Subject: Re: Free will?
But no one has yet presented a mechanism/argument that can account for breaking causality.

I've been trying to communicate an alternative perspective, apparently unsuccessfully so far.

All the myriad of natural events since Event One, plus all our respective wiring resulting from genetics and sthtu, has led us to this moment. What could have changed any of that?

In my view, human experience is more than just rote expression arising from autonomic processes of remembrance and recollection. Beyond sensation of external stimuli, it also includes cognition, anticipation and behavior, all of which are reflected in the evolving content of remembrance and recollection (reference Manlobbi's explication).

Positing a soul only transfers to the problem to something we have no evidence for, because then "how can the soul break causality" is the follow up.

I'm certainly not positing a soul, whatever that may mean. By the way, I was raised as a Catholic, and even attended a high-school seminary followed by a novitiate where saving one's soul was the agenda. I obtained a degree in philosophy from Jesuit-run but largely secular Marquette University. By a few years later I'd dropped my identification with religion, and eventually came to see it, in all its forms, as divisive and counterproductive other than as a venue for socializing. My personal story is obviously anecdotal, but if it argues for anything, it's certainly something other than strict determinism.

I believe the overwhelming tendency to regard ourselves as making choices that influence outcomes — an impression you seem to confirm — is far more credible than its denial.

Tom