[AlphaSigma]

Originally Posted by Thrash

I am not sure. After thought, I suppose this is most definitely checmical (feeling and reactions to stimuli). But is consciousness above this? As in "thinking"?

It depends. Science dictates that consciousness is simply the activity of the brain which would imply that after death, consciousness is non-existent. But that's if you believe consciousness is merely the result of chemical and biological process.

[Chrysostom]

Originally Posted by Thrash

So what you are saying (and possibly what I am realizing through interaction in this thread) is that, even if we mean this to a very lesser extent than some claim, we really have a lot less free will than we believe?

Well, I'm answering for your hypothetical interlocutor. You ask, How do you navigate such a world? This is probably why certain secular apologists drone on and on about how atheism is courageous: Because you just suck it up and keep living.

Of course, materialism (or "physicalism") doesn't necessarily entail determinism. That only works if you also think the material world operates in a deterministic fashion. Of course, you're right to link the two because they are so often held together, but there's no reason in principle that both must be true.

For my part, I honestly just don't care about "choices" and "free will" and all of this. Call it an oddity of personal temperament, but that's just not something that interests me too much. I just do things, and that's the end of the story -- and pretty well everybody believes that we do things!

[Chrysostom]

Originally Posted by AlphaSigma

It depends. Science dictates that consciousness is simply the activity of the brain which would imply that after death, consciousness is non-existent. But that's if you believe consciousness is merely the result of chemical and biological process.

This isn't necessarily the case. For instance, David Chalmers (a prominent philosopher of mind) thinks that Quantum Theory provides room for non-physicalist philosophies of mind (which matters to him because he thinks physicalism is completely off the table).

Beyond that, physicalist interpretations of mind and personal identity can allow for the continuation of consciousness after death. (In fact, I studied under a prominent physicalist, Michael Tye, who took intentional pains to make sure this was possible.) They cannot under the so-called identity theory of mind, which says that states/processes of the mind are identical to states/processes of the brain, but to my knowledge that view has been almost completely replaced by more recent physicalist models (Chalmers's critiques are significant here, and particularly Kripke's).