Materialism is incomplete even as a theory of the physical world, since the physical world includes conscious organisms among its most striking occupants.

Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable.

Common sense doesn't have the last word in ethics or anywhere else, but it has, as J. L. Austin said about ordinary language, the first word: it should be examined before it is discarded.

If I thought that everything I did was determined by my circumstancse and my psychological condition, I woudl feel trapped.

Reason is universal because no attempted challenge to its results can avoid appealing to reason in the end-by claiming, for example, that what was presented as an argument is really a rationalization. This can undermine our confidence in the original method or practice only by giving us reasons to believe something else, so that finally we have to think about the arguments to make up our minds.

If sub specie aeternitatis [from eternity's point of view] there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair.

Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless.