In this you fail to acknowledge the role of conscious awareness.
I don't need to take it into account, all of the evidence shows that it's an after effect of the decision making process. If you want it to be included in the consideration you need to show how it can have a causitive effect on a decision that can be shown to have already been made before conscious awareness of the decision occurs. You speculate on a non-temporal, non-physical interaction, and that might be a valid hypothesis, but you don't have anything to show that interacting with the physical reality to elevate it from a curious idea to something that needs to be actively considered.
It allows us to one aware of prior events, and to be influenced by them - but not dictated by them.
How? How is it influenced, but not determined, by prior events? What's the element that - I'm presuming we're still avoiding the idea of a random element - is influenced but not determined? What are the other factors that influence the decision that aren't the product of prior events?
Of course, if you presume that conscious awareness itself is entirely defined by nothing but material reactions, then everything will just be an inevitable consequence of those reactions.
It's not a presumption, it's a conclusion from the available evidence. We can see the interactions between the physical world and our sensory organs, between our sensory organs and our brains, between our brains and the decision making processes, and between the decision making process and the subsequent awareness of the conclusion. We don't see anything apparently 'spontaneous' in there that would be the impact of something unknown influencing the process from a non-physical, undetected source. We therefore conclude, based on the evidence, that consciousness is a manifestation of physical activity in the brain - it's a conclusion after the facts, not a presumption held in spite or incidental of them.
This is the root of our disagreement, because I put it to you that conscious awareness comprises perception of material reactions - not the reactions themselves.
And that's fine as a start point, but what you can't do with that presumption is discard the available evidence, create some sort of false equivalence between your concept and the measured reality and suggest that it's just a matter of preference which you go for.
Our conscious awareness is the source of our subjective reality, and in it lies the source of our freedom.
You can't just claim that and expect anyone to accept it, you need to support the claim with at least a logical explanation; how does something non-random generate this 'freedom' from cause and effect? Regardless of whether it's physical, spiritual or something else, what's the logical third path?
O.
