Quote:But wait! You say, “things like intentions and sensations are ‘emergent’ properties.” Doing so introduces a category error between mental and physical properties. You do not attribute mental properties to things like thermostats for good reason. They are physical systems governed solely by cause and effect. A desire to reach 72 degrees does not emerge in the thermostat. It doesn’t want anything, it just is. Likewise, driving is not an emergent property of a car. Driving is an act of intention expressing the will of the driver when applied to a physical object. So if the brain is a solely physical system why do you attribute mental properties to it? The problem is not a scientific one. The problem is conceptual.
You make the mistake of assuming that all physical systems have the same properties. A brain, being a physical substrate, exhibits what you call 'mental properties'. The cause for this is unknown to us right now, but I have every confidence that a physical explanation will reveal itself in time, because there are countless phenomena once thought to be supernatural and eventually proven otherwise (while the reverse has never once happened). I see no need to resort to a supernatural explanation, because in all of human history, no supernatural claim has ever been demonstrated to be different from anything anyone can just make up.
