--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <authfriend@...> wrote:
Thanks for seeking it out. > The Core of `Mind and Cosmos'By THOMAS NAGEL > <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/thomas-nagel/> > This is a brief statement of positions defended more fully in my book > "Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of > Nature Is Almost Certainly False," which was published by Oxford > University Press last year. Since then the book has attracted a good > deal of critical attention, which is not surprising, given the > entrenchment of the world view that it attacks. It seemed useful to > offer a short summary of the central argument. > Read > more:http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/the-core-of-mind-an\ > d-cosmos/ > <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/the-core-of-mind-and-co\ > smos/> So it's *that* old chestnut. I can't imagine what the controversy is about then, this idea has been around for donkey's years. Probably just some bloggers reacting to the term "neo-Darwinism" being false. Bless 'em. I always thought that if mind was some sort of intrinsic quality of the universe there ought to be a lot more of it about, and maybe of better quality than ours. Fact is, it took millions of years to arise on Earth and it needn't have so I can't imagine what sort of waiting game it was playing. I stick with probability A, there will be a complete neurological explanation but how we translate that into something that satisfies *personally* is up to us. I suspect some sort of feedback mechanism like the brain uses for everything else, the immediacy of consciousness ceases during sleep or general anaesthetic because it is electrical activity and our subjective part, that causes all the hassle, ceases too because it is inextricably bound up with the sensations that is the majority part of experience. There is a part of the brain where our sense of self resides and this is another part of the feedback monitoring system that goes during sleep. Consciousness is us being caught between different brain functions but the bit that we think is us can never be pinned down as it depends on us looking at the rest of what is happening inside to maintain an illusion that there is an "us" to start with. It's like a hall of mirrors, turn round as fast as you like but you'll never see the original you. Turn the lights off though and you see nothing. It's a machine. But it fools itself into thinking it's something it's not, if it stayed on all the time I'd be a bit more convinced. But it evolved like everything else in the brain and is therefore a bodge-up, maybe one day we'll be able to see our brains working and realise how it's all done. Actually, when I'm meditating I think I get a better glimpse of how it works because a lot of extraneous chatter can get shut down but the sense of the presence of "me" remains, until I fall asleep. A ghost in a sleepy machine...
