Consciousness Is What Makes The Mind-body Problem

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.

The Inclusion Of Consequences In The Conception Of What We Have Done Is An Acknowledgement That We Are Parts Of The World, But The Paradoxical Character Of Moral Luck Which Emerges From This Acknowledgement Shows That We Are Unable To Operate With Such A View, For It Leaves Us With No One To Be.

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)

I Want Atheism To Be True And Am Made Uneasy By The Fact That Some Of The Most Intelligent And Well-informed People I Know Are Religious Believers. It Isn't Just That I Don't Believe In God And, Naturally, I Hope That I'm Right In My Belief. It's That I Hope There Is No God! I Don't Want There To Be A God; I Don't Want The Universe To Be Like That.

The More Details We Learn About The Chemical Basis Of Life And The Intricacy Of The Genetic Code, The More Unbelievable The Standard Historical Account Becomes