psycho wrote: ↑Fri Jan 29, 2021 10:20 pm
The spiritual affects material. The spiritual also experiences material. It is through these two that minds can interact.
Is experiencing a passive or active thing? That is, does information from the exterior come to and meet the spiritual? Or does the spiritual “reach out and grab” information about the exterior, in your view?
You have mentioned that spiritual can affect physical substance. Why then, could physical not affect spiritual substance? Seems far more logical. But, it seems to violate the sense in which this spiritual substance creates its own destiny, so, you disregard that on purely ideological grounds, because you hold free will as axiomatic, and thus are trying to prove it in reverse. Not very good way of reaching an accurate picture of reality.
It also means, conveniently for you, inconvenient for anyone else who wants to confirm your theory, that mind is undetectable through physical measurement.
Much like dark matter, it seems to affect matter, yet, matter doesn’t seem to affect it, and thus can not detect it through any direct means. It can only be inferred.
Yet, unlike dark matter, we know it directly, because we ARE it, or at least, a particular subset of mind, the subset which is conscious.
What I would like to know from you is, for actions that are reflexive, and seemingly unconscious, are these freely willed actions too? Is mind even involved in these actions in your view? There are obvious cases where information seems to be at play, and thus, a mind must be required, yet there is no room for conscious intervention. Where does consciousness fit into your conception of free will? Can there be behaviours that aren’t willed, reflexive behaviours? If not, how do you account for the countless behaviours that occur without our conscious noticing? How about flow states, where we seemingly don’t even produce our actions with intent, they seem to occur and we seem to be along for the ride, just observing our body reacting? Your model must account for ALL instances of mind, not just those which align with what you are trying to prove, free will. Do you think free will is a constant state of the mind? Or are there simply cases of it, punctuated by instances no potential for free will?