Dualism versus materialism again (Humans)

by dhw, Thursday, February 15, 2024, 09:13 (281 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: No question brain and consciousness are irretractably bound together. What results is the material brain and an immaterial consciousness, dualism.

dhw: They are “irretractably bound together”, whether you are a materialist or a dualist, and the question is what creates consciousness. If the brain creates it, then it is the workings of the brain that determine our behaviour. As you have said: “A distorted brain creates a distorted consciousness.” That is materialism: consciousness is created by the brain, produces its immaterial thoughts, ideas, dreams etc., and they and it die with the brain.

DAVID: But in NDE's the consciousness is sending messages to a non-functioning brain, indicating its separate position.

I know. That is part of the case for dualism, as I wrote yesterday. And NDEs are used as evidence that the conscious soul can live on without the material body. See the bold below:

dhw: As with most of the problems we tackle, there are good reasons for both sides: brain trouble creating consciousness trouble = materialism; NDEs and other psychic phenomena = dualism.It’s only if you try to adopt one theory and dismiss the other that you come up with all these self-contradictions. There's nothing to be ashamed of if we admit we just don't know.

dhw: Dualism itself leaves open the question of what creates consciousness, but some advocates would say that it is given to us by the immaterial conscious mind we call God. [I’ve bolded this, as you bring God in later.] You said earlier that any false behaviour is the result of the physical brain “garbling” the messages sent by the immaterial consciousness. That would be dualism. The next moment, however, you announced that “your concept of an independent consciousness running me with messages is absurd”. You rubbished your own dualistic concept.

DAVID: My consciousness does not govern me. I made its contents from infancy, using my brain as it developed.

We’re back to the question what is “me”? Your dualism proposes that “you” are your material body and your immaterial “soul”. Your immaterial soul includes your consciousness, and yes indeed, it uses the brain and body, which provide it with information to process and with the means of physically implementing its decisions. Of course your dualist’s soul governs you. That’s why you reduce the role of the brain to being a receiver, as you say next:

DAVID: But it is a separate entity from the brain. When the brain gets sick what is in its consciousness gets garbled, since the concept is the brain is a receiver of consciousness.

Not quite, because your dualism tells you that there is no consciousness in the receiver brain: it is the soul, not the brain that has consciousness. Hence your talk of consciousness (the soul) sending messages which get garbled – although you then dismissed that concept as absurd, which is what I would expect a materialist to say. (And also you ignored my request about what sort of messages the soul would send, e.g. do not wash your hands/do not kill your wife, which do indeed sound absurd.)

DAVID: I'll admit we do not know the true answer. What fits for me is the separate consciousness is also part of my soul.

Yes, that is dualism.

DAVID: My belief in an immaterial consciousness and soul makes me a dualist who sees a material origin in the brain making the consciousness form by attaching to the immaterial universal consciousness from God.

I find this incomprehensible. “A material origin in the brain” – origin of what? Consciousness originates in the non-conscious brain by attaching what to God’s consciousness? Please explain. As I said above, some dualists regard God as the source of consciousness, though it’s not clear how it gets inserted into us.

Immortal souls

DAVID: I believe souls are in brained animals.

dhw: But you believe that brainless bacteria have an autonomous ability to observe their environment, process the information, and make decisions with regard to altering their own DNA. Observation, interpretation, decision-making are not material, but they most certainly entail a form of consciousness. You might say that they are evidence for consciousness without a brain. So if you think mice have a separate consciousness that can live on after death without a brain, why shouldn’t bacteria also have an independent “soul” that can do the same?

DAVID: Bacteria are automatic as they strictly follow DNA code. No brain choices. No souls.

They can’t have “brain choices” if they have no brains, but they can certainly make choices, as you agreed last month:

January 21/22: dhw: May I assume that you unequivocally believe bacteria have the autonomous ability to alter their DNA when necessary, and without divine programming and/or intervention?

DAVID: Yes.

dhw: Thank you. I will note this down for future reference.

Sure enough, three weeks later you have stripped them of their autonomy, and hence of the abilities listed above which are among the basic features of consciousness. And if you and mice, and moles and mosquitoes have a conscious soul which does not need a brain in the afterlife, why shouldn’t conscious but brainless bacteria have immortal souls as well? (Of course I’m not saying they have. I’m simply questioning the logic of your beliefs.)