Sublime

This wasn't consciousness, but it was a start. Matter could think without brains or electronics or molecular switches. It might even be a fundamental property of matter itself.

While reviewing material for this book, I realized that a unique language, which has yet to be developed, is needed to capture the thing that happens when mental processes constrain the brain and vice versa. The action is at the interface of those layers. In one kind of vocabulary it is where downward causation meets upward causation. In another vo

Let’s assume for a moment that materialism is correct and that the brain produces conscious experience. Let’s explore the miracle that this would imply. Think about your thoughts and feelings. You know you are experiencing them, but you can’t touch them. They are nonphysical. How is it that these nonphysical thoughts

Mark’s field of time is harder to survey; because, since he is, at root, still an infant, his future is not yet something that cannot change. He believes there’s some simple, radical difference about him. He hopes it’s genius, fears it’s madness. Magda knows it’s neither. She knows that in truth Mark is just a radically simple person, wildly noncom

For PKD, the big question was, what was the source of the tachyonic messages; who was sending the information and why? He quickly decided that the messages were being sent by a future version of himself. He had, for some time, felt that something else was writing his novels. Like many creative individuals, he believed that he was simply a medium fo