There Are No Forces On

Philosophers Are Never Quite Sure What They Are Talking About - About What The Issues Really Are - And So Often It Takes Them Rather A Long Time To Recognize That Someone With A Somewhat Different Approach (or Destination, Or Starting Point) Is Making A Contribution.

Not A Single One Of The Cells That Compose You Knows Who You Are, Or Cares.

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.

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.

Wherever There Is A Design That Is Highly Successful In A Broad Range Of Similar Environments, It Is Apt To Emerge Again And Again, Independently - The Phenomenon Known In Biology As Convergent Evolution. I Call These Designs 'good Tricks.'