Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example (General)

by dhw, Sunday, August 19, 2018, 10:48 (2286 days ago) @ David Turell

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

dhw: 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?

DAVID: One more time: as the soul and I, being the same, think, that process creates the electric waves in the brain which represent the thought.

This is fine with me. You now have the soul thinking, and the thought creates electric waves in the brain. That is dualism. But you never explain what you mean by the waves “representing” the thought. This is where the whole theory becomes so murky.

DAVID: The brain on its own is only a tool for me and my soul. My soul and I process the thought by use of the electricity.

Your bold is precisely what I also see as the essence of dualism, but your second statement is what causes the trouble. First of all, you continue to separate my soul and me. The dualistic “I” consist of two parts: the soul and the brain/body. The electricity comes from the brain. If my soul, as you said above, thinks, why does it need to “process” its thoughts by electricity? This in turn brings us back to your translation theory:

DAVID: How I 'hear' words in my head as I think is 'the hard problem' part of consciousness, and I have proposed that my soul provides the mechanism for the translation back from the electricity.

The hard problem is consciousness itself. What gives us the ability to think? You believe that the ability to think continues into an afterlife where there is no brain. And so your “essence” (Britannia) IS your ability to think, feel, remember etc. – what you call your immaterial piece of God’s consciousness – and the living you thinks in words, just as NDE patients do. The electricity in the brain is therefore the CONSEQUENCE of thought, as you agreed earlier but then disagreed. It makes no sense for the soul to think in electricity which it then has to translate into words! If it already knows the words, it thinks in words!

DAVID: Active thought is seen in fMRI's as increased blood flow, nothing more but it demonstrates the brain's activity in thought.

Yes, in dualism the thinking soul activates the brain.

DAVID: If thought is electricity in the brain….

But thought, as demonstrated by NDEs, appears NOT to be electricity in the brain. That is one reason why some people believe in a soul that does the thinking.

DAVID: …it must have a way of being translated back from electrical currents in living neurons and their connections.

As before: either thought is engendered by electricity in the brain (materialism) or it is engendered by an immaterial soul which CAUSES electricity in the brain (dualism). If there is a soul that thinks, it will think in words, and does not need to translate anything. It therefore only needs to use the brain for information and material expression.

DAVID: I'm simply trying to account for what we know about brain activity and conscious thought which is immaterial.

Yes, that is what we are both trying to do, and I am trying to explain my objections to your various theories. Perhaps one day we shall return to my own, and you will explain your objections to that.