Do you believe in free will?

[The Grand Nudger]

Perhaps that's because you would state the case for eliminative materialism, and then recoil in apparent shock and horror that someone might actually go with it, proceeding to then call the position you had just offered your support of handwaving and ignorance, "a hard sell". Perhaps that's because you offered up what "some buddhists" would contend as though it had any bearing whatsoever on demonstrable science. For 3/4ths of this thread (insomuch as our conversation is a part of it) you've been firmly stating your case, and then arguing against your case. I've been wondering what other mysterious thing we are referring to, since we're not looking to accept explanations which are the product of evidence, and completely in line with eliminative materialism's suggestions as to how we should proceed. Since we're apparently making assumptions about what we do not know by reference to what we do not know, and not what we do. I keep asking you the same questions, and you keep moving right along. Woo doesn't always have to cast spells or call itself a god. It need only offer some mysterious "other". In this case, the "other" would seem to be "no other", but this is not the position of cognitive science, or eliminative materialism...so precisely who's position is it, and where does it come from? If the thing that we call the self is not the function of the brain (no more, no less)..the only thing known in the natural world which can account for this, and indeed the only place where it is accounted for by evidence, then what other means are you invoking?