Vatting A Thousand Conc Series 22

Now that the brain is firmly ensconced in its vat, one or two things will need a bit of updating, fiddling-with, shuffling, and similar interference. Memory, for instance, and the question of ‘where memories live’. Language, and what it is, how it works, where it came from. Where it’s going next, which of course will be wherever the Expedition decides to send it. The meaning of life, not so much, because THAT gets old VERY fast. First, an easing-back-in to the whole business of ‘consciousness’ and where it stands. In-joke, as it happens. The ‘pes hippocampi’, the footprints of the limbic system, boots and all, probably. It’s in “A Brain In A Vat”, available (but for how long?) FREE if you go to this URL: http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/a-brain-in-a-vat/20050258 … but of course FREE doesn’t always last for ever. What started, in the rather overblown imagination of the human race, as our claim to fame, superiority, special status and even, dare we say it and we DARE, ‘intelligence’; that MARVEL known as ‘consciousness’, that has been hunted harder than the snark, and with even less success; the ‘thing’ that was supposed to set us apart from the ‘lower animals’ and place us on the right hand of some ‘god’ or other; that ‘glory all our own’ that has been the subject of so much silliness and so much delusion; yes, THAT! … became, once the brain was situated properly in its comfortable and nutritious VAT, just one ‘function’ among many, and a rather TINY one at that. Consciousness, a clever and VERY little trick; one frame at a time, maybe one PIXEL at a time, and everything else ‘just’ computation, neurology, wiring, and the management of energy. Even though I know you’ve already studied it carefully, maybe even BOUGHT it but human nature being what it is, probably NOT, I’m going to cheat, bring in the last few pages of “A Brain In Said Vat”, to remind myself where things ended up. At the feet of a pair of twinned sea-horses, which do not HAVE feet; and anyway what the anatomists for some reason call ‘the foot’ is quite obviously the SNOUT. Pick, pick, pick …. Shhh! … say this quietly … consciousness is a neat trick, rather tiny in the great scheme of things, clever as all get-out, that arose and lives in two little nubs of neural tissue, one on each side. A little tiny one-trick pony … but what a trick! Justly famous throughout the brain … oh, actually no, 99.9% of the brain is completely unaware of its existence. But a legend in its own mind!