...although I don't recall it as being very well received.

I refer to the concept that thought, indeed, consciousness itself, is an epiphenomenon; that it has no independent existence of its own. Our mental activity gives the illusion that it is a process independent and separate from external reality, but "external reality" is a meaningless concept. There is only one reality, the same laws, the same processes, there are no artificial and arbitrary boundaries between what is out there and in here. There are only interacting and overlapping systems. We certainly must concede how consciousness is affected by information and physical stimuli from places and times other than where and when the consciouness resides.

Consciousness may be a convenient fiction useful for organizing our activities and facilitating entropic processes, but it has no independent existence of its own. Mind you, I'm not saying consciouness isn't real, it is, what I mean is that it is not separate and independent from everything else. What goes on in our brains is a chemical process, it has a physical basis, and it is inconceivable for it to occur in isolation from the rest of the universe. Attempts to reconcile this have led to all sorts of mystical smoke and mirrors: the soul, the spirit, all kinds of religious nonsense designed to avoid the realization that there is no one home.

The invention of software has given us a model to help us visualize just how consciousness works. It shares many of its properties, such as the ability to perceive and affect the universe by altering internal self-generated states which can be described through formal symbol systems. But man has developed other systems like this, before: language, logic, mathematics, music...all methods of processing information by non-physical systems operating on a physical substrate (the brain for consciounsess, the computer for software, speech or print media for language, etc.). Memories and thoughts have an undeniable reality, but do they exist? Do they exist even if they refer to things and events which do not, or never, existed?

I have mentioned before that the universe consists of matter and energy interacting in time and space, but information is undeniably real, it is the quintessence that helps keep track of amounts and relationships, the universe can't operate without it. We all recognize it's existence, we communicate it to each other with phenomenal precision and efficiency, and even transmit it through wires or preserve it on paper. Yet we still can't explain it or demonstrate it or hold a pound of it in our hands. Consciousness is how the universe processes information. Can you dig it, oh vortical one?