Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example (General)

by David Turell , Wednesday, August 15, 2018, 21:51 (2290 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Because in life I see different circumstances as you know.

dhw: What is the point of an afterlife if you are no longer you? Apart from the means of observing and communicating, what has to change?

The brain is no longer present for the soul to use.

DAVID: Why is there electricity to explain? Can you tell me why it exists? You tell me below it is expression of thought. How is that translated into my mind?

dhw: There are two schools of thought: brain electricity creates thought (= materialism), but nobody knows how; or brain electricity is the brain’s response to the thoughts of a soul (= dualism), but nobody knows how “soul” thinking creates the electricity that enables the soul to control the brain.

I accept your second thought above. The soul and I since we are one and the same use the brain by creating thought in the electricity of the brain. Definition from Britannica:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/soul-religion-and-philosophy

" Soul, in religion and philosophy, the immaterial aspect or essence of a human being, that which confers individuality and humanity, often considered to be synonymous with the mind or the self. In theology, the soul is further defined as that part of the individual which partakes of divinity and often is considered to survive the death of the body."

DAVID: Remember the soul is me, never separate from me in life! I know words because I learned them from infancy on. […] I am my soul and it and I developed together as my brain developed. This means my soul is dependent in life on my brain to produce thought. *** The soul and I produce thought by use of the brain. The brain never creates thought on its own, although you constantly try to tell me I that is what I am writing.

dhw: If the soul exists, then until the passage beginning with my asterisks, I agree with almost all your comments. Of course the soul learns. Consciousness and the ability to think are a blank (unlike personality) until they have something to be conscious of/to think about. The developing brain provides the information that the learning soul is conscious of and thinks about. For example, the soul learns the language by hearing the words through the brain (information), and it learns to say the words by using the brain (material expression). As the brain develops, so the soul has more and more information to think about and to express. That is the sense in which your soul depends on your brain to produce thought. After the asterisks, it is you who again separate “I” from soul. Your materialism arises out of statements such as “a sick brain produces sick thought”, “the immaterial output from the brain is thought”, "...the thought producing electrical impulses". Your utterly confusing “translation” theory is just one of several as you “struggle” (your word) to reconcile your religious dualism with your medical materialism. And you still haven’t explained why your English-speaking soul can’t think its thoughts in English.

Note, in the early part of your response we see you stating the soul uses the brain directly to learn. That is also me learning. Why does the soul have to stop using the brain to think when I know I use my brain to create thought as a living being? What you quote from me is my consideration of what we know on the material side of the question as to how consciousness appears and how a damaged brain can alter it from normal. And the answer to your question is always the same. Since the soul is myself (defined above) and I think with my brain, my soul thinks with my brain as represented by the electricity that appears when thought is in progress. My soul is the immaterial source of my consciousness from the electricity. My theory accounts for all the aspects of what we know about thought and brain function and is a dualistic theory.