What if conscious experience is managed by each module? Lose a module to injury or stroke, and the consciousness that accompanies that module is gone… - Michael S. Gazzaniga

Do the lingering ideas of the past block us from seeing clearly how it comes about? Is consciousness just what brains do? Just as a pocket watch with all of its gears tells us the time, do brains with all their neurons just give us consciousness? The history of the topic is vast, swept by pendulum swings between the pure mechanists and the hopeful mentalists. Surprisingly, twenty-five hundred years of human history have not resolved the question or taught our species how to frame an understanding of our personal conscious experience. Indeed, our core ideas have not changed that much. While thinking explicitly about consciousness was ignited by Descartes three hundred years ago, two overarching and contradictory notions — that the mind either is part of the brain’s workings or works somehow independently of the brain — have been around seemingly forever. Indeed, these ideas are still with us.

This great zone of cerebral activity is where plans are made to speak, write, throw a baseball, or pick up a dish from the table.

I believe that things just happen in life, and pretty much after the fact, we make up a story to make it all seem rational. We all like simple stories that suggest a causal chain to life’s events. Yet randomness is ever present.