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First, everything I say presumes the action of the principle of sufficient reason (psr), which states that everything is the way it is for a reason. Second, we must separate mind from brain. It is clear from the action of the unconscious, the brain, in creating the vivid, detailed, highly structured domain of dreams, that the brain is perfectly capable of highly functioning outside of the conscious mind. We also see this in the careful actions of somnambulists, and the autonomic processes of the body. In other words the brain can function reflexively in all capacities without any need for a conscious mind. In terms of metaphysical naturalism, there is insufficient reason for the conscious mind to exist. Third, the fact that, as everyone knows from empirical experience, the mind does exist, demonstrates that the mind is distinct from the brain. This mind I call “soul”.

Relate any possible reason for the mind's association with the body, to what we were discussing in the “Why am I me and not you?” thread. All minds being equal, as mere nodes of experience, there is insufficient reason for any one mind to associate with any one body. Either all minds are the same mind (pantheism) or there are no minds (complete eliminativist materialism). To break free of these two alternatives we must consider that every mind is unique, akin to the content of a single, unreproduced original LP recording. My unique mind gives God, who created it, sufficient reason to associate my mind with my body and not another body. Without this consideration, again, pantheism or complete eliminativist materialism, both of which destroy the soul as a distinct entity. On free will: If we believe the mind to be distinct from other minds, we must believe that those minds (souls) are unique; and if we believe souls are unique and possess free will, they must be separate from the material of the brain (metaphysical naturalism) because under that metaphysic there is no “alternate world” for free will to come from. Free will means choice unbound from physics. If all there is is physics, there is no room for free will. Thus if we believe we have free will we must also have souls.

Wow, that's a pretty unique argument, I mean this sincerely, and maybe it's just because I'm sometimes ignorant, but I've not heard that argument for souls before, so definitely thank you for that, really interesting to mentally munch on. Do I smell Schopenhauer...? Maybe not... Anyway, not sure if this is nesseccarily an argument, but could it be that we simply haven't found the reason for it's existence (though I think something like the idea that freewill may have an evolutionary benefit of some sort and needed a conceptually aware brain to be able to obtain that could stand as an example of a possible reason, though I have no proof for the validity of that idea) but the fact that it does exist implies that it has a reason for existing? Perhaps we don't know how mind arises from the brain, but perhaps "mind" is an effect of the unique human brain rather than something separate and that this "mind" serves an evolutionary purpose. In short, I guess I don't see how just because we haven't found a reason for it's existence or just because we don't know the connection between mind and "body" so to speak, that this necessarily means that the two are different. Is there emperically evidence for that? I definitely be curious to find out. Thought provoking though, let me know what you think!