Free Will: Egnor shows neurological proof (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, December 10, 2020, 12:20 (1444 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You don't realize it but you've answered yourself. In seizures the brain is sick and the soul can't do anything!!! When it is over the person/soul can realize what just happened. Seizures remove consciousness!! That is where the soul resides.

dhw: But that is the whole point! In seizures the brain is sick and the person can’t “think”. Why can’t the person think if the soul is the IMMATERIAL, CONSCIOUS, THINKING part of himself/herself? And:
dhw: According to you, consciousness is a product of the soul, not the brain. And:
dhw: Thinking, according to dualists, does not “come from” the brain!

DAVID: Same starting point from a materialistic viewpoint. I'm strictly using dualism in which the soul can only think if the brain is working!!! Both are required. And:
No, both are required. The soul when totally engaged with the functioning brain makes consciousness. And:
Very limited definition of dualism. The soul is required to use brain circuits to think.

This is extremely confusing. Previously I thought you had agreed that it is the dualist’s immaterial soul that does the thinking, and it uses the material brain to gather information and to give material expression to its thoughts. Do you now disagree with this “division of labour”? Please answer. Of course it makes nonsense of NDEs (see below), which clearly argue for the soul alone being the conscious, thinking part of the self, but perhaps we should just stick to the relationship between soul and brain during life. Let’s take a concrete example. The brain receives information that a man is about to step in front of a bus. What happens next? I assumed that the brain passed the information to the soul, which put two and two together (information-processing), reasoned that the man was in danger, and decided to instruct the brain to instruct the voice to yell; “Look out!” I can understand the argument that the soul cannot think about the man and the bus unless it knows there is a man and a bus, but that does not mean that the soul is NOT the thinking, reasoning, conscious, decision-making part of the self, while the brain is the provider of information and the implementer of thoughts. Using this example, perhaps you could apply and explain your own concept of the relationship between brain and soul.

dhw: But if “normal thinking can only come from a normal brain”, as you say, then abnormal thinking comes from an abnormal brain, and that is why we cannot “blame” the psychopath. Seizures mean no free will, and a soul has no part to play, because it is the brain that does the thinking.

DAVID: Seizures mean no consciousness, a brain state required for producing thought by the soul, and briefly no free will.

Again, you are assuming that the brain has to be conscious if the soul is to be conscious. But if the brain is conscious, why does it need a soul to do the thinking? It could hardly be more straightforward: 1) seizure affects thinking brain and stops thought. 2) Seizure ends, brain starts thinking again. As regards free will, the subject of this thread, let me cite as evidence the verdict of Judge David Turell presiding over the trial of a psychopath:
Judge Turell: “A true psychopath cannot socialize properly because his brain makes him that way. From a human standpoint, we mustn’t kill him for his serial murders, but institutionalize him for life. He can’t help what he is.”

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Free will: continuity of self
QUOTE: "So even though our bodies are almost entirely changed, both in appearance and composition from what they were decades ago, we feel the same and recognize images of ourselves almost instantly. That’s a good argument for the existence of a self that goes beyond mere matter". (DAVID’s bold)

I could not see how this could possibly be used as an argument for the existence of a soul, and pointed out that for me, psychic experiences (which of course include NDEs) were the only evidence we had. You thought I had ignored NDEs. I hadn’t. Simply an oversight on your part.