Whereas I think that consciousness is reducible to a process of life which can be mathematically modeled.
Now we are touching on one of the reasons I believe in any of this spiritual stuff, because I cannot believe that reality is reducible to mathematics, but as a physicist I know the measurable universe is very much reducible to mathematics apart from any particular conception of mathematics by intelligent species residing therein. This is established by the unmatched success of mathematics in predicting and uncovering new things about the measurable universe. Apart from our mathematical conceptions there are still the irrefutable way in which things are governed by fixed rules that care nothing for what we may want or believe.
OH, ALL OF THEM! Definitely! I include even those choices from before the existence of our nervous system involved in deciding our physical appearance. I simply accept the fact that MANY of our choices are not conscious deliberative ones, and I don’t see why that would make them any less ours. From a certain perspective you might think some of our free will is just a matter of owning those things which are not determined by pre-existing conditions. But I think we only loose if we refuse to own them – making ourselves into a vague and formless shadow. I don’t think it pays to make too much of the conscious-deliberative part of our experience.
But I like the way you put this difficulty, because I think it explains a lot in what I have seen in the thinking of many people.
Interesting… Perhaps part of the explanation for the above differences in our thinking come from my being a physicist and equating the physical universe with the mathematical and the measurable, where you are perhaps using the word “cosmos” to describe an extension of reality beyond the understanding by us physicist and possibly including in some sense some of what I call the spiritual.
As you can see I made connections between your comment and very different things I said. So perhaps it is best that I explain my comment more. I think one problem here may be your attempt to restrict my meaning to your own context which still seeks to embrace some sort of naturalism. Whereas I am speaking completely of something beyond our life experiences to a time afterwards when our existence is based only upon our own choices alone. This was in response to your request, after all, that we explain our understanding of what comes next. The problem is if we are confined to our choices in life alone, then how can we have a continued experience of life which requires new experiences. So the point is that in order to have a continued experience of life we must have forged a connection with others by which we can continue to experience new things. There is no eternal life to be found in isolation.