Determinism Is Self Defeating

[bennyboy]

Based on what reason and evidence?

My brain works based on the laws of physics.
Everything that happens in my head is then deterministic... highly complex, I'll grant you that, but determined by the laws of physics... even if we may have missed some of them.
My brain sends electrical impulses which cause my body to move and type these things on this forum.

Do you have any reason or evidence that states that the brain works non-deterministically?

Show the rules by which physics manifests as subjective awareness-- and not just the appearance of it.

This whole thread is basically a process of begging the question-- "Well, we know that everything is dictated by the rules of physics, including the brain. Therefore, the mind is deterministic." I have a serious problem with this, for three reasons:
1) Nobody has created a physical description of mind, or interacted directly with one. Nobody has measured one, created one, or even provably destroyed one. Nor have you explained in a sensible way why the subjective perspective exists at all in a universe which could function perfectly well without it.

2) You are assuming that because the mind is supervenient on the brain, it cannot offer anything beyond the function of the brain. That's like saying "Casablanca is just a complex interaction of QM particles, and doesn't offer anything beyond the function of a movie projector"-- it doesn't actually explain how something like Casablanca exists, or describe its symbolic importance to the human minds watching it.

3) You ( and by this I mean you and the other physical monists ) keep asking people to furnish evidence that any competitor to the physical monist determinism you take as the default is wrong/incomplete. However, at no point have you actually established the truth of determinism, particularly with regard to mind. Instead, you point to brain function. However, this begs the question-- kind of the point of non-determinism is that mind on some level transcends the pure physical mechanism of the brain. As for evidence, I take as evidence the existence of the subjective perspective, aka sentience, itself. Why should a purely objective physical process manifest as subjective awareness? So far, Dennett has made the most famous attempt at this, but I find it pretty unconvincing.