Consciousness: and psychedelic alterations like NDE's (General)

by David Turell , Friday, August 17, 2018, 17:33 (2288 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Yes, it’s a clear example of how drugs/diseases change the brain and hence a person’s thoughts and behaviour. As I keep pointing out, it is evidence for materialism, whereas psychic experiences that provide new information – together with the known fact that thought also changes the brain (illiterate women, taxi drivers, musicians) – provide evidence for dualism. Hence the great dichotomy which you refuse to recognize, although we have spent so much time trying to resolve it.

DAVID: All I have done is recognize the material side of the problem, not that I am a materialist, but your mind is tightly closed to the way I approach the problem. So be it.

dhw: I am not saying you are a materialist! If you recognize the material side of the problem, then you recognize the dichotomy in your own thinking: i.e. you recognize the materialist side but you believe in the dualist side. And then you try to reconcile the two with a collection of theories that are riddled with contradictions. I have exactly the same problem as you, and I have tried to find a reconciliation of my own. You are as free to criticize my theory as I am to criticize your different theories. That is how this forum works!

You see contradictions I don't see, because you appear to have a fixed definition of dualism I do not have.