The Mind Is The Effect, Not The

Sometimes You Don’t Just Want To Risk Making Mistakes; You Actually Want To Make Them - If Only To Give You Something Clear And Detailed To Fix.

The Only Meaning Of Life Worth Caring About Is One That Can Withstand Our Best Efforts To Examine It.

I Should Emphasize This, To Keep Well-meaning But Misguided Multiculturalists At Bay: The Theoretical Entities In Which These Tribal People Frankly Believe — The Gods And Other Spirits — Don't Exist. These People Are Mistaken, And You Know It As Well As I Do. It Is Possible For Highly Intelligent People To Have A Very Useful But Mistaken Theory, And We Don't Have To Pretend Otherwise In Order To Show Respect For These People And Their Ways.

Let Me Lay My Cards On The Table. If I Were To Give An Award For The Single Best Idea Anyone Ever Had, I'd Give It To Darwin, Ahead Of Even Newton Or Einstein And Everyone Else. In A Single Stroke, The Idea Of Evolution By Natural Selection Unifies The Realm Of Life, Meaning, And Purpose With The Realm Of Space And Time, Cause And Effect, Mechanism And Physical Law. It Is Not Just A Wonderful Idea. It Is A Dangerous Idea.

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.