Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example (General)

by dhw, Saturday, August 18, 2018, 07:41 (2077 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You agree that the same soul (if it exists) survives the death of the brain, and you have come up with no changes apart from the means of observation and communication. You also agree that the soul is conscious and has the ability to think. Put the two together, and what have you got? In life, you have a conscious, thinking soul which depends on the brain for its means of observation and communication (= acquiring information and giving material expression to its thoughts – these functions being performed through the electricity of the brain). So why do you object to this perfectly logical description of how dualism works?

DAVID: Because I use the brain to create thought with electric currents in life and the soul is me, it does the same.

Please point to any statement in the above which you think is incorrect, and please explain how the “immaterial essence of a human being” (the Britannica definition of “soul” which you accept), which you believe survives the death of the brain as your same essential self, can be conscious and able to think without electric currents in death, but cannot be conscious or able to think in life until the brain supplies it with electric currents.
Meanwhile, I don’t know how you can misinterpret the exchange below:

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.

DAVID: I accept your second thought above.

dhw: If you accept that the electricity is the brain’s response to the thought of the soul, the soul does not create thought with electricity, the electricity is the result of thoughts created by the soul.

DAVID: A total misinterpretation of my thinking as apparently I did yours. You know full well I know I create the electricity in the brain that represents thought.

I have no idea what you mean by the electricity “representing” thought. The only explanation you have given me so far is that the English-speaking soul thinks gibberish which creates electricity in the brain and the electricity goes back to the English-speaking soul which translates the gibberish into English. Why the soul should be capable of translating the gibberish into English but not capable of thinking its thought in English is beyond me.

DAVID: My soul is me and we together initiate the thought/electricity in the brain. Your proposal separates you from your activity and your soul's activity, and you don't see the separation. Are you your soul or not?

Yes, I am my soul, and since my soul is me, the only “we” who do things “together” are my soul and my brain. That is dualism. It is you who repeatedly separate my soul from me! I am quite happy to agree with you that the dualist’s soul initiates thought and is situated in the brain, but I don’t know why you have to bracket thought and electricity together as if they were the same thing. That is the basis of your extraordinary translation theory above. My proposal at the head of this post could hardly be clearer, but I’ll look forward to hearing which statements you reject. Your objection that the soul needs the brain’s electric currents in order to produce a thought clashes with your acceptance that the electric currents are the brain’s response to the thoughts of the soul. How can the brain respond to thought if the thought has not yet been created?

David: But you've not accepted my view that I/soul use the brain in creation of thought.

I have accepted it a hundred times: in creating thought, the soul uses the brain for information and material expression. What I do not accept is your illogical translation theory, but perhaps you can answer my objections to it. Once more: either the brain’s electricity creates thought (materialism), or the soul’s thoughts cause electricity in the brain (dualism). Drugs/diseases suggest the former, and psychic experiences and experiments with learning suggest the latter. Hence the dichotomy we are trying to resolve. What is your objection to this statement?