Do you believe in free will?

[Perhaps]

Hey, I gave you the cause and effect analogy to show you that there both do have separate identities. Here, the requirement is simple. For a non-material entity called "the conscious mind" to exist, it must have a non-material mechanism of consciousness that is a part of its identity. The brain mechanism is not applicable because it is a material mechanism and according to you - a separate entity. You have never even mentioned a non-material mechanism of consciousness, much less demonstrated how it'd work. As it is, your argument doesn't stand.

Under what assertion? I'm stating that there need be no mechanism, it is truly free of any deterministic attribute. A mechanism is a material concept which you are transposing on a non-material subject. Simply stated, the conscience is non-material with a individual identity; while the brain is material with an individual identity. The non-material cannot exist without the material in so much as it is ontologically dependent. The identity of the non-material may still be preserved without the material, which is how/why they differ.

That is a very simplistic approach - something FNM often refers to as the illusion of free-will. In case of the apple, you are only conscious of the immediate cause - the apple falling beside you. You ignore all the other lines of causation, which, put together, would determine whether you pick up the apple or not. It is simply because you are unaware of them that you think you are making a free-choice.

I'm aware of the theory of epistemic free will as compared to metaphysical freedom. I don't base my belief in free will solely on the idea of non-material consciousness, though I've focused only on that subject in this discussion because of the way it has been presented.

This doesn't explain how it exists, what exists in it and how it interacts with the material.

Nor is any of that required in this discussion (let alone the fact that it most likely can't be physically known other than through induction). We aren't discussing whether I'm right or you're right, it's whether free will can exist, and if so how would that be so. I believe it can - and does - exist, and I am justifying my belief. This isn't a discussion which has an answer, it's a discussion to analyze free will and its possibilities. You can analyze the validity of my argument (which you are doing), but I can't bring you to perceive what I perceive if we differ so greatly on our original perspectives.

You believe free will is an illusion and that the world is deterministic and material. I believe that there is more outside of ourselves which we must abstract to even attempt to understand. Our perceptions limit our knowledge, and you favor the side of complete knowledge, I favor the side of not-knowing but being inspired by its awe.

3. The existence of free will isn't easily demonstrated if the observers already believe it to be determined materially. Just as I can't illustrate to you the fourth dimension, but I can draw you the shadow of a hypercube; I can't demonstrate to you the existence of the non-material conscience, but I can show you its effects (free will).

Then show me. You haven't done anything like that yet. All you have done is make unjustified assertions.

You ask to know how a non-material subject operates in a materialist perspective. You limit the abilities of the non-material to the confines of materialist physics and determinism. And then you ask me to show you the effects a non-material subject causes in a material world without allowing me the supposition that free will does come from this non-material subject.

If I asked you to show me the effects a sharpened pencil has on a piece of paper (writing), yet didn't allow you the supposition that a sharpened pencil is the method through which writing is possible, then I could easily tell you you're wrong about the whole illustration. But how would you prove that the pencil does actually cause writing to occur when applied to paper? Surely you would tell me to write my name down with the said pencil and paper, but what if I told you that the paper read my mind and the words appeared on the paper, therefore the pencil didn't cause the writing to exist? If I fight you at every turn, then of course I'm never going to see that the pencil does in fact cause the writing to appear on the paper.