This is correct, except for the third sentence, which should read “We have it, as long as you redefine it as consisting of properties we have.” Preserving a folk concept like 'free will' and recasting it as “reasons responsiveness” (or whatever) in order to confirm that actually, we do have free will seems like the epitome of a pointless equivocation. (Cf. “We have free markets; it's just that they're centrally planned.”)

“To be is to be the value of a bound variable.”

No. To be a justified existential postulate is to be the value of a bound variable. (Cf. your subsequent musings about epistemology.)

“Modal statements about fundamental kinds (”gold might have had a different atomic weight”) may be grammatical but are not meaningful.”

Only if we insist on reading it in terms of the Kripkean construction that gold necessarily has the atomic weight that it does. (Again, cf. your remarks on epistemology.)

Qualia: Yes! They play a computational function.

Don't say that out loud. Daniel Dennett will appear and destroy you.

The Appearance Is
Matter
Consciousness
Movement.

The consciousness is
Feeling,
growth,
Perception,displacement,
Appearance,communication.

Conscious is.

“First of all, we don’t ever claim “with certainty” even the things we can observe. Empirical claims are necessarily probabilistic, not deductive proofs.”

“It might be true that something “exists” beyond our ability to observe it, but [then] what difference does its existence make to us, as observers?”

I think we apparently agree that there can’t be certainty that there is nothing outside what we might call the material world or the realm of pure naturalism.

So, what do we do? Exactly what we’ve done throughout history. If we observe events in the natural world which cannot be explained by the mechanical operation of natural laws, that constitutes proof of something operating outside those natural laws. So if we observe something non natural, that is the extra-natural intruding on the natural world. Then there is something more than the material world, and it sometimes affects the material world.

The existence of nature itself, the existence of life, the existence of intelligent life, and our apparent free will are some possible candidates for things which we observe which we can, at least arguably, say are not the result of the mechanical operation of natural laws. Then there are the cases of historical events which observers claim to have experienced things which contravene the mechanical operation of natural laws.

Since we cannot with certainty rule out the existence of something outside of nature, we can’t start with the position that everything happens as the result of the mechanical operation of natural laws, and then use this position to discard any evidence to the contrary simply because we hold that position. We can certainly have the debate–we can, for example, argue that life evolved by chance or that it must have been created by a force outside nature, or that it makes more sense to believe a certain naturalistic explanation of what observers saw (or that observers were wrong or lied) or that it makes more sense to believe a “super natural” explanation. But one side of the debate can’t claim victory simply because it holds to pure materialism to begin with–we’ve already seen that there is no a priori reason to hold to pure materialism.

Considering a few more of Matthew Heaney’s points:

(from Will)

“That is, if something plays a role in our best explanation of some phenomenon, you should believe it exists. Otherwise, not.”

I agree. But, as I’ve pointed out, you can’t discard the “extra natural” as playing a role in our best explanation. If you being with the assumption that all there is is the material world, the extra natural can never play a role in the best explanation, no matter how outlandish the best explanation is without the extra natural. But, as I’ve tried to argue, you can’t discard the possibility of something outside the material world a priori, so you have to consider whether something “extra natural” plays a role in the best explanation.

“Also, there is the matter of burden of proof. The naturalist has no obligation to prove that nature is all there is. It’s up to the non-naturalist to adduce evidence for the claim that nature is not all there is.”

I think I simply disagree with this point. Philosophically, I think, the naturalist has no superior claim to the truth. Since we have nature at all, it seems to me just as valid to say that the naturalist has the burden of proof to show how nature came into being without something outside of nature. But even without that kind of “first mover” argument, I don’t see any special status for a naturalism from a purely philosophic point of view. If it has a special status, it derives from the fact that everyone can see and feel and hear things for themselves–but then we’re back to our previous discussion about how the extra natural would intrude on the natural world and how we’d experience that with our senses.

“It is simply impossible to claim, with certainty, that the natural world observed with our senses is all there is.”

First of all, we don’t ever claim “with certainty” even the things we can observe. Empirical claims are necessarily probabilistic, not deductive proofs.

But my real point (and Will would probably agree with me) is that what you cannot observe isn’t very interesting! It might be true that something “exists” beyond our ability to observe it, but that what difference does its existence make to us, as observers?

This is exactly what Will was getting at when he said:

“That is, if something plays a role in our best explanation of some phenomenon, you should believe it exists. Otherwise, not.”

So it is perfectly correct to claim that an entity does not exist, if we can’t observe it (e.g. “the natural world is all there is”).

Also, there is the matter of burden of proof. The naturalist has no obligation to prove that nature is all there is. It’s up to the non-naturalist to adduce evidence for the claim that nature is not all there is.

(Of course, how he would be able to adduce such evidence is another matter. What would evidence of a non-natural entity look like, if it’s not observable??? Good luck with that…)

I agree that we have free will.

But where does our free will come from? If I can choose to do A or B, and my choice isn’t determined simply by the current state of my brain, or by some simply random process inside my brain, then there has to be something acting outside the realm of nature to allow “me” to “choose.” That there is something outside of nature allowing me to have free will wouldn’t prove the existence of God, but it would prove that everything we see in “nature” is not everything that exists.

I saw an argument similar to this somewhere else. The author said that we give natural laws too much credit, and turn them into God. He thought it was perfectly non contradictory to say that everything followed natural law, and that our choices aren’t predetermined by natural law. But it seems to me that either all of you is completely subject to natural law, including that which supposedly gives you free will–or it’s not.

I think it is a contradiction to believe in “free will” and also to believe that everything, including us, always precisely follow deterministic natural laws (even including natural laws which involve random probability–a random event involves no choice by us).

Now an aside. I am not that knowledgeable about philosophy, which probably shows in my previous discussion. However, it seems to me that something I read at one time must absolutely be true. The statement “the only things which exist are the things we can observe directly or indirectly with our senses” is a self-stultifying statement. There is nothing you can observe with your senses that will prove that there is nothing you cannot observe with your senses. It is simply impossible to claim, with certainty, that the natural world observed with our senses is all there is.