Hi George-
I think that you've pointed out one of the best reasons for belief in a reality that is not totally explicable in material terms. The "official" explanation is that we are nothng but biological machines that compute according to stimulus-response principles. That seems to be adequate until we get into interesting questions like what is a thought, or how we actually move something in response to a thought.
The best that we can do on the basis of available evidence is to say that reality has to make sense in terms of physics and chemistry, the orthodox view. But reality also must make sense with respect to the feelings and thoughts we have, and more than that, there must be some way in which all of this can arise from nothing at all. That places three seemingly incompatible requirements on any explanation.
My personal opinion is that everything is ultimately nothing but a collection of thoughts in the Mind of God. Because we all share an essential God-nature, we all share the collective thought we call the world, as well as thoughts that physicists and neurologists have about it, and also the thoughts that each of us has about the way that we see it from our individual location. Interestingly, in deep meditation, this seems to be the actual truth. In that case, your arm is only a dream, and you are dreaming that it moves. That takes care of that idea.
What it doesn't take care of is negative feelings, unless you happen to view karma as the cause of "bad dreams". I recall a limerick-
There was a faith healer named Beale
Who said, "Although pain isn't real,
When I sit on a pin,
And the point punctures in,
I dislike what I fancy I feel."
dave
My personal belief is that our reality i