Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example (General)

by David Turell , Sunday, August 19, 2018, 19:38 (2286 days ago) @ dhw

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.

dhw: 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!

The bold is not what I think about the brain and thought. The brain is a material electrical tool that I/soul use to create thought. The key is viewing the brain as as tool to use which is the materialism side of the discussion. When I/soul think fMRI lights up and electricity flows in the area designated. Those signals are the generation of thought using the brain. But those signals are not thought itself until the consciousness mechanism translates back to the immaterial side as words in my head.

And back to the newborn: blank slate, barely conscious with basic necessary reflex actions, sucking, grasping actively, while automatically breathing and digesting. The infant I/soul learn language from the brain, which acts as a teaching tool and gradually a use tool. Some how the input of vision, hearing brain electricity is translated for the infant into purposeful conscious information. At some point memory for living events appear and last a lifetime. At another point purposeful thought appears, rather than automatic reactions to hunger, discomfort, and other noxious brain input. I/soul must learn to use the brain and for all of this development I view the soul as providing the consciousness translation.

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

dhw: Yes, in dualism the thinking soul activates the brain.

DAVID: If thought is electricity in the brain….

dhw: 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.

'Some people' but not me. I know I/soul uses the brain to create immaterial thought.

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

dhw: 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.

As usual, at this point we stay in total disagreement. The act of thought by material me/soul creates thought represented by the electricity, which the brain passively creates as I/soul think.

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

dhw: 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.

Your theories skip over the material I present about child/brain development which show how the child/soul develop their use of the brain. I kn ow it is he material side of the problem.