"In the New Yorker article referenced by Professor Henriques, Andy Clark, the subject of the article, mentioned the relationship of body to mind in conversation with Kurt Friston, the British Neurologist. Perhaps the Mind is the aggregate memory of the evolutionary history of the organism, all the way back to the Singularity/Big Bang? So what we think of as consciousness is actually referencing the vertical evolution of physiology from the unicellular state to Man, and everything in between. That would account for both the mundane function of the brain, just like all other physiologic organs, but also encompass the extra-corporeal aspect of mind that Clark thinks is relevant. What he is talking about iactually a new concept in ecology called Niche Construction- how earthworms remodel the soil to accommodate their aquatic kindneys; beavers build dams; Man builds villages, towns, cities, states and nations- "First there were bacteria, Now there is New York (Simon Conway Morris). Elsewhere, I have hypothesized that unicellular organisms were the first Niche Construction, internalizing the environment in the process of Endogenization that ultimately gave rise to physiology, body and mind alike. If the environment and the biota both were the products of the Singularity/Big Bang, then perhaps what we think of as mind is the anthropomorphizing of the Cosmos. This perspective may explain the 'hard question' (David Chalmers) as to why we see red when we hit our thumb with a hammer, or why there are no bad color schemes in Nature."

TBC