Although I may be struck by a thought, or moved by a memory, or distracted by a craving, these familiar descriptions suggest an effect with no obvious physical cause. Thoughts, memories, cravings—they are what? Crossing space and time effortlessly, the human mind deliberates, reckons, assesses, and totes things up; it reacts, registers, reflects, and responds. In some cases, like inattention or carelessness, it invites censure by doing nothing at all or doing something in the wrong way; in other cases, like vision, it acts unhesitatingly and without reflection; and in still other cases, the human mind manages both to slip itself into and stay aloof from the great causal stream that makes the real world boom, so that when it gives the go-ahead, what I do is, as Thomas Aquinas observed, “inclined but not compelled.”
These are not properties commonly found in the physical world. They are, in fact, not found at all.
– David Berlinski, “On the Origins of the Mind,” in Bruce L. Gordon and William A. Dembski, The Nature of Nature : Examining the Role of Naturalism in Science (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2011), p. 713.