Free Will: Egnor shows neurological proof (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, November 27, 2020, 11:22 (1239 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The sick, let's say psychotic, brain stops the soul from rational thinking, since the soul is forced to use the brain to think with in life. Your dualism is muddled.

dhw: It is your dualism that is muddled. You have agreed that in life the dualist’s soul does the thinking and it uses the brain to provide information and implementation of its thoughts. So the soul should be able to think rationally about information provided by the sick, psychotic brain. It doesn’t. Your patients never tell you that during the seizure they had rational thoughts about what was happening to them. How, then, can you conclude that there is a soul that does the thinking if the soul can’t think when the sick brain sends it information (whether true or false)? The clear implication is that if the patient can’t think rationally when he/she has a brain seizure, it is because the brain is the source of thought!

DAVID: Again total muddle. The schizophrenic brain forces the soul to have schizophrenic thoughts. The soul can only think with the form of brain it has to work with: sick brain, sick thoughts created by the soul working through it and getting the result it is forced to accept.

Why on earth (as opposed to heaven, or wherever dualists’ souls go to after death) do you need a soul if it is the brain that dictates how the soul thinks? If the brain determines the nature of thoughts, it stands to reason that the brain is the source of the thoughts! This argument makes total nonsense of your concept of free will: “the soul can only think with the form of brain it has to work with”, so clever brain, clever thoughts; stupid brain, stupid thoughts; warped brain, warped thoughts. And these conditions don’t influence your decisions? You could hardly have a more devastating rebuttal of free will (we’ll leave dualism out of it for the time being). But there is another option:

dhw: Whether you think your will is free or not depends on which of these approaches you take: 1) you are not free from all the causes that have made you what you are and that therefore influence your decision (no free will); 2) you are what you are, regardless of the influences, and it is you who take the decision, and nobody else. You are free from all constraints other than those of the situation and of your own limitations. (You have free will). I still can’t see why you refuse to acknowledge that belief in free will depends on what you think the will is free from.

DAVID: I don't agree. As time passes I can think and analyze about all my past influences, and choose to ignore them. I can be what I wish to be. […]

dhw: If you actually know ALL your past (and present) influences, you are the superest of all Supermen.
And I must now add that if your “soul” can only think with the form of brain it has to work with, then the brain will determine what you wish to be.

From this point on, the discussion veered away from free will to your God’s purpose, and so I have transferred it to “Theodicy”.