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

by dhw, Monday, December 21, 2020, 12:11 (1433 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: 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.

DAVID: 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.

You continue to repeat the false assumption that my concept of dualism is that the soul is separate from the brain. This is summed up in your second post: “It appears to me you conceive of a separate soul which dictates thoughts to the brain which then expresses them.” My concept of dualism is that the immaterial “soul” resides within the material brain and uses the brain to gather information and to give material expression to its thoughts. Only when the body dies does the soul separate itself from the brain. It could hardly be more straightforward.

dhw: 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?

DAVID: 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.

Once again you muddy the waters by refusing to acknowledge what the soul uses the brain for. The soul thinks with brain circuits, whether the brain is sick or not. See above for what it uses the brain circuits for. If it recognizes false information when the brain is not sick, it should still do so when the brain is sick. You keep agreeing with the concept summarized above, then glossing over the whole process, and now repeating a silly straw man “separation” issue of your own making.

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.

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

It implies no such thing. See above.

DAVID: My self (soul) is completely attached to my brain and must use my brain circuits to form thought. Thus sick brain, sick thoughts.

And again you gloss over what the soul uses the brain for. Sick brain, sick thoughts = materialism.

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? […] Is it the dualist’s brain or the soul that solves the equations?

DAVID: 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

It is only enormous because you continually gloss over the question of what the dualist’s soul uses the brain for. Taking this example: the brain provides the soul with the mathematical problem (= the information) presented to it. The soul analyses the information and then instructs the brain to use the voice in order to tell everyone the answer it has worked out. Remember your own words: “The soul is the analyzer, the brain its tool.” Yes or no?