From ALAN BRADFIELD; RICHARD WILSON
I do not see why I, a fully self-conscious and wide awake being, who knows
what he is doing and thinking and saying, should take any notice whatsoever of
Guy Claxton and the noises he makes in his darkroom (Review, 1 October), when
on his own admission he is a fully automated product of evolution, whose
genetically programmed bio-computer brain leaves no room for any conscious
entity that knows what it is talking about.
I agree with Claxton’s opposition to a slavish addiction for possessions,
but this is a moral position and his theory allows no morality. He denies the
individual’s freedom to choose, a prerequisite for moral action. For him,
consciousness is a mere epiphenomenon, no more important than Huxley’s “steam
above the factory”.
