Free Will: Egnor shows neurological proof (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, December 02, 2020, 12:54 (1452 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The point is the brain never produces abstract thought during seizures. Only the soul can do that as it uses the brain. You can't avoid that thought.

dhw: The point is that the SOUL never produces abstract thought during seizures, but if only the soul does the thinking (as you have agreed), it should be able to think about the information being sent to it by the sick brain. IT DOESN’T.

DAVID: No. My view is the soul cannot recognize what is truly going on because it is trapped into using a sick brain. A seizure can produce false sensory information as my sea shore patient's smell of the [sea] was a seizure reproducing a memory. The soul did recognize that brain production.

First you support Egnor’s contention that during seizures there is no abstract reasoning, and now you tell me that there is abstract reasoning (apparently the patient knew his brain had provided him with false information). This fits in just as easily with the idea that the brain is the source of abstract reasoning, and in this particular case, the seizure had NOT completely paralysed it. There remains the question for a dualist: if the soul does all the abstract reasoning, why in most cases did it NOT reason that the brain was sending it false information? “Trapped into using a sick brain” explains nothing if the immaterial soul uses and processes and reasons about the information given to it by the brain, whether this is sick, normal, stupid or clever.

dhw: Conclusion: the mechanism for abstract thought (Egnor equates it with reasoning) has been put out of action by the brain seizure, and therefore the mechanism for abstract thought must be part of the brain. Hence "sick brain = sick thoughts".

DAVID: Totally backwards. Egnor says if the brain is an exact/primary source of all abstractions, the abnormal electrical impulse, which drives into the abstraction area, and should produce an abstraction during a seizure, but never does.

If the abnormal impulses drive into the brain’s abstraction area, that would explain why the abstraction area does not function any more! Only when the impulses are “normal” will the abstraction area function properly again. The electrical impulses should only affect the brain, not the immaterial “soul” which processes and analyses and reasons about the information provided by the brain. Sick brain = sick thoughts. Therefore the brain produces the thoughts. (In contrast to near-death experiences, which do appear to offer “proof” that there IS a soul which thinks abstract thoughts when the brain isn’t functioning.)