Life May Be Not Only Meaningless But

Eventually, I Believe, Current Attempts To Understand The Mind By Analogy With Man-made Computers That Can Perform Superbly Some Of The Same External Tasks As Conscious Beings Will Be Recognized As A Gigantic Waste Of Time.

If I Thought That Everything I Did Was Determined By My Circumstancse And My Psychological Condition, I Woudl Feel Trapped.

The Great Cognitive Shift Is An Expansion Of Consciousness From The Perspectival Form Contained In The Lives Of Particular Creatures To An Objective, World-encompassing Form That Exists Both Individually And Intersubjectively. It Was Originally A Biological Evolutionary Process, And In Our Species It Has Become A Collective Cultural Process As Well. Each Of Our Lives Is A Part Of The Lengthy Process Of The Universe Gradually Waking Up And Becoming Aware Of Itself.

The External View [of Agency] Forces Itself On Us At The Same Time That We Resist It. One Way This Occurs Is Through The Gradual Erosion Of What We Do By The Subtraction Of What Happens.

If A Psychological Maxwell Devises A General Theory Of Mind, He May Make It Possible For A Psychological Einstein To Follow With A Theory That The Mental And The Physical Are Really The Same. But This Could Happen Only At The End Of A Process Which Began With The Recognition That The Mental Is Something Completely Different From The Physical World As We Have Come To Know It Through A Certain Highly Successful Form Of Detached Objective Understanding. Only If The Uniqueness Of The Mental Is Recognized Will Concepts And Theories Be Devised Especially For The Purpose Of Understanding It.