A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE chemical problems (Identity)

by David Turell , Wednesday, August 08, 2018, 20:39 (2298 days ago) @ dhw

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.

dhw: 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.

I don't understand what else you want. In life I use my brain to create thought. As me my soul does also.

dhw:If you believe there is a soul which produces thoughts (and goes on doing so when there is no brain), you have dualism.

The soul must use the brain network to create thought, just as I do in life. Death is a different circumstance.

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

dhw: 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.

To repeat. I am my soul and my soul is me. In life I create thought by using electric networks in the brain. Therefore my soul is doing the same.

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.

dhw: 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.

I think my material body/ brain has free will.

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

dhw: 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.

dhw: Why “both”? Why do you separate me from my soul?

I don't. I view the soul as an immaterial copy of me, existing along with me but on the quantum side of the wall of uncertainty. In the afterlife the soul return to the quantum realm where the afterlife is. But the soul and I are never separate or separated by the wall.

dhw:See above for your refusal to answer what “use” the soul makes of the brain. Why “represents”? Isn’t it me?

See above for explanation of the non-separation of soul and me.

dhw: 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!

And I separate life and death into two very different circumstances. The soul and I, as the same entity, use the brain to think in life, but the soul, lacking the living me, thinks and communicates telepathically, all in a quantum reality. By the way, Susan agrees with you and says if you accept that theory of yours about the soul you must accept God as existing.