A Working Draft Design Argument

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But the prior factors determined what I was to think, what thought transpires in my brain.

The prior factors produced the thought that arose in my consciousness. Consciousness is more like an awareness rather than an originator or assigner of things. A passenger observing the thoughts that form, then the cause of the thoughts themselves .

You're saying that consciousness under the postulate I provided must necessarily be an epiphenomenon, but I don't see why this must be so.

But even if I'm forced to concede that, the act of assigning values and meaning is then reduced to physical processes happening in our nervous systems (or similar such systems in possible alien beings), so we're still ultimately the arbiter of meaning and value, because we possess these systems.

Those physical process cause us to recognize values and meaning, but we’re not the arbiter of them, we’re a passenger, not the captain. We don’t dictate the destination. 

My consciousness mind might see a value being attached to certain things, a meaning to life            revealed, but I watch this as a man at a movie, not as a director.

I’m a character and a reader of a story, not it’s author.