Each Of Our Lives Is A Part

The Universe Has Become Not Only Conscious And Aware Of Itself But Capable In Some Respects Of Choosing Its Path Into The Future--though All Three, The Consciousness, The Knowledge, And The Choice, Are Dispersed Over A Vast Crowd Of Beings, Acting Both Individually And Collectively.

To Look For A Single General Theory Of How To Decide The Right Thing To Do Is Like Looking For A Single Theory Of How To Decide What To Believe.

I Should Not Really Object To Dying Were It Not Followed By Death.

It Is Prima Facie Highly Implausible That Life As We Know It Is The Result Of A Sequence Of Physical Accidents Together With The Mechanism Of Natural Selection. We Are Supposed To Abandon This Naïve Response, Not In Favor Of A Fully Worked Out Physical/chemical Explanation But In Favor Of An Alternative That Is Really A Schema For Explanation, Supported By Some Examples. What Is Lacking, To My Knowledge, Is A Credible Argument That The Story Has A Nonnegligible Probability Of Being True.

What We Take Ourselves To Be Doing When We Think About What Is The Case Or How We Should Act Is Something That Cannot Be Reconciled With A Reductive Naturalism, For Reasons Distinct From Those That Entail The Irreducibility Of Consciousness. It Is Not Merely The Subjectivity Of Thought But Its Capacity To Transcend Subjectivity And To Discover What Is Objectively The Case That Presents A Problem....thought And Reasoning Are Correct Or Incorrect In Virtue Of Something Independent Of The Thinker's Beliefs, And Even Independent Of The Community Of Thinkers To Which He Belongs. (p. 71)