Consciousness: Egnor on dualism: another example (General)

by David Turell , Wednesday, September 05, 2018, 15:02 (2269 days ago) @ dhw

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.

dhw: 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.

Same thought as usual. I am my soul and I must think with my brain which has its thoughts represented by electric waves. Those waves must be translated by some mechanism, which I think is supplied by the soul, since we have no valid theory of consciousness.

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

dhw: 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?

The brain does not initiate/create thought. I/soul do. The Brain's thoughts are seen in the brain's representation of thought in electricity waves over circuits of networks of neurons.

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!

dhw: 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.

You have again agreed that the I/soul understands the brain's electricity, which means it translates the electricity into words in my head, whether it is retrieved information from memory or new observations in thought.

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