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includes the physical processes we are all familiar with—electricity streaming, gravity pulling. The second includes the contents of our consciousness, including volition. The importance of this second process cannot be overstated, for itallows human thoughts to make a difference in the evolution of physical events.
    Because the question of mind—its existence and its causal efficacy—is central to our thesis, let us turn first to an exploration of a problem as ancient as philosophy and as modern as the latest discovery of genes that “cause” risk taking, or shyness, or happiness, or impulsivity—or any of the dozens of human behavioral traits that are now being correlated with the chemical messages encoded on our twisting strands of DNA.
    Let us turn to the duality of mind and brain.

{ ONE }
THE MATTER OF MIND
    Nature in her unfathomable designs has mixed us of clay and flame, of brain and mind, that the two things hang indubitably together and determine each other’s being, but how or why, no mortal may ever know.
    — William James
Principles of Psychology, Chapter VI
     
    What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.
    — T. H. Key
    Of all the thousands of pages and millions of words devoted to the puzzle of the mind and the brain, to the mystery of how something as sublime and insubstantial as thought or consciousness can emerge from three pounds of gelatinous pudding inside the skull, my favorite statement of the problem is not that of one of the great philosophers of history, but of a science fiction writer. In a short story first published in the science and sci-fi magazine Omni in 1991, the Hugo-winning author Terry Bisson gets right to the heart of the utter absurdity of the situation: that an organ made from basically the same material ingredients (nucleated, carbon-based, mitochondria-filled cells) as, say, a kidney, is able to generate this ineffable thing called mind. Bisson’s story begins with this conversation between an alien commander and a scout who has just returned from Earth to report the results of his reconnaissance:
    “They’re made out of meat.”
    “Meat?”
    “There’s no doubt about it. We picked several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, probed them all the way through. They’re completely meat.”
    “That’s impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?”
    “They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don’t come from them. The signals come from machines.”
    “So who made the machines? That’s who we want to contact.”
    “They made the machines. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Meat made the machines.”
    “That’s ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You’re asking me to believe in sentient meat.”
    “I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in the sector and they’re made of meat.”
    “Maybe they’re like the Orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage.”
    “Nope. They’re born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their lifespans, which didn’t take too long. Do you have any idea of the lifespan of meat?”
    “Spare me. Okay, maybe they’re only part meat. You know, like the Weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside.”
    “Nope, we thought of that, since they do have meat heads like the Weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They’re meat all the way through.”
    “No brain?”
    “Oh, there is a brain all right. It’s just that the brain is made out of meat.”
    “So…what does the thinking?”
    “You’re not understanding, are you? The brain does the thinking. The meat.”
    “Thinking meat! You’re asking me to believe in thinking meat!”
    “Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture, or do I have to start all over?”
     
    It was some 2,500 years ago that