Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example (General)

by dhw, Monday, August 20, 2018, 12:21 (2285 days ago) @ David Turell

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!

DAVID: 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...

So far there is no difference between us. When the soul thinks, the brain lights up, and yes indeed, the thinking soul (if it exists) uses the brain.

DAVID: ...But those signals are not thought itself until the consciousness mechanism translates back to the immaterial side as words in my head.

And this is where your theory becomes incomprehensible to me. How can the soul think if it doesn’t have thoughts? Of course the signals are not thought itself: thought is thought itself. The English-speaking soul is conscious (as it is in NDEs), and so it thinks conscious thoughts inside your head (until you have no head). Once more: why does the soul have to translate its English words into electricity and then translate the electricity back into the English words it thought in the first place? Please answer.

DAVID: 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.

I agree with all of this except the last non sequitur. What is a “consciousness translation”? The dualist’s soul IS his/her consciousness, and of course (unlike personality, with its inborn characteristics) it is a blank slate until it has something to be conscious of. As you say, the brain provides information, and as the brain develops, the dualist’s soul has more and more information to be conscious of and to use. This includes language, which the child’s soul learns to use in order to express the thoughts resulting from the information. You are right to point out that the infant doesn't yet think in words. My twin grandsons still aren’t talking, but they are thinking. If they want something, they can now point to it, go and get it, or even fight for it. They couldn’t do this at birth, but the soul develops and makes decisions as it absorbs information from the developing brain, and at the same time the brain/body develops the means of expression. Eventually, when their soul begins to master language as conveyed to them through the brain, they will think and express themselves as you and I do in words. The two thought processes are materially acquired information being immaterially processed (thinking about the information), and immaterial thought being expressed materially. That is how the soul “must learn to use the brain”. What do you disagree with?

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.

DAVID: 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 know it is he material side of the problem.

My one theory incorporates the “material side of the problem”: the brain is the source of consciousness and thought, and as agreed above, the child is a blank (other than through its inborn characteristics) until the brain is mature enough to absorb information and then to instruct the rest of the (developing) body to express its thoughts materially. My theory in the context of child/brain development is the same as yours, except that the “soul” (if it exists) is the product of the brain through a process I have described under THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE.