Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example (General)

by dhw, Friday, August 24, 2018, 12:03 (2281 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: […] you still haven’t explained the logic of your theory that an English-speaking soul initiates thought but cannot think until its thoughts become electric waves which it then translates back into the English it started with in the first place.

DAVID: I've explained it over and over.

dhw: You have repeated it over and over, but have never explained it, no doubt because one cannot explain something that makes no sense. My apologies if this sounds offensive, but I really do wish you would drop the whole theory! At least your original theory, that our consciousness (soul) was part of God’s consciousness, was intelligible.

DAVID: That our consciousness is part of God's has never changed.

You still haven’t explained your unintelligible translation theory. I hope this means you’ve quietly withdrawn it.

DAVID: Let's start by not accepting 'soul'. In life all of us think with our brains. You don't deny that.

dhw: In this context, “we think with our brains” is an obfuscation. There are two possibilities. If the soul doesn’t exist, our brains do the thinking. If the soul does exist, the soul does the thinking and uses the brain for information and material expression.

DAVID: Not so. I use my brain to think. I control my brain . It does nothing until I tell it to act. That is the material side of the issue. I view your thought at totally confused.

Yet again you separate your soul from you! “You” in your dualistic life are your soul and your brain. Your soul uses your brain and controls your brain and your brain does nothing until your soul tells it to act.

DAVID: Next, accept our souls are our essence. They do exactly what we do but as immaterial forms. If I think with my brain my soul does also.

dhw: Yet again you separate the soul from “I” – the “crime” you keep accusing me of! The soul IS the immaterial essence of you. It doesn’t do what you do. It does what it does! And yes it thinks and uses your brain as above.

DAVID: My soul is me! You've separated us again!

You say the soul does what we do. THAT separates soul from us! Soul and brain are the two parts of your dualistic self. The soul part of you uses the brain part of you to think (in the manner I keep describing).

DAVID: I've got it all along. It [= the dhw theory] doesn't explain immaterial consciousness at all, but a material source for the immaterial. How are the EEG waves translated into understandable thought?

dhw: NOTHING explains immaterial consciousness! It is a mystery. At those moments when you forget about your illogical translation theory, you claim that our consciousness is a part of your God’s consciousness. That doesn’t explain consciousness either – it merely shifts the mystery to God instead of ourselves. And how, in your illogical translation theory, can the soul think incomprehensible thoughts and have them “translated” into electrical waves, which it then translates back into understandable thought?

DAVID: The soul and I, one and the same, use the brain to create thoughts. My soul is separate from me only in death or NDE's.

You have repeated the points we agree on (except for HOW the soul uses the brain). No comment on your illogical translation theory. This is a hopeful sign.

DAVID: My addition of God's consciousness is not what you have really proposed in the past or even now. You still have the brain with a brain-based mechanism for consciousness which is not really a part of a universal God's consciousness.

dhw: I don’t know what you mean by “addition” – I thought you believed the soul WAS part of God’s consciousness, but couldn’t think until it had done the weird translation trick. My theory (theistic version) has your God inventing a machine (the brain) which can produce thought and possibly even an immaterial essence that can survive the demise of the machine. Humans are also trying to produce machines that can think, but (theistic version), your God got there before them. Your only objection now seems to be that this doesn’t fit in with your theory (whichever one it happens to be). I’ve told you my logical objections to yours. What are your logical objections to mine?

DAVID: Having the brain invent consciousness is materialism.

Not invent. Produce. Yes, my theory attempts to reconcile materialism and dualism by inverting the conventional approach, and showing how materials might produce a soul.

DAVID: […] When Libet asked his subjects to think and timed EEG results why did he measure EEG timing ?

Why must you muddy the waters with Libet’s experiments? They support the belief that the brain initiates thought, and so we do not have free will. Dualists object. If anything, I can use Libet to support my theory.
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DAVID: This article is about a scientist who studies comatose patients and others who have brain damage and might or might not be conscious and may or may not have consciousness:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-can-we-tell-if-a-comatose-patient-is-con...

QUOTE: It remains to be discovered whether the brain is the entire story. Scientific research has to be conducted with an open mind. The topic of consciousness is rife with philosophical implications and questions.

Absolutely. Hence dualism and materialism, and my attempt to reconcile the two.