Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example (General)

by David Turell , Monday, August 27, 2018, 18:18 (2278 days ago) @ dhw

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.

dhw: 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: Separate again. In life I/soul think by using the brain, not the soul alone!

dhw: There is no separation of soul and ME. There is a distinction between soul and brain/body, which are the two parts of the self that work together in life. Meanwhile, do you or do you not agree with my two "ifs"?

IF-one: The brain is not the source of thought, it is the maker of thought with its electric grid under my/soul impetus. Looking on the material side I/soul use the brain to create thought.

IF-two: Absolutely wrong. I/soul must employ the brain circuits to create thought.

DAVID: What doesn't make sense to you is the hard problem of consciousness. Those electric waves are thought in a material form.

dhw: What doesn’t make sense to me is your whole translation theory. Nobody has solved the “hard problem of consciousness”, which is why we have different theories. The material form of thought is expression, which comes about through the use of electricity. If the soul thinks, it directs the brain to give material expression to the thought. It makes no sense for the soul to think, have its thoughts translated into electric waves and then sent back again for it to translate into its original thought, which it then sends back again to the brain to translate into material expression (e.g. speech).

I'm sorry you are so confused, but this is what the research scientists think on the material side of the issue. Thought is encoded in the electricity and comes out as words in my head, the hard problem we face.

DAVID: [...] any immaterial entity arising/created from the material is materialism.

dhw: 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: I don't think souls arise from material forms. God breathed a soul into Adam making him a living being, to quote the Bible.

dhw: I know what you believe. That doesn’t explain why you think it is impossible for your God to have created a material mechanism that produces an immaterial soul.

Anything is possible for God according to human religious reasoning, but the Bible is specific on the point. Since from quantum theory I accept the concept of universal consciousness as God or coming from God, I think the immaterial has to be injected into the material.