Free Will: Egnor shows neurological proof (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, November 28, 2020, 11:09 (1456 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

dhw: 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!

DAVID: Please think if the brain as a tool the soul uses, a point you seem to miss.

I have repeated this point over and over again, and have emphasized that the dualist’s soul uses the brain for information and for implementation of its thoughts, and you have agreed.

DAVID: In schizophrenia the soul's proper thoughts are translated into psychotic thought. The sick brain cannot handle the soul's thoughts properly so they appear distorted.

We’re talking about seizures, and you have told us that after a seizure, no patient has ever told you about the “proper” thoughts he had while his brain was distorting them. The obvious conclusion is that the thoughts came from the brain. You don’t need a soul to think proper thoughts which the brain distorts into improper thoughts!

dhw: 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)

DAVID: You are simply following your weird concept of the soul/brain arrangement. Each individual with a damaged/incompetent brain expresses his free will within those limits.

Yes, that is option 2. The incompetent brain is “you”, and “you” alone take your decisions with no constraints other than those of the situation AND YOUR OWN LIMITATIONS. Option 1 is that you cannot help having an incompetent brain – it is something you were born with, and it determines your decisions even if you don’t realize it – as is the case with innumerable other factors that have never been under your control (upbringing, disease, accidents, traumatic experiences imposed from outside yourself…)

dhw: 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.

DAVID: See above. We all have limits. I'm not the genius Einstein was. As I've noted in the past the complexity of one's concepts depends on the complex ability of one's brain to allow their production. What you miss is all of us/souls can think with our brain to its limits. The quality of brain limits folks ambitions. I can't replicate Einstein. I can't write plays, but I have become freely what I wished within my limits. Limiting free will does not mean my will is not free within those limits. So I will agree with you in a limited way. We all have limits to our desires about our possible accomplishments in life.

You are agreeing with me in a total way. All this is option 2, as bolded above. And what you are missing is option 1. And our conclusion will depend on which of these approaches we adopt.