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

by dhw, Monday, December 21, 2020, 12:21 (1216 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: We have gone round and round with this discussion about dualism for years, and I have told you constantly our views of dualism are totally different. You envision an immaterial soul that dictates thoughts to a material brain, and I view the self/soul as having to use the circuits of the brain to create/form/develop thoughts.

There is no difference at all between us. We agree completely that the soul uses the brain to develop its thoughts. You simply keep on and on glossing over the nature of the use. So yet again: the dualist’s immaterial soul resides within the material brain, is the thinking part of the self, uses the brain to collect information, analyses it, and then “dictates” its thoughts to the brain so that the brain can mobilize its material means of giving material expression to those thoughts. None of this contradicts anything in your statement above.

DAVID: That is exactly what my body tells me is happening, and therefore I don't think your separation concept is valid and does not exist as presented by the facts we know. Therefore sick brain, sick thoughts and the self/soul cannot change it, stop it, or even recognize the disparities.

There is no separation concept. They live and work together, performing their different functions. Your “therefore” is totally unconnected with the rest of the argument. Where do the sick thoughts come from, if they don’t come from the soul? Back we go to your statement that the soul “receives incorrect analytic thought”. How can the "analyzer" receive the analysis? From what? It can only come from the brain! But when I pointed out the materialistic implications (i.e. the brain does the thinking), you cried: “No, no, no!!! The soul uses the brain’s networks to do the analysis. The soul is the analyzer, the brain its tool.” If the brain is only the tool, the dualist’s soul should be able to recognize the falseness of the information given to it by the dualist’s sick brain, which does not formulate any thoughts. All your twisting and turning is an effort to counter the fact that brain disease, epileptic fits, drunkenness, drug addiction all provide evidence for materialism: as you so aptly put it yourself: “sick brain can only produce sick thoughts”.