What's all this, then?
These pages are devoted to short discussions of some of the major thinkers and theories about consciousness. The selection of topics is idiosyncratic and there are still some regrettable omissions. The pieces are meant to be brief and lively,and written from a distinct point of view (sometimes more than one point of view), and this naturally makes it difficult at times to do full justice to the views or the people under consideration. But no-one is mentioned here who I do not sincerely respect and admire, however much I may think they are mistaken on some points. Clearly the only way to get a full understanding of what someone is saying is to read their own books, a course I heartily recommend.
One possible source of confusion is that some of the discussions here are presented as dialogues between two different characters. One of these, whom I think of as 'Blandula', after the Emperor Hadrian's verse addressed to his own soul, is represented by a sort of cherub, and is suspicious of reductive and materialist ideas: the other, ('Bitbucket', represented by an abacus) takes the opposite view. I hope this helps both sides to benefit from vigorous advocacy, but the two characters are merely figments of my imagination and I cannot supply email addresses for either of them.|
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