(April 12, 2012 at 2:55 pm)Perhaps Wrote: To the deterministic materialist my argument holds no water, which is fine.
I personally do accept the continuity of the natural laws and fully acknowledge that causation provides a deterministic word view, but I do not ascribe to materialism in the fullest extent. I don't think magic pixies make choices for us, or that we are fated to a certain destiny. I simply believe that the conscious mind, separate from the brain mechanism, provides us with the ability to abstract and to make decisions based on whims. Our physical existence is subject to determined physics, but we have the ability to enact our own causation through the non-material aspect of our conscious.
Not to get too off topic, but let me ask you this: Are you the same person as you were 5 years ago, in so much as your identity hasn't changed? If you are, then what makes that so?
1. How can a conscious mind exist separately from the brain mechanism when without the mechanism there would not be any ability of awareness and therefore no consciousness?
2. By what mechanism does this non-material aspect of consciousness able to interfere with material causation and still remain independent of it?
3. Once again, is the ability to make decisions on a whim an expression of free-will, whereas a reasoned and considered decision is not?