A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE chemical problems (Identity)

by David Turell , Saturday, August 11, 2018, 19:29 (2295 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: More confused interpretation of what I write. Free will decisions are made by me/soul using the brain to think.

dhw: The confusion arises from your constant changes of mind. Here is the exchange:

DAVID: I am in charge.
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?
DAVID: I think my material body/brain has free will.

In my statements I am describing me within the material side of life, and I do not accept the premise that only the soul provides free will. In life I know I have choice in decision-making, and my soul as me does also. I/soul make choices all the time. We have identified a differences in our concepts of soul.

dhw: I then expressed my surprise, and continue to do so.

dhw: The problem is straightforward! Dualism divides us into soul and body/brain, with the soul comprising all our immaterial attributes (including consciousness and the ability to think), and for those who believe in an afterlife, the soul lives on with all those attributes.

Again a difference in concept. My soul does not give me the ability to think. Soul/I use the brain to create thought in the electricity and the soul gives me consciousness to interpret the electricity.

dhw: But against this are the findings of materialists who seize on the indisputable influence of the body/brain on those immaterial attributes and believe that eventually they will be able to prove that the body/brain are responsible for all those attributes. I don’t know why you refuse to consider the possibility that the materialists are right, but the material mechanisms may be (it is only a hypothesis) capable of producing the immaterial self that dualists believe in. This hypothesis allows for whatever faith you wish to embrace.[/i]

I am not a materialist. I do not believe the soul is created by the material brain. It comes from God.

DAVID: The electricity in the brain is the problem I am trying to solve.

dhw: Yet another shift of focus. The problem we have been trying to solve for months and months on this thread and several others is the dichotomy between your own dualism and your own materialism, and for some reason you refuse (a) to acknowledge it and (b) to consider the solution that I have proposed. I have responded to the electricity question on the Egnor thread about dualism.

No shift of focus. I am trying to get you to explain what you think is going on in the brain with its material functions, which appear when active thought is in process. I see no dichotomy in the way I view the material side and try to explain consciousness as a property of the soul. You seem to separate the soul from the functions of the brain by having the soul separately create thought and then tell the brain what to think so I recognize what I am thinking! I/soul think as one using the brain as a processor of thought. Pure dualism as I see it! I don't care what the 'approved' rigid definition of dualism happens to be. All of the theories are just that, proposals not fact.