dhw: A material brain that creates a soul could also come from your God. But if you wish to go back to your theory that the soul is a piece of God’s consciousness, then may I suggest that it makes sense for a piece of God’s consciousness to be conscious.

DAVID: My consciousness is not God's consciousness, I think my soul provides a way to reach consciousness from a material brain. If I had a direct connection to God’s consciousness faith in God would not be needed. I would have direct knowledge of God.

dhw: ... So what IS your soul? You refuse to accept the definition that it is the immaterial part of your self which contains all your immaterial attributes - e.g. consciousness, the ability to think, to feel, to process information, to make decisions (free will) – and you say it is a copy of yourself which “provides a way to reach consciousness from a material brain”.

This is our difference. I know the soul is me as an immaterial essence. I know I think using my brain to create thought. We know electricity is activated in the frontal cortex of the brain when I think. My solution to consciousness is the soul provides an interpretive mechanism for the material electricity that we know exists during thought. I hear my thoughts in words, not electrical buzzing.

dhw: If you think consciousness comes “from” a material brain, you are caught between your belief in a conscious immaterial soul and the “material side of the problem which you refuse to recognize”.

But that is not my thought. I recognize the issue, I think more fully than you do because you have a pre-formed rigid concept of soul, when we have yet to agree on what the soul is, which is what I admit I am struggling with, knowing the presentation of the material side. We recognize consciousness, but when we look of the brain all we see is electricity. How does the electricity convert to consciousness is the continuing 'hard' problem. I think my soul offers a mechanism of translation.

DAVID: You and I have stated we think with our brains. Start your thinking about consciousness from that point.

dhw: I have stated that in dualism, the soul uses the brain for information and material expression of its thoughts. I start my thinking about consciousness from two points: 1) if the soul exists, it would have no function unless it was conscious, i.e. able to think. 2) If there is no such thing as a soul, the brain does the thinking.

I view the soul's thought as developing from initial birth when there is no thought, and no circuits for memory developed just as I did from birth.

dhw: If the soul is the immaterial thinking self that survives the death of the brain, then of course it creates thought! And so it uses the brain for information and material expression, not for the actual process of thinking (just as in your afterlife it thinks without the brain).

DAVID: I think the soul is immaterial and plays different roles in life and death, which are completely different, and require differences.

dhw: No one would disagree that life and death are different. Why should that mean that the soul plays different roles? If it is the immaterial, thinking, feeling, remembering etc. self in death, why shouldn’t it be the thinking, feeling, remembering etc. self in life? The difference is that in death it now uses different means of observing and communicating in a different “reality”. But it is still the same immaterial self that it was in life, as NDE patients confirm.

NDE folks do have a continuity. The difference I see between us is that in death I see the soul as an observer. No new concepts are developed, but points of view are discussed telepathically. It is obvious soul/consciousness survives clinical death, but in death I see the soul as operating differently than in life.

DAVID: In an NDE the soul observes the afterlife and then when it comes back to a living brain, electricity appears which sre the thoughts the soul presents to you about the experience, and interprets the electricity as conscious thought. We know the presence of electricity must return.

dhw: How can the soul possibly not be conscious of what it experienced without the brain during the NDE? The soul (if it exists) activates the living brain. Why does it need the brain’s electricity to become conscious of the experience it has just consciously had?

Because that is what is observed when they revive brain function. Only then do they learn what happened on the other side. They cannot learn about it without the functional brain. The soul in death is totally disconnected from the soul in life. You are trying to subscribe to some sort of continuity in realms.

DAVID: I only pointed out the material side of the problem which you refuse to recognize.

You separated the soul from me, and you attributed the will to the body/brain. The material side of the problem is what causes you to vacillate between dualism and materialism, but you refuse to recognize the problem.

DAVID: My soul does not give me the ability to think. Soul/I use the brain to create thought in the electricity and the soul gives me consciousness to interpret the electricity.

dhw: Once again separating me from soul. “You” are your soul and your body/brain. Now you have your soul giving your soul and your brain consciousness. How does the soul give your soul and brain consciousness if it isn’t conscious? And how can your soul be conscious if it can’t think? And omitted from all these convolutions is your belief that the soul is conscious and thoughtful when the brain is dead.

DAVID: Dead is different realm from I/soul alive using brain to think.

See below for death. Meanwhile, how about answering the questions?

DAVID: I am not a materialist. I do not believe the soul is created by the material brain. It comes from God.

dhw: A material brain that creates a soul could also come from your God. But if you wish to go back to your theory that the soul is a piece of God’s consciousness, then may I suggest that it makes sense for a piece of God’s consciousness to be conscious.

DAVID: My consciousness is not God's consciousness, I think my soul provides a way to reach consciousness from a material brain. If I had a direct connection to God’s consciousness faith in God would not be needed. I would have direct knowledge of God.

A good reason for discarding your theory that your soul is a piece of God’s consciousness. This is one of the problems: your theories change so frequently. So what IS your soul? You refuse to accept the definition that it is the immaterial part of your self which contains all your immaterial attributes - e.g. consciousness, the ability to think, to feel, to process information, to make decisions (free will) – and you say it is a copy of yourself which “provides a way to reach consciousness from a material brain”. If you think consciousness comes “from” a material brain, you are caught between your belief in a conscious immaterial soul and the “material side of the problem which you refuse to recognize”.

DAVID: I see no dichotomy in the way I view the material side and try to explain consciousness as a property of the soul.

dhw: Again, how can consciousness be a property of the soul if it doesn’t have the ability to think? […]

DAVID: You and I have stated we think with our brains. Start your thinking about consciousness from that point.

I have stated that in dualism, the soul uses the brain for information and material expression of its thoughts. I start my thinking about consciousness from two points: 1) if the soul exists, it would have no function unless it was conscious, i.e. able to think. 2) If there is no such thing as a soul, the brain does the thinking.

dhw: If the soul is the immaterial thinking self that survives the death of the brain, then of course it creates thought! And so it uses the brain for information and material expression, not for the actual process of thinking (just as in your afterlife it thinks without the brain).

DAVID: I think the soul is immaterial and plays different roles in life and death, which are completely different, and require differences.

No one would disagree that life and death are different. Why should that mean that the soul plays different roles? If it is the immaterial, thinking, feeling, remembering etc. self in death, why shouldn’t it be the thinking, feeling, remembering etc. self in life? The difference is that in death it now uses different means of observing and communicating in a different “reality”. But it is still the same immaterial self that it was in life, as NDE patients confirm.

DAVID: In an NDE the soul observes the afterlife and then when it comes back to a living brain, electricity appears which sre the thoughts the soul presents to you about the experience, and interprets the electricity as conscious thought. We know the presence of electricity must return.

How can the soul possibly not be conscious of what it experienced without the brain during the NDE? The soul (if it exists) activates the living brain. Why does it need the brain’s electricity to become conscious of the experience it has just consciously had?

DAVID: In my statements I am describing me within the material side of life, and I do not accept the premise that only the soul provides free will. In life I know I have choice in decision-making, and my soul as me does also. I/soul make choices all the time. We have identified a differences in our concepts of soul.

Now you are separating your soul from me! You’re saying “I” make choices and so does my soul! I didn’t ask you to choose between yourself and your soul as the source of free will. I proposed that it was the soul and not the body/brain that made the choices, and you opted for the body/brain.

I only pointed out the material side of the problem which you refuse to recognize.

DAVID: Again a difference in concept. My soul does not give me the ability to think. Soul/I use the brain to create thought in the electricity and the soul gives me consciousness to interpret the electricity.

dhw: Once again separating me from soul. “You” are your soul and your body/brain. Now you have your soul giving your soul and your brain consciousness. How does the soul give your soul and brain consciousness if it isn’t conscious? And how can your soul be conscious if it can’t think? (Electricity is dealt with under “Egnor”.) And omitted from all these convolutions is your belief that the soul is conscious and thoughtful when the brain is dead.

Dead is different realm from I/soul alive using brain to think .

DAVID: I am not a materialist. I do not believe the soul is created by the material brain. It comes from God.

dhw: A material brain that creates a soul could also come from your God. But if you wish to go back to your theory that the soul is a piece of God’s consciousness, then may I suggest that it makes sense for a piece of God’s consciousness to be conscious.

My consciousness is not God's consciousness, I think my soul provides a way to reach consciousness from a material brain. If I had as direct connection to ?God's consciousness faith in God would not be needed. I would have direct knowledge of God.

DAVID: I see no dichotomy in the way I view the material side and try to explain consciousness as a property of the soul.

dhw: Again, how can consciousness be a property of the soul if it doesn’t have the ability to think? Instead of it thinking, you have it interpreting the electric waves from the brain, although somehow it initiates the waves that are supposed to contain the thought which requires interpretation by a soul that can't think the thought it is interpreting! The weaverbird's knots are child's play compared to all this!

You and I have stated we think with our brains. Start your thinking about consciousness from that point. In life I/soul think by using the brains electric networks.

DAVID: You seem to separate the soul from the functions of the brain by having the soul separately create thought and then tell the brain what to think so I recognize what I am thinking! I/soul think as one using the brain as a processor of thought.

dhw: If the soul is the immaterial thinking self that survives the death of the brain, then of course it creates thought! And so it uses the brain for information and material expression, not for the actual process of thinking (just as in your afterlife it thinks without the brain). The “I” that recognizes what “I” am thinking is the dualist’s soul. It doesn’t tell the brain what to think; the soul does the thinking, and the brain responds. The brain doesn’t “process” thought – that is the work of the soul – but it implements thought (e.g. the illiterate women). But all this is countered by the fact that drugs and diseases change the brain and hence our behaviour (see the section of the Egnor post which you ignored), thus creating the dichotomy which you refuse to recognize, even though it is the cause of your own struggle in trying to reconcile the two conflicting sets of evidence.

I think the soul is immaterial and plays different roles in life and death, which are completely different, and require differences. If you are alive and your brain is dead, can you have thoughts? In an NDE the soul observes the afterlife and then when it comes back to a living brain, electricity appears which sre the thoughts the soul presents to you about the experience, and interprets the electricity as conscious thought. We know the presence of electricity must return.

dhw: The confusion arises from your constant changes of mind. Here is the exchange:

DAVID: I am in charge.
dhw: In charge means free will, and if I believed in dualism I’d say that free will is an attribute of the immaterial soul, not of the material body. Do you agree?
DAVID: I think my material body/brain has free will.

DAVID: In my statements I am describing me within the material side of life, and I do not accept the premise that only the soul provides free will. In life I know I have choice in decision-making, and my soul as me does also. I/soul make choices all the time. We have identified a differences in our concepts of soul.

Now you are separating your soul from me! You’re saying “I” make choices and so does my soul! I didn’t ask you to choose between yourself and your soul as the source of free will. I proposed that it was the soul and not the body/brain that made the choices, and you opted for the body/brain.

dhw: The problem is straightforward! Dualism divides us into soul and body/brain, with the soul comprising all our immaterial attributes (including consciousness and the ability to think), and for those who believe in an afterlife, the soul lives on with all those attributes.

DAVID: Again a difference in concept. My soul does not give me the ability to think. Soul/I use the brain to create thought in the electricity and the soul gives me consciousness to interpret the electricity.

Once again separating me from soul. “You” are your soul and your body/brain. Now you have your soul giving your soul and your brain consciousness. How does the soul give your soul and brain consciousness if it isn’t conscious? And how can your soul be conscious if it can’t think? (Electricity is dealt with under “Egnor”.) And omitted from all these convolutions is your belief that the soul is conscious and thoughtful when the brain is dead.

dhw: But against this are the findings of materialists who seize on the indisputable influence of the body/brain on those immaterial attributes and believe that eventually they will be able to prove that the body/brain are responsible for all those attributes. I don’t know why you refuse to consider the possibility that the materialists are right, but the material mechanisms may be (it is only a hypothesis) capable of producing the immaterial self that dualists believe in. This hypothesis allows for whatever faith you wish to embrace.[

DAVID: I am not a materialist. I do not believe the soul is created by the material brain. It comes from God.

A material brain that creates a soul could also come from your God. But if you wish to go back to your theory that the soul is a piece of God’s consciousness, then may I suggest that it makes sense for a piece of God’s consciousness to be conscious.

DAVID: I see no dichotomy in the way I view the material side and try to explain consciousness as a property of the soul.

Again, how can consciousness be a property of the soul if it doesn’t have the ability to think? Instead of it thinking, you have it interpreting the electric waves from the brain, although somehow it initiates the waves that are supposed to contain the thought which requires interpretation by a soul that can't think the thought it is interpreting! The weaverbird's knots are child's play compared to all this!

DAVID: You seem to separate the soul from the functions of the brain by having the soul separately create thought and then tell the brain what to think so I recognize what I am thinking! I/soul think as one using the brain as a processor of thought.

If the soul is the immaterial thinking self that survives the death of the brain, then of course it creates thought! And so it uses the brain for information and material expression, not for the actual process of thinking (just as in your afterlife it thinks without the brain). The “I” that recognizes what “I” am thinking is the dualist’s soul. It doesn’t tell the brain what to think; the soul does the thinking, and the brain responds. The brain doesn’t “process” thought – that is the work of the soul – but it implements thought (e.g. the illiterate women). But all this is countered by the fact that drugs and diseases change the brain and hence our behaviour (see the section of the Egnor post which you ignored), thus creating the dichotomy which you refuse to recognize, even though it is the cause of your own struggle in trying to reconcile the two conflicting sets of evidence.

DAVID: More confused interpretation of what I write. Free will decisions are made by me/soul using the brain to think.

dhw: The confusion arises from your constant changes of mind. Here is the exchange:

DAVID: I am in charge.
dhw: In charge means free will, and if I believed in dualism I’d say that free will is an attribute of the immaterial soul, not of the material body. Do you agree?
DAVID: I think my material body/brain has free will.

In my statements I am describing me within the material side of life, and I do not accept the premise that only the soul provides free will. In life I know I have choice in decision-making, and my soul as me does also. I/soul make choices all the time. We have identified a differences in our concepts of soul.

dhw: I then expressed my surprise, and continue to do so.

dhw: The problem is straightforward! Dualism divides us into soul and body/brain, with the soul comprising all our immaterial attributes (including consciousness and the ability to think), and for those who believe in an afterlife, the soul lives on with all those attributes.

Again a difference in concept. My soul does not give me the ability to think. Soul/I use the brain to create thought in the electricity and the soul gives me consciousness to interpret the electricity.

dhw: But against this are the findings of materialists who seize on the indisputable influence of the body/brain on those immaterial attributes and believe that eventually they will be able to prove that the body/brain are responsible for all those attributes. I don’t know why you refuse to consider the possibility that the materialists are right, but the material mechanisms may be (it is only a hypothesis) capable of producing the immaterial self that dualists believe in. This hypothesis allows for whatever faith you wish to embrace.[/i]

I am not a materialist. I do not believe the soul is created by the material brain. It comes from God.

DAVID: The electricity in the brain is the problem I am trying to solve.

dhw: Yet another shift of focus. The problem we have been trying to solve for months and months on this thread and several others is the dichotomy between your own dualism and your own materialism, and for some reason you refuse (a) to acknowledge it and (b) to consider the solution that I have proposed. I have responded to the electricity question on the Egnor thread about dualism.

No shift of focus. I am trying to get you to explain what you think is going on in the brain with its material functions, which appear when active thought is in process. I see no dichotomy in the way I view the material side and try to explain consciousness as a property of the soul. You seem to separate the soul from the functions of the brain by having the soul separately create thought and then tell the brain what to think so I recognize what I am thinking! I/soul think as one using the brain as a processor of thought. Pure dualism as I see it! I don't care what the 'approved' rigid definition of dualism happens to be. All of the theories are just that, proposals not fact.

dhw: So now we have a copy of you, which is on the quantum side of reality, being the same as you and working as one, except that the copy of you doesn’t have free will, because it is your body/brain that has free will.

DAVID: More confused interpretation of what I write. Free will decisions are made by me/soul using the brain to think.

The confusion arises from your constant changes of mind. Here is the exchange:

DAVID: I am in charge.
dhw: In charge means free will, and if I believed in dualism I’d say that free will is an attribute of the immaterial soul, not of the material body. Do you agree?
DAVID: I think my material body/brain has free will.

I then expressed my surprise, and continue to do so.

dhw: The problem is straightforward! Dualism divides us into soul and body/brain, with the soul comprising all our immaterial attributes (including consciousness and the ability to think), and for those who believe in an afterlife, the soul lives on with all those attributes. But against this are the findings of materialists who seize on the indisputable influence of the body/brain on those immaterial attributes and believe that eventually they will be able to prove that the body/brain are responsible for all those attributes. I don’t know why you refuse to consider the possibility that the materialists are right, but the material mechanisms may be (it is only a hypothesis) capable of producing the immaterial self that dualists believe in. This hypothesis allows for whatever faith you wish to embrace.

DAVID: The electricity in the brain is the problem I am trying to solve.

Yet another shift of focus. The problem we have been trying to solve for months and months on this thread and several others is the dichotomy between your own dualism and your own materialism, and for some reason you refuse (a) to acknowledge it and (b) to consider the solution that I have proposed. I have responded to the electricity question on the Egnor thread about dualism.

DAVID: But I've said all along my soul and I are the same and work as the same entity.

dhw: So now we have a copy of you, which is on the quantum side of reality, being the same as you and working as one, except that the copy of you doesn’t have free will, because it is your body/brain that has free will.

More confused interpretation of what I write. Free will decisions are made by me/soul using the brain to think. The quantum reality and our living reality are not separate in the sense you imply. The wall of uncertainty is a metaphor for the fact that we only see the probabilities and not a clear basis of quantum activity.

DAVID: My soul is me and is not helpless any more than I am.

dhw: The problem is straightforward! Dualism divides us into soul and body/brain, with the soul comprising all our immaterial attributes (including consciousness and the ability to think), and for those who believe in an afterlife, the soul lives on with all those attributes. But against this are the findings of materialists who seize on the indisputable influence of the body/brain on those immaterial attributes and believe that eventually they will be able to prove that the body/brain are responsible for all those attributes. I don’t know why you refuse to consider the possibility that the materialists are right, but the material mechanisms may be (it is only a hypothesis) capable of producing the immaterial self that dualists believe in. This hypothesis allows for whatever faith you wish to embrace.

The electricity in the brain is the problem I am trying to solve. The problem is more complex
than your approach. What is the role of the electricity that appears in the brain every time I/soul initiate thinking? A quote of mine from the Egnor thread explains the problem:

David: I think the desire to think initiates thought as new original electrical activity in the brain. The electricity does not spark the thought, it appears as a representation of thought. The point is to answer this question: in the presence of any thought, why is there a new wave of electricity? For my view the soul/I are initiators of the electricity and the soul provides the conscious interpretation of the electricity as it appears in the brain. A longer version of I/soul think by using my brain. The appearance of the electric waves must be explained.

dhw: Same old mantra: my soul thinks with (or “uses”) my brain, but you won’t tell us what the use is, other than for information and material expression.

DAVID: I don't understand what else you want. In life I use my brain to create thought. As me my soul does also.

dhw: You don’t want to understand what else I want. If the soul is conscious, as you keep saying it is (though then you keep saying that it isn’t), it must be able to think and therefore doesn’t need the brain to create consciousness/to think!

DAVID: This is our disagreement. I theorize that since the soul is me it uses the brain to think as I do.

Same again. Why “as I do”? Why do you compare your soul to you if your soul IS you? And you still refuse to tell me HOW the soul “uses” the brain to think, other than for information and material expression.

DAVID: I think my material body/ brain has free will.

dhw: That is a real surprise to me. Your body/brain now makes all the decisions. Frankly, if the soul can’t think without the brain, and if the brain makes the decisions, determines how intelligent we are (your Einstein example), and rearranges itself in order to preserve its powers of cognition (non-Egnor non-example of dualism), what do you need a soul for?

DAVID: My soul is me. My body and brain are me. I use my brain to think and make free will decisions. So does my soul as me. You sure get confused. I've never changed my view of how it works in life.

Again you ignore the question and repeat the mantras. We agree that your soul, body and brain are you. So the rest of your post means that your body and brain and soul use your body and brain to think and so does your soul as your body/brain and soul (“so does my soul as me”), and although your body and brain have free will, your soul and body and brain use your brain to make free will. Yes, I sure do get confused. How it works in life has included the soul initiating thought although the brain creates thought, a piece of God’s consciousness not being conscious until the brain makes electric waves, the soul thinking its thoughts and translating them into electric waves which then come to the soul so that it can translate them back into thoughts, and the soul being a copy of you which IS you, as below:

DAVID: I view the soul as an immaterial copy of me, existing along with me but on the quantum side of the wall of uncertainty. In the afterlife the soul return to the quantum realm where the afterlife is. But the soul and I are never separate or separated by the wall.

dhw: “You” (soul and body/brain) lead a strange life! There’s the material you doing all the thinking and making all the decisions (a copy can hardly do the thinking, can it?)…

DAVID: But I've said all along my soul and I are the same and work as the same entity.

dhw: So now we have a copy of you, which is on the quantum side of reality, being the same as you and working as one, except that the copy of you doesn’t have free will, because it is your body/brain that has free will.

DAVID: My soul is me and is not helpless any more than I am.

If it doesn’t have free will, then it is at the mercy of the brain and body. As I pointed out on the Egnor thread, if only you would recognize the dichotomy in your own thinking, as you try to reconcile your dualism with your materialism, you would not be forced into any of these convolutions.
The problem is straightforward! Dualism divides us into soul and body/brain, with the soul comprising all our immaterial attributes (including consciousness and the ability to think), and for those who believe in an afterlife, the soul lives on with all those attributes. But against this are the findings of materialists who seize on the indisputable influence of the body/brain on those immaterial attributes and believe that eventually they will be able to prove that the body/brain are responsible for all those attributes. I don’t know why you refuse to consider the possibility that the materialists are right, but the material mechanisms may be (it is only a hypothesis) capable of producing the immaterial self that dualists believe in. This hypothesis allows for whatever faith you wish to embrace.

DAVID: I/soul think with my brain…

dhw: Same old mantra: my soul thinks with (or “uses”) my brain, but you won’t tell us what the use is, other than for information and material expression.

DAVID: I don't understand what else you want. In life I use my brain to create thought. As me my soul does also.

You don’t want to understand what else I want. If the soul is conscious, as you keep saying it is (though then you keep saying that it isn’t), it must be able to think and therefore doesn’t need the brain to create consciousness/to think!

This is our disagreement. I theorize that since the soul is me it uses the brain to think as I do.

DAVID: I think my material body/ brain has free will.

dhw: That is a real surprise to me. Your body/brain now makes all the decisions. Frankly, if the soul can’t think without the brain, and if the brain makes the decisions, determines how intelligent we are (your Einstein example), and rearranges itself in order to preserve its powers of cognition (non-Egnor non-example of dualism), what do you need a soul for?

My soul is me. My body and brain are me. I use my brain to think and make free will decisions. So does my soul as me. You sure get confused. I've never changed my view of how it works in life.

DAVID: I view the soul as an immaterial copy of me, existing along with me but on the quantum side of the wall of uncertainty. In the afterlife the soul return to the quantum realm where the afterlife is. But the soul and I are never separate or separated by the wall.

dhw: “You” (soul and body/brain) lead a strange life! There’s the material you doing all the thinking and making all the decisions (a copy can hardly do the thinking, can it?),

But I've said all along my soul and I are the same and work as the same entity.

DAVID: I separate life and death into two very different circumstances.

dhw: Surprisingly, so do I.

Not surprising.

DAVID: The soul and I, as the same entity, use the brain to think in life, but the soul, lacking the living me, thinks and communicates telepathically, all in a quantum reality.

dhw: Back to the old mantra, except that it is now the copy of “you and you” that uses the brain to think. And you seem to have forgotten that the copy of you is helpless – it has no will of its own.

My soul is me and is not helpless any more than I am.

DAVID: By the way, Susan agrees with you and says if you accept that theory of yours about the soul you must accept God as existing.

dhw: I’m delighted to have Susan supporting my theory, which makes so much more sense than any of the multiple theories you have been proposing and discarding. And since I have no answer to the design theory – I cannot place faith in chance as the creator of all these complex mechanisms – I must accept the POSSIBILITY of God’s existence. But I find it equally difficult to place faith in the concept of an unknown, unknowable, all-knowing, all-powerful conscious mind that came from absolutely nowhere, created the vastness of the material and ever changing universe out of its own immaterial self…. In brief, I can’t solve one mystery by having faith in another mystery which, if anything, I find even more mysterious. That is the agnostic’s dilemma.

In the thread referring to Egnor and his insights as a religious neurosurgeon, he describes the role of the soul directly supporting consciousness, as I know from his other writings which have been presented previously. Susan's view is from strict religious training, which I have't had.

dhw: Same old mantra: my soul thinks with (or “uses”) my brain, but you won’t tell us what the use is, other than for information and material expression.

DAVID: I don't understand what else you want. In life I use my brain to create thought. As me my soul does also.

You don’t want to understand what else I want. If the soul is conscious, as you keep saying it is (though then you keep saying that it isn’t), it must be able to think and therefore doesn’t need the brain to create consciousness/to think! It uses the brain for information and material expression (you can hardly disagree), and when I ask you what else it uses the brain for, you come up with theories which even you have to discard. Now you have come up with not knowing what I mean. (Most of your post simply goes on repeating the mantra, so I’ll leave those bits out.)

DAVID: In life I am in charge…

dhw: In charge means free will, and if I believed in dualism I’d say that free will is an attribute of the immaterial soul, not of the material body. Do you agree?

DAVID: I think my material body/ brain has free will.

That is a real surprise to me. Your body/brain now makes all the decisions. Frankly, if the soul can’t think without the brain, and if the brain makes the decisions, determines how intelligent we are (your Einstein example), and rearranges itself in order to preserve its powers of cognition (non-Egnor non-example of dualism), what do you need a soul for?

DAVID: I view the soul as an immaterial copy of me, existing along with me but on the quantum side of the wall of uncertainty. In the afterlife the soul return to the quantum realm where the afterlife is. But the soul and I are never separate or separated by the wall.

“You” (soul and body/brain) lead a strange life! There’s the material you doing all the thinking and making all the decisions (a copy can hardly do the thinking, can it?), and the immaterial copy of you hanging around inside the material you, but also at the same time it is “on the quantum side of the wall of uncertainty”, which can only mean that the quantum world is also inside the material you, unless you have two copies of you, one on this side of the wall (inside you) and the second on the other side (outside you). This is, to say the least, somewhat confusing. Anyway, when you die, the copy of you, which does nothing at all, is suddenly able to undergo and react to and think about the new experiences of the afterlife, chatting telepathically to old friends, remembering all the things which in its material days it couldn’t even influence (it had no will of its own) and learning new things. And these new things, in the case of NDEs, it can even tell the brain about when it returns to material life. Just imagine that – the copy educating the original. I’m afraid I find this theory totally bewildering.

DAVID: I separate life and death into two very different circumstances.

Surprisingly, so do I.

DAVID: The soul and I, as the same entity, use the brain to think in life, but the soul, lacking the living me, thinks and communicates telepathically, all in a quantum reality.

Back to the old mantra, except that it is now the copy of “you and you” that uses the brain to think. And you seem to have forgotten that the copy of you is helpless – it has no will of its own. However, we have already agreed that if there is such a thing as a conscious, thinking soul, it must use psychic and not material means to observe and communicate. But if the soul is not conscious and thinking – as is apparently now the case in material life, since it’s only a helpless copy – then I don’t see how it can suddenly become conscious and thinking in the afterlife, which has now changed its name to the more scientific-sounding quantum reality.

DAVID: By the way, Susan agrees with you and says if you accept that theory of yours about the soul you must accept God as existing.

I’m delighted to have Susan supporting my theory, which makes so much more sense than any of the multiple theories you have been proposing and discarding. And since I have no answer to the design theory – I cannot place faith in chance as the creator of all these complex mechanisms – I must accept the POSSIBILITY of God’s existence. But I find it equally difficult to place faith in the concept of an unknown, unknowable, all-knowing, all-powerful conscious mind that came from absolutely nowhere, created the vastness of the material and ever changing universe out of its own immaterial self…. In brief, I can’t solve one mystery by having faith in another mystery which, if anything, I find even more mysterious. That is the agnostic’s dilemma.

DAVID: I/soul think with my brain, but there is no thought that can be recognized until the electricity runs it course and a complete thought appears to me/soul. This is simply a recognition of the material side of the problem of consciousness.

dhw: Same old mantra: my soul thinks with (or “uses”) my brain, but you won’t tell us what the use is, other than for information and material expression.

I don't understand what else you want. In life I use my brain to create thought. As me my soul does also.

dhw:If you believe there is a soul which produces thoughts (and goes on doing so when there is no brain), you have dualism.

The soul must use the brain network to create thought, just as I do in life. Death is a different circumstance.

DAVID: I don't recognize your version of material expression of thought. I add create and express thought under an impetus from me/soul.

dhw: Material expression of thought is the translation of thought into the spoken or written word, or into the material implementation of a concept. I can hardly disagree with you that in dualism you/your soul add, create and express thought under an impetus from you/your soul.

To repeat. I am my soul and my soul is me. In life I create thought by using electric networks in the brain. Therefore my soul is doing the same.

dhw: I don’t know why your “me” is “represented” by your soul. You soul IS your “me”. Apart from that, I see no difference between your concept of dualism and my own.

DAVID: Well, we do have differences. I view my soul differently as an essence and immaterial me while in life I am a material me.

I would say “I am ALSO a material me.” Otherwise agreed.

DAVID; In life I am in charge and changing.

dhw: In charge means free will, and if I believed in dualism I’d say that free will is an attribute of the immaterial soul, not of the material body. Do you agree? And of course I agree that we change.

I think my material body/ brain has free will.

DAVID: In life I believe the soul provides the consciousness I experience.

dhw: Good news. The soul is the source of consciousness again.

DAVID: Both the soul and I use the brain to create thought. In death my soul simply represents what I was at the end of my life.

dhw: Why “both”? Why do you separate me from my soul?

I don't. I view the soul as an immaterial copy of me, existing along with me but on the quantum side of the wall of uncertainty. In the afterlife the soul return to the quantum realm where the afterlife is. But the soul and I are never separate or separated by the wall.

dhw:See above for your refusal to answer what “use” the soul makes of the brain. Why “represents”? Isn’t it me?

See above for explanation of the non-separation of soul and me.

dhw: In death, according to NDEs, the soul thinks about what it observes, responds, feels, remembers etc., and undergoes new experiences to which it reacts. NDEs are used as evidence that in life we have a soul that contains all these attributes, so why can’t the same soul have the same attributes in life until the brain produces its electrical waves? The waves are commonly used as evidence that the brain is the producer of all those attributes (which you also subscribe to every other day), and therefore there is no such thing as a soul, which is why you keep creating the here-today-gone-tomorrow theories mentioned above to accommodate the soul into your materialism!

And I separate life and death into two very different circumstances. The soul and I, as the same entity, use the brain to think in life, but the soul, lacking the living me, thinks and communicates telepathically, all in a quantum reality. By the way, Susan agrees with you and says if you accept that theory of yours about the soul you must accept God as existing.

dhw: How can consciousness appear from the material presentation of consciousness? The material presentation of consciousness is its expression, not its source! That is why in the good old days you told us that the soul was the initiator of thought, which has now abruptly changed into the brain being the initiator of thought (“a sick brain produces sick thought”, “the immaterial output from the brain is thought”).

DAVID: I/soul think with my brain, but there is no thought that can be recognized until the electricity runs it course and a complete thought appears to me/soul. This is simply a recognition of the material side of the problem of consciousness.

Same old mantra: my soul thinks with (or “uses”) my brain, but you won’t tell us what the use is, other than for information and material expression. Or you come up with new theories which you quickly abandon. What do you mean by thought being “recognized” and appearing to my soul? Is your translation theory making a comeback? (The conscious English-speaking soul thinks its thought but doesn’t know what it’s thinking until it’s been translated into electrical waves which the soul translates back into English.) If you believe the brain is the source of thought – as you keep saying, but then denying – then you have materialism. If you believe there is a soul which produces thoughts (and goes on doing so when there is no brain), you have dualism.

DAVID: What you've missed is the sick brain is producing what it can do for me, even if I preferred it wouldn't do that. I'm/soul stuck with what the brain can do.

This makes your soul into a helpless observer and not a producer. The addict or drunkard kills his wife, and the soul is standing by thinking, “Don’t do it!” And you accuse me of separating the soul from “me”!

DAVID: This is my version of dualism. I know it is not yours because you have a theory of dualism I do not recognize.

dhw: What don’t you recognize? Do you reject the version of dualism that has the soul using the brain for information and material expression? Do you reject the version in which the soul contains all our immaterial attributes, such as consciousness, the ability to think, will, emotion, memory – all of which live on after the death of the brain?

DAVID: I don't recognize that your version of material expression of thought. I add create and express thought under an impetus from me/soul.

Material expression of thought is the translation of thought into the spoken or written word, or into the material implementation of a concept. I can hardly disagree with you that in dualism you/your soul add, create and express thought under an impetus from you/your soul. The disagreement arises when you claim that in dualism the soul is a helpless observer (today’s theory), or the brain is the source of thought (a theory that comes and goes), or the soul is a piece of God’s consciousness that is not conscious until the brain creates consciousness with the use of electric waves, or the soul thinks but doesn’t know what its thoughts are until the brain translates them and/or sends them back to the soul to translate.

dhw: I don’t know why your “me” is “represented” by your soul. You soul IS your “me”. Apart from that, I see no difference between your concept of dualism and my own.

DAVID: Well, we do have differences. I view my soul differently as an essence and immaterial me while in life I am a material me.

I would say “I am ALSO a material me.” Otherwise agreed.

DAVID; In life I am in charge and changing.

In charge means free will, and if I believed in dualism I’d say that free will is an attribute of the immaterial soul, not of the material body. Do you agree? And of course I agree that we change.

DAVID: In life I believe the soul provides the consciousness I experience.

Good news. The soul is the source of consciousness again.

DAVID: Both the soul and I use the brain to create thought. In death my soul simply represents what I was at the end of my life.

Why “both”? Why do you separate me from my soul? See above for your refusal to answer what “use” the soul makes of the brain. Why “represents”? Isn’t it me? In death, according to NDEs, the soul thinks about what it observes, responds, feels, remembers etc., and undergoes new experiences to which it reacts. NDEs are used as evidence that in life we have a soul that contains all these attributes, so why can’t the same soul have the same attributes in life until the brain produces its electrical waves? The waves are commonly used as evidence that the brain is the producer of all those attributes (which you also subscribe to every other day), and therefore there is no such thing as a soul, which is why you keep creating the here-today-gone-tomorrow theories mentioned above to accommodate the soul into your materialism!

DAVID: Your paragraph above is the nubbin of our difference. We know that when we think the brain is producing electric waves that contain the thought. We don't know how consciousness appears from this material presentation of it.

dhw: How can consciousness appear from the material presentation of consciousness? The material presentation of consciousness is its expression, not its source! That is why in the good old days you told us that the soul was the initiator of thought, which has now abruptly changed into the brain being the initiator of thought (“a sick brain produces sick thought”, “the immaterial output from the brain is thought”).

I/soul think with my brain, but there is no thought that can be recognized until the electricity runs it course and a complete thought appears to me/soul. This is simply a recognition of the material side of the problem of consciousness. What you've missed is the sick brain is producing what it can do for me, even if I preferred it wouldn't do that. I'm/soul stuck with what the brain can do.

DAVID: We both seem to agree the soul is somehow related to the physical appearance of consciousness. In life I do not think the soul, which is my essence, can develop thought without using the brain to accomplish it as I know I do.

dhw: And back you go to the same old mantra: the soul uses the brain. And I keep asking you what use it makes of the brain other than to acquire information and to give its thoughts material expression. And you keep coming up with theories about translation and copy and representation, which you then discard. What other use does the soul make of the brain?

The soul/I uses the brain to create thought. Round and round we go on the material side of the problem.

DAVID: This is my version of dualism. I know it is not yours because you have a theory of dualism I do not recognize.

dhw: What don’t you recognize? Do you reject the version of dualism that has the soul using the brain for information and material expression? Do you reject the version in which the soul contains all our immaterial attributes, such as consciousness, the ability to think, will, emotion, memory – all of which live on after the death of the brain?

I don't recognize that your version of material expression of thought. I add create and express thought under an impetus from me/soul.

DAVID: As for my soul I don't think it appeared until I was born and developed conscious use of the brain as I developed.

Agreed. Now once more we have a soul consciously using the brain. Not a conscious soul that can’t be conscious until the brain has produced electrical waves that contain consciousness.

DAVID: Remember I think we start as a blank slate and develop our personage over a lifetime as a material person and as a soul. I see me as a material me and an immaterial soul, but I experience material me as in charge of me which is then represented by my immaterial soul.

dhw: Blank slate is debatable in the light of heredity, but that is not the point here. Dualism does indeed mean that you are a material body/brain and an immaterial soul, but I don’t understand the last part of your comment. Both your body and your soul experience change all through life, and it is your soul that is conscious of the changes, because your soul is your conscious mind (let’s forget your “trialism” theory). I don’t know why your “me” is “represented” by your soul. You soul IS your “me”. Apart from that, I see no difference between your concept of dualism and my own.

Well, we do have differences. I view my soul differently as an essence and immaterial me while in life I am a material me. In life I am in charge and changing. In life I believe the soul provides the consciousness I experience. Both the soul and I use the brain to create thought. In death my soul simply represents what I was at the end of my life.

DAVID: It is conscious considering that God 'breathes a soul into the body'.
And: The brain is a basic material mechanism for supporting consciousness, but it has to have something added (a soul) to have consciousness appear from the material side.

dhw" What do you mean by “supporting” consciousness? You keep telling us that the brain produces consciousness in the form of its electrical waves. Now the brain has to “have” consciousness (the conscious soul your God breathed into the body) before it can produce consciousness. Do you really find this logical? Might I suggest that if the soul is already conscious, it has to have the addition of a brain to give its consciousness material form? After all, if the soul is a piece of your God’s consciousness, it must have existed before the brain! (Don’t ask me how God pops it in – I’m only debating the meaning of dualism, not whether it’s true.)

DAVID: Your paragraph above is the nubbin of our difference. We know that when we think the brain is producing electric waves that contain the thought. We don't know how consciousness appears from this material presentation of it.

How can consciousness appear from the material presentation of consciousness? The material presentation of consciousness is its expression, not its source! That is why in the good old days you told us that the soul was the initiator of thought, which has now abruptly changed into the brain being the initiator of thought (“a sick brain produces sick thought”, “the immaterial output from the brain is thought”).

DAVID: We both seem to agree the soul is somehow related to the physical appearance of consciousness. In life I do not think the soul, which is my essence, can develop thought without using the brain to accomplish it as I know I do.

And back you go to the same old mantra: the soul uses the brain. And I keep asking you what use it makes of the brain other than to acquire information and to give its thoughts material expression. And you keep coming up with theories about translation and copy and representation, which you then discard. What other use does the soul make of the brain?

DAVID: This is my version of dualism. I know it is not yours because you have a theory of dualism I do not recognize.

What don’t you recognize? Do you reject the version of dualism that has the soul using the brain for information and material expression? Do you reject the version in which the soul contains all our immaterial attributes, such as consciousness, the ability to think, will, emotion, memory – all of which live on after the death of the brain?

DAVID: As for my soul I don't think it appeared until I was born and developed conscious use of the brain as I developed.

Agreed. Now once more we have a soul consciously using the brain. Not a conscious soul that can’t be conscious until the brain has produced electrical waves that contain consciousness.

DAVID: Remember I think we start as a blank slate and develop our personage over a lifetime as a material person and as a soul. I see me as a material me and an immaterial soul, but I experience material me as in change of me which is then represented by my immaterial soul.

Blank slate is debatable in the light of heredity, but that is not the point here. Dualism does indeed mean that you are a material body/brain and an immaterial soul, but I don’t understand the last part of your comment. Both your body and your soul experience change all through life, and it is your soul that is conscious of the changes, because your soul is your conscious mind (let’s forget your “trialism” theory). I don’t know why your “me” is “represented” by your soul. You soul IS your “me”. Apart from that, I see no difference between your concept of dualism and my own.

dhw: …why can’t your separate piece of God’s consciousness be conscious in life as you think it is in death? For “using the brain” see above.

DAVID: It is conscious considering that God 'breathes a soul into the body'.
And: The brain is a basic material mechanism for supporting consciousness, but it has to have something added (a soul) to have consciousness appear from the material side.

dhw" What do you mean by “supporting” consciousness? You keep telling us that the brain produces consciousness in the form of its electrical waves. Now the brain has to “have” consciousness (the conscious soul your God breathed into the body) before it can produce consciousness. Do you really find this logical? Might I suggest that if the soul is already conscious, it has to have the addition of a brain to give its consciousness material form? After all, if the soul is a piece of your God’s consciousness, it must have existed before the brain! (Don’t ask me how God pops it in – I’m only debating the meaning of dualism, not whether it’s true.)

Your paragraph above is the nubbin of our difference. We know that when we think the brain is producing electric waves that contain the thought. We don't know how consciousness appears from this material presentation of it. We both seem to agree the soul is somehow related to the physical appearance of consciousness. In life I do not think the soul, which is my essence, can develop thought without using the brain to accomplish it as I know I do. This is my version of dualism. I know it is not yours because you have a theory of dualism I do not recognize. As for my soul I don't think it appeared until I was born and developed conscious use of the brain as I developed. Remember I think we start as a blank slate and develop our personage over a lifetime as a material person and as a soul. I see me as a material me and an immaterial soul, but I experience material me as in change of me which is then represented by my immaterial soul.

I am my soul, I think with my brain, and so my soul thinks with my brain: this is as logical as saying a dog is an animal, an elephant is an animal, and therefore a dog is an elephant. First of all, I am my soul AND my brain, but this does not mean the soul and the brain do the same thing. Secondly, I am not asking what “is” the soul (it is the immaterial part of the self), but what do the soul and the brain DO. Thirdly, as I have complained ad nauseam, “thinks with the brain” (like your other mantra, “uses” the brain to think) has to be explained before you can talk of “logic”. Under “Egnor” you say explicitly that the brain produces thought; elsewhere you say explicitly that the soul initiates thought; and you also believe that the soul alone produces thought when there is no brain (after death). These contradictions lead to such absurdities as described at the very end of this post. But meanwhile, in answer to the question of what the soul and the brain DO, I keep repeating that the soul thinks (more below), and the brain provides it with information and material expression. And you still haven’t come up with any other function apart from those you appear to have jettisoned (translation, copy, representation, reflection). Why, then, do you still refuse to accept that in dualistic life you are your soul and brain, and your soul is the immaterial part of you responsible for all your immaterial attributes (consciousness, thought, will, emotion, memory etc.) while your brain provides the information it thinks about and the material expression necessary for life in a material world? I really don’t understand why you feel you have to keep scrabbling around with all the different theories you propose and then discard.

dhw: I wondered how long it would be before you wandered back to the murky quantum world. Of course your soul, if it exists, gives its thought material expression in this reality through its use of the brain. As for the “wall of separation”, you believe that when the brain dies, the soul will enter another reality, but by now calling this a “quantum reality” you change nothing in the argument!

DAVID: I'm simply adding back what must be considered. I'm sorry if you feel 'it murky'. We all share the same confusion about it, but it must be considered in theorizing.

If we all share the same confusion, it is murky, and the only thing it has added to your theorizing is that instead of the afterlife you now talk of quantum reality.

dhw: …why can’t your separate piece of God’s consciousness be conscious in life as you think it is in death? For “using the brain” see above.

DAVID: It is conscious considering that God 'breathes a soul into the body'.
And: The brain is a basic material mechanism for supporting consciousness, but it has to have something added (a soul) to have consciousness appear from the material side.

What do you mean by “supporting” consciousness? You keep telling us that the brain produces consciousness in the form of its electrical waves. Now the brain has to “have” consciousness (the conscious soul your God breathed into the body) before it can produce consciousness. Do you really find this logical? Might I suggest that if the soul is already conscious, it has to have the addition of a brain to give its consciousness material form? After all, if the soul is a piece of your God’s consciousness, it must have existed before the brain! (Don’t ask me how God pops it in – I’m only debating the meaning of dualism, not whether it’s true.)

DAVID: Doesn't conscious thought have a beginning? An analysis of the role of soul, if it exists, has to start by recognizing physical/material evidence. The material me thinks with the brain networks. Somehow conscious thought appears to me. Logically if the soul is the immaterial essence of me, the soul and material I initiate thought together.

dhw: There is no logic in this at all. Of course conscious thought has a beginning. Logically if the soul is the immaterial essence of you which survives the death of the brain, the soul must be the part of you that thinks, unless you believe that you stop thinking when you enter the afterlife.

Your presentation of logic starts from your view of what is the soul. As I wrote elsewhere, you are your soul. In material life which we know is real, we think with our brains. So your soul is doing the same!

dhw: I wondered how long it would be before you wandered back to the murky quantum world. Of course your soul, if it exists, gives its thought material expression in this reality through its use of the brain. As for the “wall of separation”, you believe that when the brain dies, the soul will enter another reality, but by now calling this a “quantum reality” you change nothing in the argument!

I'm simply adding back what must be considered. I'm sorry if you feel 'it murky'. We all share the same confusion about it, but it must be considered in theorizing.

DAVID: In this concept my soul is part of the quantum reality, which is the mind of God, which under girds the universe. When you follow this pattern thought, my view of what a soul might be makes sense. The immaterial quantum soul goes to the afterlife across the 'wall' to the quantum layer of reality where the afterlife exists.

dhw: Quantum this and quantum that tells us nothing about the role of the soul in life. On the assumption that your God’s mind is conscious, why can’t our part of his mind be conscious too? Why does it have to be a mechanism that works with the brain to produces electric waves before it can think? (Although you actually have it thinking with the brain in order to produce the waves, so it thinks before it can even produce thought!)

Once again separating soul from brain. You are your soul and you and your soul must think using the brain. Pure logic.

DAVID: I know your definition. It doesn't include my considerations of the quantum portion of reality….

dhw: As above, your considerations of the quantum portion of reality do not explain the role of the soul in life, or offer us one single brain function beyond those of information and expression.

Again ignoring that you/soul must think using the brain. The brain is used to create thought and express it.

DAVID: ……or of how the soul might be the mechanism that produces consciousness from electricity.

dhw: Also as above, why can’t the piece of your God’s mind be conscious, just as it is when apparently it hops over the “wall of uncertainty” to rejoin its source?

It is conscious considering that God 'breathes a soul into the body'.

DAVID: Note that Penrose has a theory about quantum activity intrinsic in the brain. Thought occurs only in the brain in reality. All analyses of the possible existence of a soul and how it functions must begin with that fact.

dhw: We have agreed that if the soul exists, it is situated “in the brain in reality”. That does not help us to understand its FUNCTION. The possible existence of a soul depends on your belief (a) that the brain is NOT a mechanism for consciousness, and (b) that there is an afterlife, or “quantum reality”, in which your immaterial, consciously thinking essence survives the death of the material you.

The brain is a basic material mechanism for supporting consciousness, but it has to have something added ( a soul) to have consciousness appear from the material side.

DAVID: Doesn't conscious thought have a beginning? An analysis of the role of soul, if it exists, has to start by recognizing physical/material evidence. The material me thinks with the brain networks. Somehow conscious thought appears to me. Logically if the soul is the immaterial essence of me, the soul and material I initiate thought together.

There is no logic in this at all. Of course conscious thought has a beginning. And until a week or so ago, we agreed that if there was such a thing as the soul, the soul initiated it. The physical/material evidence of thought is its material expression. But you keep repeating the mantra that “you” think with or use the brain networks, and I keep asking you what function the brain performs besides information and expression, and you zoom all over the place with new theories about translation and copying and representing. Logically if the soul is the immaterial essence of you which survives the death of the brain, the soul must be the part of you that thinks, unless you believe that you stop thinking when you enter the afterlife.

DAVID: I view this relationship much as we have discussed quantum reality. Quantum mechanics is the basis of our reality, but somehow the quantum basis is on the other side of a wall of uncertainty so we live in reality but suspect there is another reality across the 'wall'. ( Remember Ruth Kastner) I view my soul in the same way, based on the discoveries that consciousness appears to control the results of quantum experiments as in the late choice findings. Yes, my soul is my essence, but there may well be a wall of separation as my soul may exist primarily in quantum reality but finds expression in this reality through its contact with my brain.

I wondered how long it would be before you wandered back to the murky quantum world. Of course your soul, if it exists, gives its thought material expression in this reality through its use of the brain. As for the “wall of separation”, you believe that when the brain dies, the soul will enter another reality, but by now calling this a “quantum reality” you change nothing in the argument!

DAVID: In this concept my soul is part of the quantum reality, which is the mind of God, which under girds the universe. When you follow this pattern thought, my view of what a soul might be makes sense. The immaterial quantum soul goes to the afterlife across the 'wall' to the quantum layer of reality where the afterlife exists.

Quantum this and quantum that tells us nothing about the role of the soul in life. On the assumption that your God’s mind is conscious, why can’t our part of his mind be conscious too? Why does it have to be a mechanism that works with the brain to produces electric waves before it can think? (Although you actually have it thinking with the brain in order to produce the waves, so it thinks before it can even produce thought!)

DAVID: Tell us your concept and we can critically study it. How do you view your essence acting?

dhw: I’m surprised that you can’t remember my concept of dualism (not to be taken as belief in dualism). The self consists of two components: the immaterial soul and the material body/brain. The soul, or the “essence” of me, comprises all my immaterial attributes such as consciousness, thought, emotion, will, memory etc. In life it acts by using the body/brain to gather information and to give its thoughts material expression. When the body/brain dies, it survives as the same immaterial “essence” of me, but it uses psychic means to gather information and to communicate.

DAVID: I know your definition. It doesn't include my considerations of the quantum portion of reality….

As above, your considerations of the quantum portion of reality do not explain the role of the soul in life, or offer us one single brain function beyond those of information and expression.

DAVID: ……or of how the soul might be the mechanism that produces consciousness from electricity.

Also as above, why can’t the piece of your God’s mind be conscious, just as it is when apparently it hops over the “wall of uncertainty” to rejoin its source?

DAVID: Note that Penrose has a theory about quantum activity intrinsic in the brain. Thought occurs only in the brain in reality. All analyses of the possible existence of a soul and how it functions must begin with that fact.

We have agreed that if the soul exists, it is situated “in the brain in reality”. That does not help us to understand its FUNCTION. The possible existence of a soul depends on your belief (a) that the brain is NOT a mechanism for consciousness, and (b) that there is an afterlife, or “quantum reality”, in which your immaterial, consciously thinking essence survives the death of the material you.

https://bigthink.com/matt-davis/study-links-depression-to-a-single-molecule

"A new study has uncovered a critical biomarker of depression and a promising treatment method based on the body’s levels of a single molecule called acetyl-L-carnitine (ALC). This molecule’s main job is to help transport fatty acids into mitochondria; in effect, it helps provide cells with energy. By comparing the blood levels of 71 depressed individuals and 45 healthy individuals, it was discovered that ALC levels were significantly lower in those suffering from depression. Not only that, but the more depressed the individual was, the lower their ALC levels.

***

"According to the researchers, about 25–30% of all depression sufferers have this type of severe depression. Because ALC levels correlated with the presence and severity of the patients’ depression, measuring ALC in the blood can help psychiatrists determine who is at the greatest risk and help develop a treatment plan. In fact, providing ALC supplements to depressed patients might represent a critical treatment method.

***

"According to Dr. Nasca’s studies, ALC supplementation would work in depressed individuals by regulating the expression of genes related to synaptic plasticity. Essentially, these genes produce molecules that help the brain strengthen, weaken, and generate new synapses. Depressed individuals aren’t able to do this as well as others, causing critical mood-regulating regions in their brain to perform poorly. By regulating these genes, the neural dysfunction normally seen in depression improved.

***

"The achievement of this study was in identifying that ALC levels are low in human beings, just as in rats. While this is a major milestone toward finding an effective treatment for depression, questions remain as to whether supplementation can help treat this deadly disease, whether ALC levels are low in at-risk but non-depressive patients, if it is a biomarker for depression only or for other affective disorders as well, and many more.'"

Comment: Another study which shows that a sick brain due to a missing chemical produces sick thoughts. The problem for dhw is if I or he uses the brain to think and the soul is I or he, why does dhw try to claim the soul thinks without the brain (as we in life don't) and thus the original thought is sick, not the expression of thought from a soul separated from the brain as dhw constantly tries to present. He doesn't seem to realize he is presenting his soul as separate from his actions with his own brain as if he is not his soul.

DAVID: Not what I've proposed at all. My soul is immaterially conscious and produces consciousness for me from the electricity I create when I think.

dhw: You keep accusing me of separating the soul from "me", whereas this is precisely what you keep doing! If the soul IS you, you now have the soul BEING conscious and yet producing consciousness for the soul from the electricity the soul creates when the soul thinks? How can the soul think before consciousness has been produced?

Doesn't conscious thought have a beginning? An analysis of the role of soul, if it exists, has to start by recognizing physical/material evidence. The material me thinks with the brain networks. Somehow conscious thought appears to me. Logically if the soul is the immaterial essence of me, the soul and material I initiate thought together. I view this relationship much as we have discussed quantum reality. Quantum mechanics is the basis of our reality, but somehow the quantum basis is on the other side of a wall of uncertainty so we live in reality but suspect there is another reality across the 'wall'. ( Remember Ruth Kastner) I view my soul in the same way, based on the discoveries that consciousness appears to control the results of quantum experiments as in the late choice findings. Yes, my soul is my essence, but there may well be a wall of separation as my soul may exist primarily in quantum reality but finds expression in this reality through its contact with my brain. In this concept my soul is part of the quantum reality, which is the mind of God, which under girds the universe. When you follow this pattern thought, my view of what a soul might be makes sense. The immaterial quantum soul goes to the afterlife across the 'wall' to he quantum layer of reality where the afterlife exists.

DAVID: Tell us your concept and we can critically study it. How do you view your essence acting?

dhw: I’m surprised that you can’t remember my concept of dualism (not to be taken as belief in dualism). The self consists of two components: the immaterial soul and the material body/brain. The soul, or the “essence” of me, comprises all my immaterial attributes such as consciousness, thought, emotion, will, memory etc. In life it acts by using the body/brain to gather information and to give its thoughts material expression. When the body/brain dies, it survives as the same immaterial “essence” of me, but it uses psychic means to gather information and to communicate.

I know your definition. It doesn't include my considerations of the quantum portion of reality, or of how the soul might be the mechanism that produces consciousness from electricity. Note that Penrose has a theory about quantum activity intrinsic in the brain. Thought occurs only in the brain in reality. All analyses of the possible existence of a soul and how it functions must begin with that fact.