He's referring to consciousness, and the fact that we may all be more of passengers than drivers. The entity inside of you, experiencing everything like a highly interactive movie, is your consciousness - you. And we tend to think of this as what drives our actions, because it certainly feels it. I'm 'thinking up' these words, and then writing them down, so certainly this is me - the observing entity within this body?
But that's somewhat begging a question of free will. Did I choose these words, because I literally chose them or is it simply a product of various physical processes within the entity that I'm 'attached' to and 'observing'? And if this latter possibility is the case, then the presence of "me", the consciousness, serves absolutely no purpose beyond being a 'passenger.' And an entity with or without such a thing would behave identically. This could, for instance, include compelling descriptions of consciousness.
This is one of the main issues I have with consciousness. If you write a computer program to give you the value of a variable, add a couple of numbers, or other fundamental process then you certainly don't believe some entity suddenly poofs into existence, imagines itself doing such an action(s) of its own will, and then poofing our of existence. Yet, if one is to believe consciousness is suddenly emergent then this must become true at some point or 2, 3, or 2^100 actions, which I find no less absurd.
But that's somewhat begging a question of free will. Did I choose these words, because I literally chose them or is it simply a product of various physical processes within the entity that I'm 'attached' to and 'observing'? And if this latter possibility is the case, then the presence of "me", the consciousness, serves absolutely no purpose beyond being a 'passenger.' And an entity with or without such a thing would behave identically. This could, for instance, include compelling descriptions of consciousness.
This is one of the main issues I have with consciousness. If you write a computer program to give you the value of a variable, add a couple of numbers, or other fundamental process then you certainly don't believe some entity suddenly poofs into existence, imagines itself doing such an action(s) of its own will, and then poofing our of existence. Yet, if one is to believe consciousness is suddenly emergent then this must become true at some point or 2, 3, or 2^100 actions, which I find no less absurd.