It seems probable that humans have been on the planet, with much the same brain, for about 250,000 years.

Remember, in the heyday of vitalism, people said that when all the data are in about cells and how they work, we will still know nothing about the life force - about the basic difference between being alive and not being alive.

In all probability, mental states are processes and activities of the brain. Exactly what activities, and exactly at what level of description, remains to be seen.

Theorizing is of course essential to make progress in understanding, but theorizing in the absence of knowing available relevant facts is not very productive.

Eventually I realized that for contemporary philosophers conceptual analysis per se was an end in itself. For some, it was somehow supposed to lead to the truth about these phenomena, not just to tidy things up a bit.

Many philosophers in the second half of the 20th century really seemed to think that they were laying the foundations for science by laying down the conceptual (necessary) truths.

Humility bids us to take ourselves as we are; we do not have to be cosmically significant to be genuinely significant.