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

by David Turell , Sunday, December 20, 2020, 21:03 (1434 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? bbYou 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.bb

This is your constant difference from my view. In my theory of dualism the soul is never separate from the brain and cannot judge what the brain is doing properly or improperly

DAVID: 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.

dhw: The “living relationship” we are discussing is that of the dualist’s immaterial thinking soul which uses the material non-thinking brain to gather information which it (the brain) then processes, analyses etc. before reaching a decision to which the non-thinking brain then gives material expression. You have agreed to this. Your answer to my bold appears to be that the soul actually knows the information is false, but because the brain is sick….what happens? It refuses to give material expression to the soul’s thought, and insists on committing murder?

The soul cannot know the information or thought is false if it is forced to think with brain circuits as I demand in my approach. To repeat, I/self/soul can only think with the brain I am given to use..

DAVID: 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: But the dualist’s brain does not think! Only the soul thinks! That is why such diseases support the case for materialism.

In my view the soul is not detached from the brain, as that comment implies.

DAVID: It [the soul] 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.

dhw: But in sickness apparently your brain thinks thoughts which your soul does NOT want it to think. So there you go again: there is a battle between the thinking soul and the thinking brain, and the brain wins.

Exactly. It is not a battle. The soul is forced to use a sick brain.

DAVID: 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.

dhw: What “output”? The dualist’s brain does not produce thought. That is the function of the soul.

Only by using the brain's networks to create thought.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: The bold is agreed to in its limited form.

dhw: Why “in its limited form”? Either it is or it isn’t the dualist’s view of the relationship. The brain does not do the thinking. And therefore the soul should be capable of distinguishing between true and false information, whether the brain is sick or not.

Exactly where we completely differ. My self (soul) is completely attached to my brain and must use my brain circuits to form thought. Thus sick brain, sick thoughts.

Brain mental capacity
dhw: …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?

DAVID: 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.

dhw: Is it the dualist’s brain or the soul that solves the equations?

Same wrong approach. My dualism is that I/myself/soul must use the brain's circuits to solve equations. The brain can never solve the equations all by itself. You previously conceived form of dualism is never mine. We totally differ. The gulf is enormous