Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example (General)

by David Turell , Saturday, August 25, 2018, 18:51 (2280 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Never! Thoughts are fully represented by the brain's electric waves. Whatever solves the problem of consciousness translates them back.

dhw: You have never explained what you mean by thoughts being “represented”.....Usual question: why can’t your English-speaking soul understand its own thoughts without all this rigmarole, as you believe it does in the afterlife when there is no brain? You can treat the question as rhetorical if you like, since it is clearly unanswerable.

Usual answer. My soul is not separated from me, as you constantly imply. In material life I use my brain to think. My thoughts are those electric waves we see on EEG. How they are created in electric waves and then appear in our minds as words is the mystery of consciousness. I am my soul, no separation, and I propose the soul has a mechanism to accomplish the conversions into electricity and out again. My soul does not think for me. My soul and I think together using the brain as described.

dhw: 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: You've separated again: I am my soul and we together use the brain to think.

dhw: In life you are your soul and your brain/body. “I am my soul” is correct. “We together” separates you from the soul.

I'm not implying any separation. "We together" implies my material and immaterial sides dualistically.

DAVID: Having the brain invent consciousness is materialism.

dhw: 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: The consciousness we experience is presented by the soul; consciousness by itself is not the soul. Your inverted mechanism is still materialism.

dhw: I keep saying that the inverted mechanism is materialism, but it offers the possibility that (theistic version) your God has created materials which in turn produce the immaterial soul. You continually ignore this part of the theory.

Not ignoring: any immaterial entity arising/created from the material is materialism.

DAVID: The point is Libet was measuring latency periods for thought by measuring electric wave appearances as his subjects responded to him. He was thinking of thought as I do! Most studies do this, assuming that thought is electricity; again the material side of the problem that upsets you so much.

It doesn’t upset me at all. Libet believes that thought is engendered by the brain, and that is why there is no such thing as free will – the exact opposite of what you believe. Most studies focus on the brain, because you can only study materials, you can’t study souls. That is why dualists disagree with Libet, and why you and I cheered the article below:

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.

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

DAVID: And mine. Note he approaches brain waves as representing the ability to think and possibly act on the thoughts as represented by EEG and scans.

dhw: Unfortunately the whole article is not available, but in the extract you gave us there is nothing whatsoever about your cryptic “brain waves representing the ability to think”. The author tells us to be opened-minded about the source of consciousness (which is inseparable from the ability to think). The brain’s ability to act on thoughts is one part of my own proposal – that the electric waves signify the process of giving material expression to thought – the other being the passing of information.

The whole article is here. Google the address and it should turn up:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-can-we-tell-if-a-comatose-patient-is-con...

Read it all. I'll stick to the position that the brain's electricity IS thought itself in electric form and as created in electricity it must be translated back into understandable mental words by a consciousness mechanism supplied by the soul. I thought this should be quite clear as my constant position. You limit the brain to acting as a dictating machine-like organ, a recorder which can play back what is deposited.