AB,
You won't be surprised that I do not consider my logic to be flawed.
I’m afraid that that’s not a choice you get to make. To go back to the earlier example, if I said that there are higher birth rates where there are lots of storks therefore storks cause more babies then I’d be committing a logical fallacy. Whether I'd
consider it to be one is neither here nor there – it’s false regardless on my opinion on the matter. And that essentially is what you do when you attempt arguments that are classically defined as false.
Most arguments boil down to a difference of opinion - such as what can and can't be achieved from the deterministic activity of purely material entities. And in your case I hold a difference of opinion as to what comprises an emergent property.
No they don’t, or at least they don’t for this purpose. Whether tea is better than coffee is a difference of opinion, but logical fallacies aren’t. Your only way out of that is to argue that, say, the
post hoc ergo propter hoc (storks and babies for example) isn’t logically false at all. And that would give you many problems, not least that if you think it in respect of storkism then you have no basis to exclude the same argument in respect of any other correlation = cause claim.
I have tried to highlight that the limitations of material entities are incapable of defining conscious awareness, and this is based on logic, not just personal incredulity.
No it isn’t. Your position about that is entirely an argument from incredulity because you’ve provided no logic or evidence or any kind to support it. Time and again you say things like, “I can’t imagine how X, therefore Y” etc but that
is the argument from personal incredulity – precisely so in fact.
I have also maintained that our apparent illusion of free will is not an illusion at all, and that we have the real ability to control our thought processes and actions as directed by our conscious awareness.
Yes you have, but “maintaining” something with no supporting logic or evidence (indeed in flat contradiction of the logic and evidence we do have) is just assertion. There’s no argument there at all – just wishful thinking.
The fact that conscious awareness has not been defined in material terms means that my arguments can't be dismissed.
No, but your “arguments” (or rather assertions) can be dismissed for other reasons, just as someone who claims an invisible orbiting teapot will have his claim dismissed even though that teapot claim hasn’t been fully “defined in material terms” either. While a great deal about “conscious awareness” has been defined, and while the property aligns very well with the known phenomenon of emergence, the absence of a full understanding of it does not in other words give you licence to drop in any alternative explanatory conjecture you like with no evidence at all.
You mention the fact that correlation does not imply causation, which is an argument I have used myself to show that chemical activity in the frontal cortex of the brain does not define the cause of our thought processes, or indeed the thought itself.
If you have then you misunderstand the argument. It’s not that the fact of a prefrontal cortex existing means that it must cause consciousness, but rather that its architecture, complexity and functions align perfectly well with the theory that consciousness is an emergent property of it. If you want to claim something else as an explanation for consciousness, then you need to explain first why the neuroscience doesn’t provide a cogent working model, and second why your alternative provides a better one.
So far at least though, you’ve not even attempted to do either.
I detect a great deal of personal optimism on this forum in efforts to try to come to terms of a reality without God.
You might think rational argument in the face of superstitious beliefs to be optimistic, but to me it’s the only response I can give. If I suspended my critical faculties and succumbed to your claims, I’d have no choice but to succumb to any other illogical and un-evidenced claims too. And that’s not somewhere I’d like to be.
