"are you saying...?"

yup...I am saying such.

"The absurdity of this qualitative contradiction escapes you, apparently."

yup..not a bit absurd.

Old Occam likes my "fundamental mechanistic assumptions" and, aren't your NON-mechanistic assumptions a "a self-propogating loop."?

" "The neurons that hold our conscious memories"..oh, really? How do they do that?""

I am not the one to ask 'how'...experts on brain chemistry are working on that ... but the model is a whole bunch easier to explain than speculative concepts about 'souls'.

But, as I said, we humans are able to 'choose'...somehow... to not like certain explanations and just gravitate to others. Kinda weird, huh?