Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example (General)

by dhw, Sunday, August 26, 2018, 09:14 (2280 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: 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.

DAVID: Usual answer. My soul is not separated from me, as you constantly imply.

Never implied. In dualism, I am my soul and my body/brain. Look at your own comment: “My soul and I think together using the brain as described.” THAT is a separation of my soul and me, and you keep doing it!

DAVID: 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.

The electric waves come from the brain. If they are thoughts, then the brain is the source of thought, and that is materialism. If the dualist’s soul is the source of thought, then the waves are the result of thought.

DAVID: 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.

Your soul IS you, and so once again apparently you/your soul thinks thoughts, converts them into electric waves through the brain, then converts them back again into the thoughts you/your soul started with. No matter how often you repeat the theory, it still doesn’t make sense.

DAVID: 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.

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

That is not a rebuttal of the theory! Please explain why you think it impossible for your God to have created a material mechanism that produces an immaterial soul.

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).

DAVID: 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...

This is what I get.

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It doesn’t matter. Your translation theory remains as illogical as ever, and even if our author does say “brain waves represent the ability to think” (perhaps you can find it for me) I would still want to know what it meant.