consciousness?

[downbeatplumb]

Professor Plumb, you have only restated an argument already made, adding only that an authority shares your opinion. The tacit assumption of his concluding remarks is that no causal mechanism between brain-processes and mind-processes is required because one is the same as the other.

…neurochemical processes produce subjective experiences.

Meanwhile his next sentence injects a straw man into this debate:

…the hypothesis that consciousness creates matter (does not) hold equal standing (as physicalist theories do)

Mind creating matter has not been part of this discussion. No one denies the intimate connection between minds and brains.

The writer of the article was answering the statement that the mind creates the universe. I posted it because of the very clear way it links brain processes to the mind I apologise for not making myself clearer.

The authority you cited does not actually address the full relationship between mental events and brain events. He only looks for efficient causes and observes only third-party physical facts.

So you insist on shoehorning in the supernatural where non is required.

Empirical study of the brain takes for granted the formal relationships, logical relations, and assigned values (all immaterial) that allow us to feel, think about, and will to act upon what we observe.
In the example you provided, physical events produce both physical and mental effects. Following the initial physical cause you get both a second physical event and mental one. Now you have two potential causes, one mental and the other physical

"Mental processes" are just the manifestation of physical processes.

This means one of the following:

1. Mental properties are side-effects without causal import. This means the feeling of being alive, making choices, and contemplating ideas have no power. And because mental processes are inert they can have neither function nor use.

It means no such thing, mental processes have evolved the same way everything else and has the same importance as any other attribute. you are making baseless assertions based on your feelings where as I present facts backed by hard science.

2. A pre-existing harmony exists between mind-states and brain-states. This creates two parallel chains of causation that co-exist but do not interact.

The Mind is the brain functioning. like urine is the product of a functioning kidney.

But there is a third option that atheists refuse to consider and dismiss out-of-hand, because that is one that undermines their materialist worldview.

3. Causation, broadly defined, goes both ways. Mental causes inform physical effects, just as physical causes constrain mental effects.

Because this third option does not restrict causality to one direction, from physical cause to mental effect, it allows the possibility of interaction between two real and distinct realities, a materially substantial one and an immaterial formal one.

Oh you do talk rot don't you.
You speak of of interaction with a realm for which there is no evidence.
You may as well say you have a telephone that can call Narnia.