Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example (General)

by dhw, Wednesday, August 29, 2018, 12:03 (2276 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: 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.

DAVID: So once again we have the soul thinking thought but it doesn’t know what it is thinking about until the brain “makes the thought” into electric waves and sends them back to the soul to translate into words. Please tell me what you believe your soul thinks in initially.

DAVID: The soul can only think during material life if the brain is functioning and the soul uses it.

Yes, it can only think if it has something to think about, and the brain supplies it with information. This does not explain why the soul can’t think in words until the brain translates its thoughts into electric waves which the soul re-translates into the thoughts it had in the first place.

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

dhw: Same problem. What does your soul, which must be the source of thought if the brain is not, think in initially?

DAVID: When the soul leaves the body in death it joins God's universal consciousness and thinks through that mechanism.

And according to NDEs does it think in electric waves or in words?

DAVID: 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.

dhw: Perhaps you can tell us which research scientists inform us that there is a soul which initiates thought but cannot understand its own thought until it translates the electric waves which the brain sends to it.

DAVID: Straw man. The scientists use an atheistic approach to their science no soul involved.

You just told us that research scientists support your translation theory! Now you’re telling us they don’t. Research scientists interpret the electric waves materialistically, so why did you mention them?

dhw: Since you believe in a soul, which is a part of God’s consciousness and which can think on its own when separated from the brain, your “hard problem” is why in life the dualist's soul can’t think coherent thoughts in the first place, just as you believe it does in an afterlife. This “hard problem” becomes dead easy if the soul thinks coherent thoughts, in life as in death, but in life uses the brain to acquire information and to give its thoughts material expression, both processes requiring electric waves.

DAVID: The true 'hard problem' is how electric waves in the brain are heard as words in the brain, not your inventive description, in all I have read.

Yes, that is the problem for materialists: how do electric brain waves become thoughts in the brain? Dualists solve the problem by claiming that there is a SOUL which does the thinking (generally in words), and the soul uses the brain for information and for material expression, which both require electric waves. I don’t know why you regard this conventional and perfectly straightforward view as “inventive”, especially by comparison with your translation theory which is so inventive that it has the English-speaking soul thinking gibberish until the brain translates the gibberish into electric waves which the soul then translates into English.

DAVID: I think the immaterial has to be injected into the material.

dhw: I know you do. That is not a logical reason for rejecting the proposal that your God might have created a material machine which can produce immaterial consciousness. It’s simply a reaffirmation of your rigid belief.

DAVID: I said anything is possible for God. I just don't accept your proposal as likely.

Then clearly you can’t find any fault with the theory except that it isn’t your theory.