Ramachandran presents very reasonable and concise criteria for recognizing qualia, the internal experience at the center of what we consider consciousness. 1) qualia are irrevocable representations. The input is direct and unchangeable by the subject. 2) qualia have flexible implication. The representation of a qualia is not directly tied to a reflexive response, for then we would have no need for the intermediary. Qualia are representations to be operated on in a complex fashion, to allow a choice. 3) Qualia exist in intermediate memory. They must exist long enough to be operated on. While I don’t feel the necessity of being able to define consciousness, these criteria will provide me some dielectical ammunition.

Another salient point I got out of the last chapter: truth is limbic. This is a phenomenon you can’t miss: certainty is no guarantee of correctness. But it is ironic that the linguistic system, capable of such sophisticated propositional manipulations, in the end has very little so say about the experience of truth.

I’ve been reading Phantoms in the Brain. It has given me some leads into my thinking on mathematics and language, and even my questions about the innateness of skepticism. Delusional disorders can be pretty revealing about how people integrate information into a unified world perception, especially when this involves contradictory data. I think this process of integration makes some level of “delusion” necessary, but people have different thresholds.