If you do hold that this is the nature of the wider universe (and hence perhaps why you feel free), however, I still need an argument from you about why you’d privilege your experience of being free as something you’d assert as truly being part of the wider reality while not granting the same to the human experience of deep interconnectedness (which I have argued many times as the sine qua non of “spiritual experiences”).

If you don’t hold that what you interpret as at least some degree of “being free to act” is characteristic of wider reality, then it seems to me that you are either a solipcist (there is no wider reality beyond me) or you are living an experience different than your philosophy–which, if I understand you, is one that entertains the possibility that the kind of experiences of interconnection that many label as “spiritual” is all a matter of brain chemistry. So, unless you give me a reason that brain chemistry does not determine all actions/feelings/emotions, it seems reasonable for me to claim that your everyday experience of the world would be counter to your philosophy–i.e., you’d not be “living” your philosophy.

I think you are trying to have the best of both worlds, and I don’t think it’s a solid position. I think you need to make a choice–either freedom or determinism. If you choose freedom, which I think you will (or already do), then I think to be consistent you would also have to choose the possibility that all other things you/people experience are likewise built into the nature of the wider universe beyond ourselves. This choice then would make it impossible to easily dismiss someone’s experience of true, deep connection to something beyond his or herself as false–i.e., that interconnection is not something that is characteristic of Reality itself.

I’m sure you can imagine your own world of experience as purely coming from your brain and millennia of social milieu, and perhaps you can even think it’s bold and beautiful in its own way. I bet , however, just like David Hume when it came to where his philosophical examinations took him, you can’t LIVE it. And if that’s so, then what’s the point of such philosophizing?

Of course, I also think it’s worth exploring if it originates outside of it. Things like the large hadron collider really interest me. I’d also like to see more serious studies of the mind-body connection, etc. But in the meantime, what we already know gives plenty of reason for skepticism and perhaps even initially privileging the internal over the external.

Jonah (who is sure you’re not just a bad dream of his)