ABSTRACT
Ambrose Bierce, in The Devil's Dictionary, a century ago defined "mind" as "a mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavor to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with." Scientists sometimes call consciousness an "emergent property" of the brain's information processing. No computer has ever yet approached the degree of complexity of our brains, and perhaps if that could be achieved in an artificial system, self-awareness might arise. Experimental data suggests that intentions form in our brains some milliseconds before we are conscious of them. The mind isn't even a single system, but rather a whole complex of varied systems all doing their own things.
