Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example (General)

by David Turell , Friday, August 31, 2018, 20:00 (2274 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I see no contradiction, since I don't accept your approach. I fully accept the idea that I/soul think by using my brain and its electricity. I see the soul as having a translation mechanism so I hear the words in my head. I will not change.

dhw: Nothing to do with my approach. We agree that the soul uses the brain and its electricity, and we agree that we hear the words in our head. The illogicality (I’ll switch here from “contradiction”) lies in your claim that the soul initiates thought but does not think in words until the brain translates the thought into electric waves which the soul translates into words. If the soul knows the words, it can initiate thought in words (just as it does in the afterlife you believe in)! It doesn’t need electric waves before it can translate its own thoughts into words it already knows!

I do not assume the soul uses the same mechanism in life and in death. I am my soul and know I create electricity when I try to think and that electricity contains the created thought.

Here is a contradiction:

DAVID: Twisting me again. I/soul initiate and use the brain to create thought. The brain is simply a mechanism I/soul use.

Yes, that is conventional dualism. “The brain thinks in electric waves” is conventional materialism. I am not twisting you.

I am simply trying to solve the 'words in the head' problem by starting on the obviously correct material side of the science and adding an immaterial soul with mechanisms to solve the problem. Your view of the soul is that it exists only in one rigid form in life and death.

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

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

DAVID: By using the universal consciousness of God it thinks in words.

dhw: If the dead person’s soul thinks in words, why can’t the live person’s soul (which you say is part of your God’s universal consciousness) think in words? […]

Because in life it uses the brain networks as I do in the material side of existence.

dhw: I’ll be happy to have you pick holes in mine, but I do wish you wouldn’t keep falling down the holes in yours!

DAVID: Why can't you think originally as I do? You simply will not accept that I/soul use the brain as a mechanism to think? We might as well move on…

dhw: If the soul exists, I accept that the soul uses the brain. I simply cannot see any logic in the idea that the soul doesn’t think in words until its thoughts have been translated into brain waves which it then translates back into the words it already knows. However, if you think this is logical, we shall indeed have to move on.

You jumped right in with singular form of a soul from the beginning. Of course it contradicts me. We will each stick to our own theories. We cannot know which theory is valid. I would note that As I progressed from birth I learned words which are in the memory bank of my brain. When I think I must use the memory bank and must use electricity to do it. Don't you think my soul is in the same boat, or as you imply, the soul has its own memory bank for words? My theory starts on the material side. I don't think yours does.