A Physical Explanation for Consciousness or Free Will does not Negate Their Existence

Consciousness has a natural basis, despite what idealists and materialists would have you believe. The materialist will often attempt to negate consciousness and free will by pointing to a physical explanation of these phenomena:¹ “you see, what you think is consciousness is actually an illusion. Really all that is happening is your brain is undergoing certain chemical processes.” This explanation for consciousness does not negate the fact that under the given physical circumstances there is a consciousness, which is validated axiomatically and upon that axiom among others the materialists themselves rely for their physical investigations: the materialist is claiming to have perceived certain facts of reality, this perception is him being conscious of said facts.

Similarly, there is already a validation of free will, and no observed physical explanation of free will negates this validation.

There is no valid reason to reject consciousness or to struggle to reduce it to matter; not if such reduction means the attempt to define it out of existence. Even if, someday, consciousness were to be explained scientifically as a product of physical conditions, this would not alter any observed fact. It would not alter the fact that, given those conditions, the attributes and functions of consciousness are what they are. Nor would it alter the fact that in many respects these attributes and functions are unique; they are different from anything observed in unconscious entities. Nor would it alter the fact that one can discover the conditions of consciousness, as of anything else one seeks to know, only through the exercise of consciousness.²