There’s Simply No Polite Way To Tell

Consciousness Is Cerebral Celebrity--nothing More And Nothing Less. Those Contents Are Conscious That Persevere, That Monopolize Resources Long Enough To Achieve Certain Typical And "symptomatic" Effects--on Memory, On The Control Of Behavior And So Forth.

Is He A Dread Genetic Determinist, Or A Dread Environmental Determinist? He Is Neither, Of Course, For Both These Species Of Bogeyman Are As Mythical As Werewolves. By Increasing The Information We Have About The Various Causes Of The Constraints That Limit Our Current Opportunities, He Has Increased Our Powers To Avoid What We Want To Avoid, Prevent What We Want To Prevent. Knowledge Of The Roles Of Our Genes, And The Genes Of The Other Species Around Us, Is Not The Enemy Of Human Freedom, But One Of Its Best Friends.

Human Consciousness Is Just About The Last Surviving Mystery... A Topic That Often Leaves Even The Most Sophisticated Thinkers Tongue-tied And Confused. And, As With All Of The Earlier Mysteries, There Are Many Who Insist - And Hope - That There Will Never Be A Demystification Of Consciousness.

An Inert Historical Fact Is Any Fact About A Perfectly Ordinary Arrangement Of Matter In The World At Some Point In The Past That Is No Longer Discernible, A Fact That Has Left No Footprints At All In The World Today.

It Is Not So Much That We, Using Our Brains, Spin Our Yarns, As That Our Brains, Using Yarns, Spin Us.