[benkahuna]

Your analogy is bad. The gall bladder doesn't store "gall," but the thought does amuse me.

The gall bladder stores bile which is produced by the liver.

Interestingly, almost all animals from sharks to higher up have gall bladders. Except rats. Even mice have them. The human gall bladder can typically be removed with few complications (and it needs to be often enough).


Back to the topic though...


I think thought is produced by the brain just like the liver produces bile. It's just the product of nervous system functioning does not have mass and take up space (at least not insofar as we're aware).

I may be using the term material incorrectly here, but I pretty much use materialist to refer to a reality that most scientists concede exists. Matter/energy, mesons/bosons, etc. I include consciousness in this rubric because I think most scientists would concede that consciousness is a proven, real phenomenon.

The works you cite sound interesting and I can't really discuss the ideas intelligently unless I read them or otherwise become familiar with them.

Because consciousness is so poorly understand and is so different than anything we know about, I think it's very difficult to really compartmentalize it.

It's like someone I know used to often say, "You can't turn your own corner." It's almost like to really understand consciousness, you'd have to be outside consciousness as we know it.