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

by David Turell , Saturday, December 19, 2020, 16:05 (1435 days ago) @ dhw

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.

dhw: 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.

What you cannot seem to absorb is the living relationship we are discussing. The soul must think with the type of brain it is given. A soul trying to produce rational thought with a sick brain will not produce rational thought. The brain will distort it, and the soul will have to accept the output. In patients with mild mental illness, I have seen some who recognize their thinking is not correct. In more severely ill patients they do not.

dhw: 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.

It is the source of thought output. The soul is trapped into accepting the results. I think of this as my living self is a representation of my living soul. Obviously I have to produce thought with the brain I have. My brain does not produce thought until I make it think. I drive my brain to produce thought that I wish to produce..

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.

dhw: 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?

The sick brain never drives the soul!! The soul must accept the sick output a sick brain produces when the soul tries to think using the brain.

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.

dhw: 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.

The bold is agreed to in its limited form.

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.

dhw: 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?

It drives the brain to produce the prodigious activity is is capable of performing. We only can work with the type of brain we are given. Very simple or enormously capable.