A THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE chemical problems (Identity)

by dhw, Monday, August 13, 2018, 09:01 (2293 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: I didn’t ask you to choose between yourself and your soul as the source of free will. I proposed that it was the soul and not the body/brain that made the choices, and you opted for the body/brain.

DAVID: I only pointed out the material side of the problem which you refuse to recognize.

You separated the soul from me, and you attributed the will to the body/brain. The material side of the problem is what causes you to vacillate between dualism and materialism, but you refuse to recognize the problem.

DAVID: 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: Once again separating me from soul. “You” are your soul and your body/brain. Now you have your soul giving your soul and your brain consciousness. How does the soul give your soul and brain consciousness if it isn’t conscious? And how can your soul be conscious if it can’t think? And omitted from all these convolutions is your belief that the soul is conscious and thoughtful when the brain is dead.

DAVID: Dead is different realm from I/soul alive using brain to think.

See below for death. Meanwhile, how about answering the questions?

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

dhw: A material brain that creates a soul could also come from your God. But if you wish to go back to your theory that the soul is a piece of God’s consciousness, then may I suggest that it makes sense for a piece of God’s consciousness to be conscious.

DAVID: My consciousness is not God's consciousness, I think my soul provides a way to reach consciousness from a material brain. If I had a direct connection to God’s consciousness faith in God would not be needed. I would have direct knowledge of God.

A good reason for discarding your theory that your soul is a piece of God’s consciousness. This is one of the problems: your theories change so frequently. So what IS your soul? You refuse to accept the definition that it is the immaterial part of your self which contains all your immaterial attributes - e.g. consciousness, the ability to think, to feel, to process information, to make decisions (free will) – and you say it is a copy of yourself which “provides a way to reach consciousness from a material brain”. If you think consciousness comes “from” a material brain, you are caught between your belief in a conscious immaterial soul and the “material side of the problem which you refuse to recognize”.

DAVID: I see no dichotomy in the way I view the material side and try to explain consciousness as a property of the soul.

dhw: Again, how can consciousness be a property of the soul if it doesn’t have the ability to think? […]

DAVID: You and I have stated we think with our brains. Start your thinking about consciousness from that point.

I have stated that in dualism, the soul uses the brain for information and material expression of its thoughts. I start my thinking about consciousness from two points: 1) if the soul exists, it would have no function unless it was conscious, i.e. able to think. 2) If there is no such thing as a soul, the brain does the thinking.

dhw: If the soul is the immaterial thinking self that survives the death of the brain, then of course it creates thought! And so it uses the brain for information and material expression, not for the actual process of thinking (just as in your afterlife it thinks without the brain).

DAVID: I think the soul is immaterial and plays different roles in life and death, which are completely different, and require differences.

No one would disagree that life and death are different. Why should that mean that the soul plays different roles? If it is the immaterial, thinking, feeling, remembering etc. self in death, why shouldn’t it be the thinking, feeling, remembering etc. self in life? The difference is that in death it now uses different means of observing and communicating in a different “reality”. But it is still the same immaterial self that it was in life, as NDE patients confirm.

DAVID: In an NDE the soul observes the afterlife and then when it comes back to a living brain, electricity appears which sre the thoughts the soul presents to you about the experience, and interprets the electricity as conscious thought. We know the presence of electricity must return.

How can the soul possibly not be conscious of what it experienced without the brain during the NDE? The soul (if it exists) activates the living brain. Why does it need the brain’s electricity to become conscious of the experience it has just consciously had?