Before going further, I ought to offer a word of explanation for my use of the mathematical idea of function, which can be expressed algebraically as y = f(x); and why I never use the expression “cause and effect” if I can help it. Quite simply, the idea of function is so much more versatile, and so much more useful. If I had tried to describe my theory of consciousness, limiting myself to the idea of cause and effect, I would have got nowhere. The idea has usefulness in the natural sciences; but even with something so simple as the electric potential set up when you squash a crystal, you have to resort to partial differential equations because the potential is different along the different axes of symmetry. To try to use cause and effect to describe it, would be a nightmare. It would not promote understanding, it would conceal it. Outside natural science, cause and effect has a limited usefulness. You only have to consider the hopeless mess that lawyers have got themselves into with their theory of the measure of damages, where only foreseeable events “cause” recoverable damage, to see they would have been better off with “function”. It is delightful to remember that only a few years ago lawyers were hiding behind such phrases as “causa causans” and “causa sine qua non”, and…