Elements within those factors are simply input signals to my chemical machinery.
What makes you think that some parts of those factors aren't input signals to your chemical machinery? If they are thoughts that you are having that you are using to evaluate your response, why wouldn't you consider them just input signals to your chemical machinery, similar to the ones your pain receptors are sending?
Are you suggesting that "thoughts" aren't completely contained within the brain?
That does not make it all cause and effect.
Well, I would caution you to be aware of the can of worms you'll open here on the philosophical front if you start allowing for a whole host of uncaused events existing within our causal universe.
Just because there's a biological element to my ability to experience emotions doesn't mean that emotion is simply a biological function.
What do you think emotion is, if not simply a biological function of your brain?
If your answer is "I don't know", why do you think that emotion is not simply a biological function of your brain? Have you seen evidence that emotion is not a function of brain chemistry?
I assume you admit that it is partially the result of brain chemistry, since we can alter it with chemicals.
There may be something else involved, the uncaused effect as you put it.
There may be. What evidence is there that a biological explanation for emotion is insufficient?
I believe there is
Why?
but that at least leaves the door open to free will.
Only if that thing you are talking about is coming from outside our caused universe, and only if being outside the universe allows for events to be uncaused.
The "if"s are mounting.
I'm just curious now, because your rebuttal for your decisions being caused was to start listing all of the causes for whatever your final response was. That seemed like and odd way of arguing against a lack of free will because we live in a causal universe.
The failure of science to fully understand something like consciousness to me implies the possibility that it's beyond science.
I'd be careful with that statement on a few levels. For one, it sounds like you are imposing your own lack of understanding of consciousness on the rest of humanity, and I don't know if that is true. Perhaps someone like Gebeker, whose job it is to determine and predict responses of primate brains, understands consciousness, or at least more than us laypersons?
Secondly, the statement implies that it will hold true in the future.
Consciousness happens within this universe. That brings it well within the boundaries of Science, even if we don't completely understand it today.
It wasn't so long ago that we didn't understand relativity or quantum mechanics. That didn't mean that Newton was right.
Anything that interacts with the physical world is subject to science. It's the achilles heel of supernaturalists. Sure, ghosts can exist in some ethereal plane outside of our realm of existence. But if we experience them - they must be interacting with our world - and that interaction is absolutely subject to scientific inquiry.
Same goes for God. Science may not be able to investigate Him - but they can investigate His interaction with our world. Of course, that interaction seems to have stopped as Science came of age and had the opportunity to investigate (conveniently
).
I guess now I'm more interested in WHY you think that there is something more to these emotions than chemicals racing around a gray blob in your skull. Is it because you need there to be something more? Hope that there is something more? Is that sufficient justification for not realizing that there is no evidence available to support such a view?
Unless you have evidence that supports such a view. Then I'll shut the hell up.