Justhuman wrote:Kurieuo wrote:Justhuman wrote:Besides that, I don't believe in any form of immaterial power that can create, or control, a material realm.
I think you have that back-to-front. I'd point out we experience precisely that immediately and directly with ourselves, an exterion of our will over the natural and material realm.
I'd have to reread the "delusions of free will" posts to refreshen my mind...
Do you mean that the will controls material substances directly?
I believe the mind to be a faculty of the soul that, for us as physical beings, requires certain physical states to obtain in the brain and central nervous system before the mind can function.
justhuman wrote:To me our will is merely the computational result of neural and biological processes, which is confined whithin the thought patterns in the brain. It is not an immaterial extension of ourselves.
Some might consider one’s brain being touched with an electrode causing a memory to occur as evidence for such. Yet, such doesn't show mental states are reducible to physical states. Rather this only demonstrates that the mind is causally connected to the brain and not that they are identical.
Given the distinctiveness of mental and physical properties, there is a reason to embrace the two as difference substances however interlinked and connected they might be.
justhuman wrote:Besides, how can something immaterial control something material?
Why isn't it a problem to you that the material (physical) control the immaterial (conciousness), yet the other way around presents some problem? Lack of knowledge about how something works, doesn't mean it can't work. In any case, I think it's a false dilemma. The relationship as I see between mind and matter appears direct and immediate.
Consider the question of
how turning a key can start a car? It starts the car because there is an system inbetween the key and the car’s engine such that turning the key causes the engine to start. The "How” question is a request to describe that intermediate mechanism.
Yet, as far as I experience, my control over my fingers as I type this message is rather direct and immediate. I don't really think much, yet I have thoughts, develop an intention to communicate a message, and just start typing. Everything just happens, my mind (will, thoughts, desires, intention) and body (brain, neurology, fingers) is so intimately tied together.
Furthermore, many philosophically inclined Theists who consider the ontology of reality are often Idealists. In a manner of speaking, everything is running on "God's mind" so-to-speak, such that what we call physical reality is simply that which we experience in the mind-constructed world. Consider how at quantum levels particles behave with observation changing the result (e.g.,
double-slit experiment). It mightn't be that "minds" or consciousness run on the physical order, but on the most fundamental levels the physical order running on mind.
In fact, there is quite a bit of research that shows that our mental force changes to our brain chemistry with OCD patients and what-not. The brain appears plastic and can change. People via pure will power can rewire brain neurology.
As a side,
here's a video that makes a case for the "soul".