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Originally Posted by Robert This next chat session will be held on Friday, June 24th at 11:00pm Central Standard Time (CST) also known as (GMT-6).
The topic for this chat session is...
Ghost in the Machine
Of course, the ghost is the soul, our consciousness, our very being or essence.
A On the one hand is the belief, a doctrine known as dualism ...
B On the other hand there is the doctrine of materialism, which states that the mind is not separate from the brain
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Please add your pre-chat comments to this thread. If you have any topics you would like to discuss, you might post it here ahead of time. email going out soon.
Regards,
--Robert |
I'm not sure if I can make the chat session or not, but here is what I believe to be a key point in the discussion: communication between the physical brain/body and a "non-physical" ethereal being (spirit, soul, etc.).
For any ethereal being (EB) to have any effect upon a material body, some physical mechanism must be jointly accessible. From the EB side, it must "sense" or perceive what the body is doing. In other words, it must sense/perceive the physical universe. Further, the EB must transmit commands to the brain/body (BB) in order to influence its behavior. From the "body" side, it must have a mechanism by which it receives commands from the EB. Either it senses the EB universe (spiritual world) or the EB has transmuted commands from "ethereal" into a physical transmission so that the BB can receive them.
Thus, (1) a transmission/reception system must exist between the EB (ethereal being) and the BB (brain/body). (2) for a dual universe, information must either (1) be transmuted from the laws of one universe to the laws of the other or (2) utilize a mechanism which co-exists in both universes in order to enable transmission.
Now, if communication/transmission (CT) is possible because it utilizes a facet which exists in both universes, then CT becomes the unification principle of both universes, and dualism is thwarted. CT is the bridge unifying all universes.
My contention is that dualism cannot exist due to the scenario above. If there are two (or more) universes, they cannot communicate.
Now, the only flavor of "dualism" that I can accept is born of set theory. If the physical universe is a subset of a larger universe, then an EB (being part of the superset) can participate in "both" the larger universe and the subset physical universe. Meanwhile, the physical brain/body can only participate in the physical universe - the subset. This resolves the communication problem and defines "duality" as a superset with a subset.
If someone takes an "intersection of sets" to explain dualism, the area of intersection becomes "the bridge" as a unification principle. And CT would occur within the intersection. The difficulty with an intersection is defining what would be inaccessible to the EB. If it perceives all human endeavors, then it accesses all of the physical universe. The only exclusion possibility is if the EB relies upon the brain/body to transmit information about the physical world. Then we would have a scenario like the Mars Rovers. (The Jet Propulsion Lab would represent the EB, and a rover would represent the BB.)