I'm not familiar with Noe's writings but he sounds like just another run-of-the-mill mysterian. Does he have anything new to add to the standard mysterian argument that nothing could count even in principle as an explanation for consciousness because qualia are just too mysterious? Because if he does, he certainly hasn't expresed it here.

Some of the stuff he says in this columns is clearly a crock:

"The brain is essential for our lives, physiology, health and experience. But the idea that it is the whole story, or even the key to understanding the story, is not a scientific conclusion. It's a prejudice.

Straw man alert! No one says the brain is the "whole story". For one thing there is obviously the environment. No one ever denied that.

But Noe's assertion notwithstanding, the brain is clearly "key" to understanding the story. To say otherwise is ridiculous -- in the sense of laughable. And to see the brain as "key" is no prejudice at all. Quite the contrary -- that is a very hard won scientific finding that only became clear in the 20th century.

Crick framed the problem in terms of an unquestioned set of philosophical dogmas; namely that the key to consciousness will be found in the brain, that that's literally where experience and thought take place. My book is not anti-science; it's a challenge to science to get serious.

Noe's incredibly hand-wavy "argument" is not serious. Yes there's a point to be made that consciousness is not "in" the brain in any simple way but the idea that it is linked crucially to the brain is indisputable. The environment is important to be sure, but that's not where the processing takes place. If Noe thinks the processing happens somewhere other than the brain then please tell us where.

Noe may find the idea that we are strangers in a strange land too disturbing for his taste but that is a sign of his immaturity. We ARE strangers in a strange land. We are thrown into the world. We'd love to believe that we don't die but every indication is that we die and then we're done. That is a thought that may tend to alienate us in some fashion but there's no getting around it. You either make peace with that fact or you don't, perhaps choosing to delude yourself with religious nonsense.

Personally, I take the approach of eating, drinking, and being merry. I'll worry about dying when I'm dead. Come to think of it, I won't worry about it then either.

ELYDOG said, "This must be the 5th straight story about so-called 'philosophers' using strawmen like the 'brain is consciousness' to resurrect religion. Someone at Salon in a position of power - Joan Walsh? - must attend her liberal church every week. And has to convince us that her fuzzy thinking should be the norm."

I suspect that ELYDOG is onto something here. This contrarian pap has the stench of Joan Walsh all over it, and I think ELYDOG may have diagnosed the cause as well.

You know Joan, before you dismiss me (as you are wont to do), you should understand that I was raised in a devout but somewhat liberal Catholic family and I was trained by Jesuits. I know where people like you are coming from. I know exactly where you are coming from.

That's how I know that you're gutless. Do I sound angry about it? Yes I do. Because your gutlessness and lack of intellectual integrity makes it harder on those of us who don't give up on making sense and facing the world as it really is.

Reductionism, properly understood, isn't nearly the boogieman many people want to make it out to be. Allow me to quote from the philosopher David Papineau in his article "The Rise of Physicalism" on this point:

"Contemporary physicalism is an ontological rather than a methodological doctrine. It claims that everything is physically constituted, NOT that everything should be studied by the methods used in physical science...You can be a physicalist about biology, say, and yet deny that biology is concerned with laws, or a physicalist about sociology, and yet insist that sociology should use the method of empathetic verstehen rather than third-person observation."

(emphasis mine)