The Universe Has Become Not Only Conscious

What We Take Ourselves To Be Doing When We Think About What Is The Case Or How We Should Act Is Something That Cannot Be Reconciled With A Reductive Naturalism, For Reasons Distinct From Those That Entail The Irreducibility Of Consciousness. It Is Not Merely The Subjectivity Of Thought But Its Capacity To Transcend Subjectivity And To Discover What Is Objectively The Case That Presents A Problem....thought And Reasoning Are Correct Or Incorrect In Virtue Of Something Independent Of The Thinker's Beliefs, And Even Independent Of The Community Of Thinkers To Which He Belongs. (p. 71)

Common Sense Doesn't Have The Last Word In Ethics Or Anywhere Else, But It Has, As J. L. Austin Said About Ordinary Language, The First Word: It Should Be Examined Before It Is Discarded.

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.

A Theory Of Motivation Is Defective If It Renders Intelligible Behaviour Which Is Not Intelligible.

It Is Prima Facie Highly Implausible That Life As We Know It Is The Result Of A Sequence Of Physical Accidents Together With The Mechanism Of Natural Selection. We Are Supposed To Abandon This Naïve Response, Not In Favor Of A Fully Worked Out Physical/chemical Explanation But In Favor Of An Alternative That Is Really A Schema For Explanation, Supported By Some Examples. What Is Lacking, To My Knowledge, Is A Credible Argument That The Story Has A Nonnegligible Probability Of Being True.