Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist

Having lost my central sun, I am a solitary planet now, wandering in the silent spaces between the stars.

What am I to the universe? Practically nothing.

constant internal interrogation sharpens your sensitivity to your actions, desires, and motivations. You earnestly try to identify your faults and struggle to eliminate them. You seek to bring your unconscious motivations into consciousness. This will enable you not only to understand yourself better but also to live a life more in harmony with your character and your long-term goals.

You seek to bring your unconscious motivations into consciousness. This will enable you not only to understand yourself better but also to live a life more in harmony with your character and your long-term goals.

Can you truly act freely? Can you do and say things that are not a direct consequence of your predispositions and your circumstances?

A more cautious reading of the data is that forming a rapid impression and coming to a conscious decision can be better than endlessly second-guessing that first-glance assessment. Make a decision, trust yourself, and stick with it.

The brain is not like a hologram, in which everything contributes equally to the image. Some regions add little, if anything, and can be damaged without loss of phenomenal experience, whereas others are crucial to consciousness.

To have an experience means to have qualia, and the qualia of an experience are what specifies that experience and makes it different from other experiences.

On the one hand is the brain, the most complex object in the known universe, a material thing subject to the laws of physics. On the
other hand is the world of awareness, of the sights and sounds of life, of fear and anger, of lust, love, and ennui.
These two worlds are closely related—as a stroke or a strong blow to the head demonstrates dramatical y. Oscar Wilde expressed it
poetical y, “It is in the brain that the poppy is red, that the apple is odorous, that the skylark sings.”