Free Will: Egnor shows neurological proof (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, December 12, 2020, 22:00 (1442 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I have over and over. I/soul/self can only initiate a thought by activating the brain's networks and using those specific networks exclusively to create the thought and then express it.

dhw: You continue to dodge my question. Over and over you say the soul uses the brain. There is no disagreement between us, but you continually gloss over WHAT IT USES THE BRAIN FOR! It uses the brain to gather the information which it then thinks about, draws its conclusions, and then uses the brain to express the thought. There is nothing in your answer that contradicts what I have written here. You simply couch it in less precise terms.

It is you who is imprecise in the bold. In order for the soul to create a thought it enters the brain networks and uses those networks to actually form the complete thought. Without that attachment no thoughts can form, and because of that required attachment, if the brain is sick the soul can only have sick thoughts and the soul can't even realize they are sick, since the soul must use those circuits to create and to interpret what is created..

DAVID: Your previous impressions about dualism have been locked into not understanding my descriptions, with the soul in your version, at some separate distance dictating to the brain. The soul must use the brain circuits to form thought.

dhw: What on earth does “at some separate distance” mean? My interpretation of dualism is that just as different compartments of the brain are believed to be responsible for imparting different sets of information, the soul is the immaterial self that resides within the brain. And yet again, of course the soul uses the brain: for information and implementation.

Also for thought creation. Your imprecise 'implementation' is a gross tent of a word which doesn't say how it must happen under the tent. You have a soul simply dictating to a separate brain which responds. I have them intimately bound together to form thought as described here.

DAVID: Thus a sick brain can only produce sick thoughts which the soul cannot prevent from appearing in sick form.

dhw: But the dualist’s sick brain does not produce thoughts. It produces the information that the dualist’s soul thinks about. It is the dualist’s soul that “forms” the thought. Yes or no?

DAVID: No. Only by using the brain as I describe above. Egnor and I have the same view.

dhw: This is the strangest “no”. What does it use the brain for? See above, and see post after post. You wrote “I am my soul”. Is the dualist’s soul the thinking, decision-making part of the self or isn’t it?

It is the driver of thoughts and decisions, but it must be fully attached to the brain circuits which are used to create and form thoughts under the soul's direction/initiation. One does not work without the other, which is why sick brain equals sick thoughts, and the soul can't stop or correct them.

dhw: You gave us an extreme case of permanent sickness: the psychopath commits murder. Your verdict: “Normal thinking can only come from a normal brain”. The sick psychopath “cannot socialize because his brain makes him that way. […] He can’t help what he is.” But if the brain makes him what he is, and normal thinking comes from a normal brain, then it is the brain that makes all of us what we are. So what is the function of a soul? You could hardly make a clearer case for materialism, or for determinism. (And of course, you may be right.)

DAVID: Still total confusion. Absorb the above explanation without reverting to your previous teaching.

dhw: Without glossing over how the soul uses the brain, please explain how “normal thinking can only come from a normal brain”, and “his brain makes him that way”, and “he can’t help what he is” all comes to mean that there is an immaterial soul which has free will.

I've glossed over nothing. The immaterial soul must work with a normal brain to have normal thinking. The psychopath has an abnormal brain, so his abnormal crimes are physically his doings but not his soul's fault. Don't kill him, institutionalize him for life.

This is the way I've always viewed dualism and it is Egnor's way. Your view of dualism is totally different and you haven't ever understood how I see a required connection to the actual physical brain circuits: why do I demand that? Because that is what happens in life.