Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example (General)

by David Turell , Monday, August 20, 2018, 17:47 (2285 days ago) @ dhw

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...

dhw: 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.

dhw: 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.

I've answered over and over. Your soul is not separate from you as you exist in your material body. You think with your brain! Thought does not appear until you desire to initiate it and then we can see it in fMRI and electric waves. Remember evidence of no consciousness is a flat EEG during NDE's. You and your soul obviously think with brain waves as the container of the thoughts. You keep separating your soul from your brain. What do you think the EEG represents? .

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.

dhw: 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. ....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?

Your separation of soul from brain processes in initiation of thought, as described in the paragraph above.

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 the material side of the problem.

dhw: 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.

Your theory is pure materialism.