[Interesting Ian]

Which came first? The law or the reality? Perhaps you should read Newton's book, before you assume that he waved his hand and consigned all of reality to his laws of motion.

First of all you make it sound as if I subscribe to the position that physical laws govern. Please don't quote me out of context.

But to answer your question:

There's no purpose in reading Newton's book.

a) What he personally thought is not relevant

b) His principles does not address this question.

And neither came first. The Universe would presumably consist in both the material entities of reality and the laws governing the interaction of these material entities. You can't have one coming before the other.

Correct. We can't. However, the explanation is based on the evidence at hand, contingent upon the awareness that the explanation could always be wrong. It's a theory. It's a very nice theory, but it remains only a theory.

What are you talking about? You seem to be talking about a scientific explanation where as I'm talking about the true metaphysical explanation. Your response is therefore a complete non-sequitur.

For instance, gravity does not explain why the Earth orbits the Sun at all. It explains why the Earth does not fly away from the Sun. It does not suggest why the Earth started orbiting in the first place.

Don't be absurd. If it explains the latter than necessarily it explains the former. But under your metaphysical proposal that laws do not govern gravity actually explains nothing whatsoever. But I'm ok with that; it doesn't need to as I've already explained.

Then let us drop physical causation and explore mental causation. Tell me about it. What is it?

Our ability to voluntarily move our bodies.

I hold the term "free will" to be interchangeable with "choice".

Then you're not using the term in its correct sense.

You're making assertions without argument; provide the argument, please, and explain what it is while you're doing so.

1. If it were true that my consciousness is not causally efficacious and instead the totality of my behaviour is governed by physical laws, then my conviction that I am conscious is wholly caused by determined events in the brain which form links in a chain of physical cause and effect.

2. Thus my conviction that I am conscious has nothing to do with the fact that I am conscious since my consciousness is causally inefficacious. Instead, as stated, my conviction I am conscious is a result of the causal chain of physical cause and effect in the brain.

3) But I know without a shadow of a doubt that I am conscious since there is no distinction between seeming to be conscious and really being conscious. Moreover it is very clear that it is my consciousness which provides this incorrigible knowledge, for, if "I" were not conscious, "I" could not think "I" am, since, not being conscious, "I" could never actual think at all!

4) But now we have an internal inconsistency since, on the one hand, I have incorrigible certain knowledge that I am conscious, and yet, on the other hand, if all mental events simply follow physical events in the brain, I could logically be mistaken in thinking I am conscious.

5) Therefore we need to abandon the initial premise i.e that my consciousness is not causally efficacious.

Starting with a thousand words at a time would be acceptable. Professing a surplus of knowledge is not an argument.

I am unable to comprehend why you think it is an argument. The problem here is that you don't appear to understand a great deal of what I say. IN this you are in the same boat as the vast majority of skeptics. In addition I am not prepared to start lecturing on all topics under the Sun in this one thread.