Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example (General)

by dhw, Wednesday, September 05, 2018, 08:19 (2270 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I'm sure, ignoring solipsism, you think with your brain's functions and drag along your 'possible' soul in the process.

dhw: Now who are “you”? I thought “you” were your soul, so what exactly is “dragging” what? A few days ago, it was your soul that instructed the brain, but if your soul is being “dragged” along, presumably it’s now the brain that is in command. Hey ho, this is the topsy-turvy world of the translation theory.

DAVID; Not what I wrote at all, as usual. you have again 'presumed the brain is in command.

I have presumed that if the brain drags the soul along, you mean the brain is in command. Since when did the servant drag the master along? But perhaps you will explain what you meant by this strange image.

DAVID: All the while, the thoughts are created in electric waves which require translation to be heard as words in our heads.

dhw: Created by what? Electric waves come from the brain, but if the brain creates and has a memory bank of words, as you told us last time, why does it need the soul to translate its waves into words it already knows? Why can’t the brain think directly in the words already at its disposal? Same question I asked about the soul. Topsy-turvy again.

Why have you ignored this latest illogicality? If the brain creates thoughts and speaks English (with its memory bank of words), why can’t it think in English?

DAVID: At birth I could not think. I had to develop my physical brain and learn to think. What was the infant soul capable of in thought process at that point in life? In your version of soul please tell me.

dhw: [...] At birth the conscious soul (but not the personality) is blank. It is your God-given ability to think, but it cannot function until it has something to be conscious OF! The brain supplies the information for the soul, mainly through the senses, and as the brain matures, the amount of information it passes on (including language) increases, and so the conscious soul increases the range of its thought, and continues to do so throughout life.

DAVID; Thank you for making my point. The brain works in electricity. If it supplies the soul with information the soul can translate the electricity into meaningful information!

This is what I keep telling you! The soul, if it exists, uses the brain’s electricity for information and for material expression. Information is not thought! It is the soul that processes the information it receives from the brain’s electric waves (bus coming), it THINKS (quickly) about it, then it draws conclusions (I’m in trouble), makes decisions (I need to move) , and sends its instructions electrically to the brain (get us out of here!). The brain does not send these thoughts to the soul for translation; these thoughts are the work of the soul. Gathering information and giving expression are the two electric processes which, if the soul survives into an afterlife, require psychic substitution, while the soul continues to do the thinking.

I’m off to do my packing! Back in a few days....