But the materialist view would mean choices were entirely predetermined before we became consciously aware of them. There can be no half measures. We are entirely driven by past physically predetermined reactions - or there is something else involved - but not random.
If that's where the evidence leads, that's the conclusion. To start an argument with 'but, if this is the case then...' sound awfully like your argument is derived from the fact that you don't like the implication of the conclusion, not because you think any of the elements leading to it are incorrect.
Conscious choices are not random.
Then they are, by definition, dependent upon something, right?
My reasoning is entirely based upon the reality of my demonstrable ability to drive my own thought processes.
And there's your first misstep - it's not a demonstrable ability at all, in fact the evidence points to exactly the opposite. Even if it were somehow true, though, that part of you that's 'driving' - how is it making its decisions on where to drive? They're not random, you assured us, so they're dependent upon the prior events as well - you can make it spiritual rather than mechanistic, despite the absence of evidence, but you aren't escaping causal mechanisms. If it's not random, it's driven by something - what's that something, and in what way is it free of what's come before?
But if a brain comprises nothing but material elements, the only form of control will be physically controlled reactions within the material. So everything will be inevitable, uncontrollable reactions to previous events. This is not control - just uncontrollable reaction.
Again, this is sounding an awful lot like
argumentum ad consequentiam.
But I suspect the wealth of evidence you consider is entirely based upon material science investigation. If you deliberately exclude any possible source outside material science, you will inevitabley conclude that everything must somehow be derived from pre defined material reactions, even if you can't discover how it works.
It isn't inevitably down to science; however, until and unless you can bring something to the table that's at all reliable and validatable, it's what we have that actually works.
When the physical brain ceases to function it is inevitable that any interactivity with a human soul would no longer be possible, so consciously controlled actions will cease - but what happens to our conscious awareness can't be predicted.
It can be, indeed it is; our conscious awareness stops. So far, there's no reliable evidence to suggest that prediction is wrong, and so it continues to be the provisional understanding of conventional science. There are ways it could be changed; we might, in the future, upload a consciousness to an artificial 'brain' for instance. If you want to posit a 'soul' though, you need to show how it interacts with the brain; you need to show something happening in thought which isn't a consequence of the known physical laws, in order to justify adding an otherwise unevidenced element to the mix.
Determinism is certainly the norm.
Without determinism you can't know anything. If effect is independent of cause there is no consistency, not prediction, no reliability, no confirmation of prediction. More significantly, perhaps, without determinism there is no evolution - successful traits cannot be passed down if they are not reliably successful.
As explained above, physical determinism will be entirely defined by the laws of physics acting within material reactions.
Only by convention, not by dictate. If you can show non-material effects reliably, they'd be added to the sum of human knowledge.
But our conscious freedom to drive our own thought processes does not fit with this type of determinism.
I'd agree, but not for the reasons you're citing - it's 'special' - but rather because you can't demonstrate that it's actually real.
So you are faced with the possibility that our conscious freedom is just an illusion, or there is something else which determines our thought processes which is not predetermined, but consciously invoked.
Those appear to be the possibilities. One of those has evidentiary support, one of them doesn't.
It is human will.
Oh, well why didn't you say so. Can you let me know when you're due to get your Nobel Prize for solving the problem of consciousness? I presume, of course, that you're backing this up with something more than 'I really, really, really want it to be so'.
But quantum indeterminacy implies that there is no perceived cause to quantum events.
On the contrary, the predictable distribution of quantum events in large numbers suggests that there are causitive mechanisms; it's impossible to define whether the individual indeterminacy of a given event is the product of a truly random element or a mechanistic event that we are currently unaware of.
It does not preclude the possibility that quantum indeterminacy has no cause - just no discernable cause.
Precisely.
It opens the door to the possibility of non physical causes, such as a spiritually invoked cause.
That door was never closed, it was just waiting for someone to turn a light on on the other side to give us reason to walk through it. There are an infinite number of open doors, we can't walk through all of them.
The evidence for the human soul lies in our own conscious awareness and in our ability to make consciously driven choices - both of which defy any explanation from physically predefined material reactions.
Wow - never has so much been wrong about so much in so little writing... There is no evidence for a human soul in conscious awareness, especially when the evidence shows that consciousness lags behind the neural activity that provides it. Our choices are not consciously driven, they are subconsciously driven and consciously recognised after the fact. Consciousness does not 'defy explanation from physically predefined material reactions' you just don't like the explanation - I'll freely admit its both highly provisional and not clearly understood, but it's not reliant on unevidenced elements. Which is not to say, definitively, that a 'soul' isn't involved, just that you don't have sufficient basis to claim that it's a fact.
Coming to any conclusion requires the ability to consciously contemplate the relevant factors.
No, it requires the application of logic in an algorithm - if that algorithm is deliberately formulated in a silicon-based processor in a computer we don't presume there's any sort of conscious contemplation involved, why would we presume so when a carbon-based experientially derived algorithm does the same?
Such freedom to contemplate cannot exist within physically predefined chains of cause and effect in an entirely material brain.
Don't worry, it doesn't exist at all, you just think it does.
Conclusions cannot be determined by uncontrollable reactions.
On the contrary, conclusions have to be determined by uncontrollable reactions - once it's in play, it takes on a life of its own.
Yes, we do have the freedom to witness - but what drives this act?
What does that even mean? Witness what?
Electrical activity certainly plays a part in the brain's cognitive functionality, as do electromagnetic fields, but can you honestly presume that they play the whole part?
Yes, we can presume, given that they are sufficient explanation for the observed phenomena. If you want to suggest something else, you either need to demonstrate that the current explanation doesn't adequately explain the phenomena (demonstrate, not merely claim) or you need to demonstrate something else interfering with the operation. You are doing neither of those things.
If they do play the whole part then the inevitable conclusion mus be that everything we do, think or say is entirely predetermined by underlying physically controlled reactions - which denies us the consciously driven freedom we all enjoy.
Right. And?
The evidence for my conscious freedom lies in my ability to make the consciously driven assertions I am perceived to make.
Except that you could exactly as equally make those assertions in a deterministic system - the fact that you make them is evidence of brain activity, but says nothing about the sequence of that activity or the inputs into it. Even your feeling of conscious control - which I don't doubt you believe you feel - is only evidence of consciousness, it doesn't actually demonstrate where in the sequence it occurs, and it certainly doesn't evidence any non-neural elements of the process.
This presents a fascinating thought experiment, to try to imagine one'self when cut off from the information contained in our brain. But:
I am aware of past memories.
But these memories are not me.
I am aware of all my learnt experiences.
But these learnings are not me.
I am aware of sight, sound, touch and taste.
But there senses are not me.
Take all these away, and what is left?
Me.
Brain injury victims who lose memories often undergo profound changes in personality - are they the same person? That's a difficult question to answer without a clear definition of what makes someone 'them' - what it doesn't do is suggest that the rest of the brain somehow requires something extra-physical to animate or agitate it.
I remain a single entity of awareness and willpower.
And you still have a brain to provided that awareness - whether 'willpower' in the sense you mean is a thing, or merely a characteristic of the activity of that particular brain's algorithms is questionable.
When my material body ceases to function, I will look forward to being aware of a place in a new world which God has prepared for me.
Perhaps. Certainly whilst your material body functions you are looking forward to it; when it ceases to function, the evidence suggests there will be no pattern of activity to post-hoc rationalise as looking forward to anything.
No. I am not determined by prior events - I am God's creation.
Again, this is an assertion - you've not derived this from anything other than really, really wanting it be so, and an argument from incredulity regarding what complex processing systems might be capable of.
Yet I have had the freedom to consciously contemplate the points you have made and make these sincerely thought out replies. I am not at all convinced that I could have acomplished this by nothing but physically predetermined material reactions in my brain.
You feel like you have that freedom, but the evidence doesn't support your conclusion.
O.
