Does consciousness have a “physical basis” or “material basis”? I am provoked by the suggestion that it does; for the question itself is misleading, if not simply meaningless.
In the September, 2014, issue of Harper’s magazine, Edward O. Wilson begins an essay called “On Free Will” with the following paragraph.
These are the notes of an amateur of the work of the philosopher R. G. Collingwood.
Published in 1942, The New Leviathan was the last book that Collingwood wrote. He finished it in some haste, because he knew he was dying—albeit of a condition brought on or at least exacerbated by overwork in the first place. He did die in 1943. Having been born in 1889, he was not so old as Socrates at death; but like Socrates, he had a babe in arms. Continue reading
Polytropy 