Free Will: Egnor shows neurological proof (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, December 15, 2020, 14:43 (1439 days ago) @ dhw

PART TWO

I have briefly covered the sad example of your mother-in-law’s dementia in Part One. You have raised two other points which I’d like to reply to.

DAVID: We know the brain stores all sorts of information and helps is our sensations to fill in holes in what we realize. That is why cloud formations will look like familiar objects like Mickey Mouse, England, a woman's head. […] Pattern help is what confused Romansh.

Romansh was not confused. His argument was that there was no escaping the chain of cause and effect, going right back to the fact that if the universe didn't exist, we would not be here. Pattern forming underlies the perception department of gestalt psychology and is integral to the way we interpret the world and generally form meanings. Basically, we join up the dots to create a coherent pattern. It sheds no light whatsoever on the problem of the source of consciousness or the clash between dualism versus materialism. Whether you say the brain or the soul joins the dots is a matter of personal belief.

DAVID: The other aspect of it comes from NDE's. It tells us a non-functioning brain allows the soul to separate from it and somehow think on its own, and this implies that the same circumstance happens after true death.

Your “somehow” is the crux of the whole matter. But NDEs clearly denote that the soul is the immaterial thinking part of the self (evidence for dualism). However, if the soul is capable of thinking without the brain, it makes no sense for it to lose its ability to think while it is residing in the brain, even if the brain is sick. (Problem discussed in Part One.) The concept of an afterlife also raises the intriguing question of what sort of soul the psychopath will have when he/she has got rid of the brain – but that’s another subject!