Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, August 14, 2018, 09:45 (2292 days ago) @ David Turell

I am telescoping two threads, as our discussion has now veered away from my THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE and is focused solely on the nature of dualism.

dhw: I have reproduced some of your multiple, ever changing theories above, and you do not advance the discussion by ignoring all the contradictions they contain. They arise out of your attempt to reconcile your belief that the soul is a piece of your God’s immaterial consciousness with your knowledge of what happens materially.

DAVID: I know that. My multiple approaches confuse you, in part because you seem to have one rigid view of the characteristics of what a soul does or is capable of doing. I have my view. You have your different view. Until we find a common description of soul that we both agree to, our confused discussion will continue.

Since you know that all your contradictions arise out of your attempt to reconcile your belief that the soul is a piece of God’s immaterial consciousness with your knowledge of what happens materially, why do you claim that you have “your view”? You have lots of different views (“multiple approaches”) which are full of contradictions, and so long as you dash from one to another, of course our confused discussion will continue. You never deal with the contradictions. You merely repeat your mantra that the soul thinks with the brain or uses the brain to think.

As for a common description, what is your objection to my proposal that the soul (IF it exists) comprises all the immaterial attributes of the self which believers think will survive the death of the body, e.g. consciousness, the ability to think, emotion, the will, memory, etc.?

DAVID: I think more fully than you do because you have a pre-formed rigid concept of soul, when we have yet to agree on what the soul is, which is what I admit I am struggling with, knowing the presentation of the material side. We recognize consciousness, but when we look of the brain all we see is electricity. How does the electricity convert to consciousness is the continuing 'hard' problem. I think my soul offers a mechanism of translation.

You are struggling because you insist that the electricity from the brain is the CAUSE of consciousness, and that is the essence of materialism. You refuse to contemplate the possibility that the soul itself – IF it exists – is the source of consciousness (in spite of the fact that you believe it is conscious in an afterlife) and that the electricity is the RESULT of conscious thought. And yet you say yourself that the soul controls the brain: “I/soul control the brain's activity. Doesn't yours?” How can it control the brain if it is not conscious?

DAVID: We know electricity is activated in the frontal cortex of the brain when I think. My solution to consciousness is the soul provides an interpretive mechanism for the material electricity that we know exists during thought. I hear my thoughts in words, not electrical buzzing.

Again you have identified the dualistic process, but then tried to reverse it. Yes, in dualism there is electricity when “I” (= the soul) think. The soul thinks. Full stop. You don’t need all the confusion of “the brain produces thought because I/soul drive it to produce thought”, as if the soul can’t think a coherent thought of its own but mysteriously has to initiate gibberish which makes the brain come up with electrical waves that are also gibberish and have to be translated into words by the soul. If the soul knows words for the purpose of translation, it can think in words, so it can initiate thoughts in words! Its use of the brain to acquire information and to give material expression to its thoughts involves electrical activity in both cases. The alternative is that all the electrical activity is indeed what produces consciousness and thought (= materialism), i.e. there is no such thing as a soul. There is evidence for both theories, and that is why we have a dichotomy which you refuse to recognize (even though you struggle with it), and which I have tried to resolve with my THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE.

On the subject of NDEs you wrote:
"The soul in death is totally disconnected from the soul in life. You are trying to subscribe to some sort of continuity in realms."

What on earth or in heaven would be the point of a soul and an afterlife if there was no continuity? If you are not the same person with the same attributes, you might as well stay dead. Once again, why do you reject the definition of the soul that I have proposed?