Of the choices you offer, ‘Strongly Disagree’ comes closest, but ‘Utter Nonsense’ would be more accurate.
As a psychologist, I somewhat agree that the psychological mind is not limited by the biological brain. We have interesting case studies–one involving the autopsy of the brain of a 100-year-old nun–in which the brain has all the hallmark signs of Alzheimer’s disease but the individual was still functioning normally up to the point of death. And anecdotal evidence tells of people whose brain and body have degenerated yet sheer willpower enables them to continue living so that they can attend, for example, the marriage or graduation of their child. The opposite also has occurred, in which people lack the will to live and do indeed die even though their brain is functioning normally. There is evidence of this in the animal kingdom where we have found that baby chimps who have lost their mother die of a broken heart despite being otherwise healthy. We also know that when parts of the brain have been damaged, it is sometimes possible for other parts to compensate by taking over the functioning of the damaged parts. This is not to say one can live without a brain, especially the hindbrain which controls vital life functions. At the same time, however, the normal functioning of the brain may, at times, not be sufficient for sustaining life, and furthermore the abnormal functioning of the brain is not always restrictive of normal life functioning.
It will be interesting to see how materialists try to explain that!
There is such a thing as asymptomatic Alzheimer’s Disease. It is widely believed (or at least suspected) that the development and maintenance of strong cognitive skills throughout life (aka exercising the grey matter) makes one more resilient. Try to google/Wikipedia - cognitive reserve
When fish get stressed (often because of other fish) they can die, even when they are otherwise healthy. No-one doubts that there is a significant link between the mind/brain and the body. It’s an interconnected physical system, so of course one part effects the other.
I’m not sure how does this support your own contention. It would more aptly be characterized as an argument against it.
I agree with this.
People die of heart attacks and other non-brain related trauma all the time.
Again, please google/wikipedia - cognitive reserve
I am going to go with “Strongly Agree” and support it by pointing out that a material mind would be as subject to deterministic nature of the universe as a computer chip. Free Will demonstrates that our minds are not material.
That is not necessarily so. Daniel Dennett argues that what we think of as free will has evolved and that it works conceptually if it is something which is the product of causes and not something outside of causality. There is no ‘unmoved mover’ sitting there in our heads. Having a material brain which is responsible for perception, thought and consciousness does not mean that we are like unintelligent computer chips. We learn to avoid/opt for things and to make decisions, like software with an ability to self-programme along pre-defined routes. I’d say look at his Freedom Evolves, it explains things a lot better than I can and is fascinating.
Theories of free will that depend on material in a deterministic universe always fail to account for thermodynamics. Namely, given the starting state of a system one can determine the state of that system at any point along the trajectory of its existence. Therefore, a snapshot of every particle in the universe now could be determined from a prior snapshot and vice versa. So if the current snapshot of the universe is coherent, the starting state of the universe is coherent. The point being that if we have a coherent picture of the universe that seems to include free will, then either we really do have free will, or every single particle in the universe has randomly, by chance been in a position to form a coherent snapshot for the entirety of the existence of the universe, for no reason. Considering the numbers of particles and the resulting permutations, it seems much more likely that we simply have free will as it appears to us all. That’s my opinion on arguments against free will.
Apart from the fact that the more you know about position, the less you know about velocity, or something similar - quantum indeterminacy. And what if the most complete picture possible can only give you a quite precise set of possibilities after 10s, a fuzzy one after 10mins and one with a high tolerance of error after 10 years? What if the picture included the fact that ‘free will’ multiplies up the possible arrangements of atoms tremendously? It would still work, I think, to see determinism like this.
Can you explain what you mean by this statement? I have a hunch this is going to turn into a claim requiring some rather fantastic evidence so please do come prepared.
That it is, or a better way to express it is the brain is enabled by “physical laws”.
That would be a demonstrably false claim, IMO.
That’s about the size of it. Given the number of particles and the possible permutations, a randomly coherent universe, perfectly faking free will, moment by moment for billions of people is simply ludicrous.
See above.