Free Will: Egnor shows neurological proof - PART ONE (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, December 19, 2020, 08:27 (1435 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: The dualist’s soul does not “receive incorrect analytic thought”. I’m glad you now see that your bolded statement above is totally wrong.

DAVID: The soul forms thoughts using the brain, a great difference.

dhw: It’s an enormous difference. So please stop telling us that the dualist's soul tells the brain to think! The dualist’s brain does not do the thinking!

DAVID: The soul uses the brain as its machine to create thought. The brain cannot think on its own.

dhw: The dualist’s brain cannot think. It is the materialist’s brain that thinks “on its own”. […] And the dualist’s brain is not a machine that creates thought. It is a machine that provides information for the dualist’s soul to think about, and provides material expression for the soul’s immaterial thoughts. Why do keep trying to twist this simple description into tortuous ambiguities?

DAVID: Because you misinterpret my theories about soul and brain.

It’s very hard to make sense of your theories when at one moment you agree that the brain does not think, and the next moment you tell us that the soul drives the brain to think, or the soul receives incorrect analytic thought from the brain.

DAVID: A sick brain will makes the reasonable thoughts by the soul sick thoughts. The soul has no control about the end product!!!

dhw: […] if you claim that the immaterial, controlling soul is governed by the sick brain, there is really no point in having a soul at all. That is why materialists point to examples of sick thoughts (whether permanent [psychopaths] or temporary [epileptics]) as evidence that it is the brain that does the thinking – hence the fact that such wrong-doers are deemed not to have free will and therefore not to be responsible for their crimes.

DAVID: A mentally ill patient cannot control his sick thoughts even as his self/soul wishes to. I will stick to claiming that I/soul run my brain.

In the comment I replied to, you have the soul thinking reasonable thoughts, but the sick brain somehow changes them and the reasonable soul can’t do anything about it. How can you then argue that the soul runs the brain, if its reasonable thoughts are converted into sick thoughts? You have never responded to the point that if the soul does all the thinking, and analyses the information given to it by the brain, it should be able to detect false information whether the brain is sick or not. There is no way round the fact that if a sick brain produces sick thoughts, as you state elsewhere, this is powerful evidence that the brain is the source of thought – the opposite of what you rightly say is the dualist’s view that the soul runs the brain.

From PART TWO:
DAVID: You have twisted your theorizing into knots. A mentally ill patient cannot control his weird view of the world. HIS SOUL CANNOT REJECT THE STRANGE THOUGHTS THAT APPEAR DESPITE ANY ATTEMPT THE SOUL MIGHT TRY. The soul/self can only use the brain it has. Sick brain produces only sick thoughts for the soul driving it.

The knotty twists are entirely yours. Of course the mentally ill patient has lost control, but what is the source of the strange thoughts that “appear”? This ties in with your statement that the soul receives incorrect analytic thought from the brain, and contradicts your agreement that the brain does not think! And how can the soul be said to drive the brain when you keep insisting that it is the sick brain that drives the soul – which apparently tries but fails to reject the thoughts passed on by the brain? See above for the obvious conclusion, beginning “There is no way round…”

DAVID: One last time, the soul creates thought using the brain networks, but in life the soul cannot think without a functional brain.

dhw: First part spot on, at last! But the second part excludes one of the few pieces of evidence we have for the very existence of a soul – namely, NDEs, during which the brain is not functional but the patient is still alive. […] But I hope our discussion will now put an end to all the obfuscations with which you keep implying or explicitly stating that the dualist’s brain thinks.

DAVID: We both recognize NDE's. The 'first part' is what I have stated for weeks.

Yes you have, but then for weeks you have gone on to state that the soul drives the brain to think etc. as per the various quotes I keep repeating. I’m glad to have your definitive agreement that the brain does not think. It will save a lot of unnecessary debate. It would also be useful if you would agree specifically to my proposal that the soul uses the brain to gather information and to give material expression to its thoughts.

Under “Brain mental capacity”
dhw: These calculations would normally require hours of conscious thought and analysis, and I’m sure materialists would agree with you that such astonishing mental feats are to be directly attributed to the brain.

DAVID: We are born with the quality and abilities our brain gives us for the soul to use.

But you have labelled this thread “Brain mental capacity”, and the child’s ability to work out the solutions to complex immaterial maths problems surely belongs to the kind of abstract reasoning you and Egnor are so keen to attribute to the soul. If the ability to solve such problems depends on the brain, what function does the soul perform in the activity?