. I view my soul differently as an essence and immaterial me while in life I am a material me.

I would say “I am ALSO a material me.” Otherwise agreed.

DAVID; In life I am in charge and changing.

In charge means free will, and if I believed in dualism I’d say that free will is an attribute of the immaterial soul, not of the material body. Do you agree? And of course I agree that we change.

DAVID: In life I believe the soul provides the consciousness I experience.

Good news. The soul is the source of consciousness again.

DAVID: Both the soul and I use the brain to create thought. In death my soul simply represents what I was at the end of my life.

Why “both”? Why do you separate me from my soul? See above for your refusal to answer what “use” the soul makes of the brain. Why “represents”? Isn’t it me? In death, according to NDEs, the soul thinks about what it observes, responds, feels, remembers etc., and undergoes new experiences to which it reacts. NDEs are used as evidence that in life we have a soul that contains all these attributes, so why can’t the same soul have the same attributes in life until the brain produces its electrical waves? The waves are commonly used as evidence that the brain is the producer of all those attributes (which you also subscribe to every other day), and therefore there is no such thing as a soul, which is why you keep creating the here-today-gone-tomorrow theories mentioned above to accommodate the soul into your materialism!