I used to suspect that in the brain, time is its own representation. I now think the problem is so much more complicated. Initially I was rather impressed by the experiments showing that on complex problems, subjects who are distracted do better in getting an answer than either those who answer immediately or those who spend time reflecting on the problem.

Being engaged in some way for the good of the community, whatever that community, is a factor in a meaningful life. We long to belong, and belonging and caring anchors our sense of place in the universe.

Studies of decision-making in the monkey, where activity of single neurons in parietal cortex is recorded, you can see a lot about the time-accuracy trade-off in the monkey's decision, and you can see from the neuron's activity at what point in his accumulation of evidence he makes his decision to make a particular movement.

It seems that the brain has a "small world" architecture - or at least the cortex does. Everything can connect to everything else in a few synaptic steps.

When that theory is isolated from known facts, it is likely not to be productive.

I had no idea what philosophy was until I went to college at UBC. I first read Hume and Plato, so naturally I was under the misapprehension that philosophers are trying to figure out what is true, and that contemporary philosophers are mainly trying to figure out what is true about the mind. Of course Hume and Plato were trying to do that, hence my misapprehension.

I am less attracted to guesses about what cannot be done, than about making progress on a problem.